[Zhihu question] Why Do Some People Like Horror, Extreme, and Bizarre Movies and TV Shows?
This psychological phenomenon is called benign masochism.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people generally share a certain psychological tendency:
As long as we can be sure that something that “could have killed us” can no longer kill us, we find it—thrilling.
Real danger makes us desperately want to stay away, but “false danger” makes us flock to it.
When the car you’re riding in loses control in real life, you’d be so terrified your heart might stop—but you’ll willingly pay to experience losing control on a roller coaster;
When you’re falling from a cliff in real life, you might be scared to death before you even reach the ground—but you’ll willingly pay to go bungee jumping;
If you get shit, piss, or other gross stuff on you in real life, you might be so disgusted that you throw up last night’s dinner—but when you hear Guo Degang tell a story about how Yu Qian set off firecrackers in a public toilet as a kid and ended up with shit all over his face, you’ll laugh until you double over;
Likewise, if a psychopathic killer were to gut someone right in front of you, you’d definitely crap your pants—but you’d willingly pay for a movie ticket to watch a maniac go on a killing spree.
—See? We do everything we can to avoid real danger, but we actually love “false danger”.
The renowned psychologist and “father of disgust” (what a bizarre title) Paul Rozin came up with a concept to sum up this phenomenon—benign masochism[i]. Once we realize that an activity that looks dangerous is actually safe, we willingly seek out that danger. It looks like masochism, but it’s a low-harm, “benign” kind of masochism.
Riding roller coasters, skydiving, listening to disgusting jokes, and watching or reading horror and extreme fiction are all examples of benign masochism.
Benign masochism is an ancient psychological mechanism, so the popularity of horror and extreme art is by no means a sign of “moral decline”—it’s been around since ancient times.
For example, according to statistics compiled by American art historian Clark Hulse[ii], Shakespeare’s tragedy Titus Andronicus contains 14 murders, 6 acts of dismemberment, one rape, one live burial, and one act of cannibalism. If the play were faithfully adapted into a movie, it would unquestionably be rated “not for minors”.
Xiaobai’s book The Lustful Hamlet goes into detail about how today’s readers misread Shakespeare. In fact, Shakespeare’s works contain plenty of lowbrow stuff. In Shakespeare’s time, the atmosphere in the theater during his plays was actually more like that of Deyunshe—a crosstalk troupe—than a theater where the audience sits stiffly upright. Shakespeare later became high culture, but back then his work was a bit like today’s B-movies: the kind of horror, extreme, and bizarre art the questioner is talking about.
Here we have to ask one more question: when all is said and done, why does benign masochism feel so good? After all, skydiving and bungee jumping still look pretty terrifying.
The reason is roughly this: when danger is closing in, the experience isn’t entirely negative to begin with. For example, when the body is in pain, the brain also releases endorphins to ease it, and endorphins produce a kind of floaty euphoria. Likewise, when you’re being chased by a tiger or beaten up, adrenaline floods your system, giving you that intensely excited, heart-racing rush. It’s just that when the danger is real, these pleasurable sensations are overshadowed by much stronger negative emotions.
Once we realize the danger isn’t actually real, those pleasurable sensations come out on top. So why not use “false danger” to experience pleasure? That’s the first-level explanation for why people engage in benign masochism[iii].
Most of the literature I’ve read stops at this explanation, but personally, I think benign masochism also deserves an evolutionary explanation. My guess is that people may be drawn to benign masochism because it enhances their ability to survive.
Throwing yourself into a situation that merely looks dangerous—isn’t that a very good kind of training and rehearsal? We don’t have to take any real safety risks, yet we can experience danger. It’s a “danger-situation simulator”, basically. We’re using the simulator to improve our crisis-response skills.
So people may like benign masochism because they use “false danger” to cultivate their ability to deal with “real danger”. That is probably the evolutionary significance of benign masochism.
That’s all.
Written by: Zhichao Wei
[i] Rozin, P., & Schiller, D. (1980). The nature and acquisition of a preference for chili pepper by humans. Motivation and emotion, 4(1), 77-101.
[ii] Hulse, S. C. (1979). Wresting the Alphabet: Oratory and Action in” Titus Andronicus”. Criticism, 21(2), 106-118.
[iii] Strohminger, N. S. (2013). The Hedonics of Disgust (Doctoral dissertation).
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