Issue 14- Phobophilia: For the Love of Horror

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A peep from the editor

Dear reader,

What better way to celebrate the month of October than by celebrating its most iconic holiday ever- Halloween!

With Halloween just around the corner, we wanted to dive into the spirit of the holiday in this issue, by looking at all the pieces of psychology in horror.

This issue is full of busting some myths on the “tricks” by talking about superstitious trances and how our brain interprets horror while enjoying sweet little “treats”- like having a scream therapy session with your favorite horror movie (my all-time favorite's Hereditary) is good for your mental health!

Being a huge horror movie fan, we’ve even set your “Horror-scopes” on the run through a fun Scream themed maze- don’t forget to click on the killer to see if you survive the night from Ghostface

So, cuddle up with your favorite blanket and snacks and delve into “Phobophilia- for the Love of Horror”

How Brain Interprets HHorror ow Brain Interprets Horror

Zaina –Naeem Zaina Naeem

Have you noticed how some people enjoy horror while some people despise it and avoid it at all costs? How do some people watch it like any other movie while someone people have a blanket wrapped around them at all times? Why is it that we feel such a rush of emotions and are afraid of something that we know isn’t real at all? Our brain is intricate, it is responsible for various functions like controlling our body movements and senses and is responsible for why some individuals love horror while some detest it. In this essay, we will try to understand how the brain interprets horror.

LeDoux (2002) has identified the pathway by which fear and memory in the hippocampus operate in unison to establish conditioned learning. When the body senses fear, the amygdala alerts the brain. This in turn asks the hippocampus, another part of your brain, for assistance. hippocampus's role is to contextualize this fear and comprehend it. This triggers the brain to begin generating the neurochemicals and hormones necessary for your body to successfully react to the frightful circumstance. in actuality, processing and perceiving fear involves considerably more than just two parts of your brain interacting. Scientists are constantly learning about fear and the intricate series of reactions that our brains organize in their wake. And this complexity may also be what separates those who enjoy horror films from those who don't. When one feels fear there aren’t only physical changes but even a lot of physiological changes occur like in situations of fight, freeze, or flight, the sympathetic nervous system is activated. On occasion, the fury and attack mechanism will activate and start acting violently (Konner, 2002).

Some of the hormonal triggers and gates linked to fear include corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), cortisol, and adrenaline. In a study held by Asma (2014), they inserted a mouse with a gene that makes CRH and saw that this resulted in a fearful mouse while in the absence of that produced a fearless mouse. Fear lives in our brains and it is all grouped in the limbic system (Panksepp, 1998). Each of these circuits in the brain contains distinctive brain pathways, makes use of particular neurotransmitters and hormones, and produces particular behaviors. Each of the temporal lobes of your brain has an almond-shaped structure called an amygdala which is responsible for various emotional responses especially fear. Researchers (Adolphs, 1994) found that individuals with damaged amygdalas had difficulty identifying fearful expressions. In actuality, processing and perceiving fear involves considerably more than just two parts of your brain interacting. Scientists are constantly learning about fear and the intricate series of reactions that our brains organize in their wake. And this complexity may also be what separates those who enjoy horror films from those who don't.

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Personality types and the enjoyment Pof ersonality types and the enjoyment of horror hmovies orror movies

Naila –Khamis Naila Khamis

ovies are specifically created to elicit fear and can even result in cal responses such as trembling, shivering, screaming even paralysis. p ple develop a fascination with horror movies, they enjoy the consistent feeling of fear that is portrayed and excitement, while others cannot finish watching a horror film. Numerous studies have been carried out to understand more about the effects of horror films on viewers. For instance, Cantor (2004) looked at the effect of watching horror movies ranging from high and low suspense. Participants were asked to write their experience in an essay, he found that 46% reported sleep disturbance and 75% reported experiencing anxiety. Other classifications for horror enthusiasts include addicts to adrenaline or dark copper. Adrenaline junkies love the sensation they get from watching a scary movie, they tend to immerse themselves in experiences that make them excited. As for dark copers, they use horror films to cope with their lives and watch horror films as a way to deal with their anxiety. The reasons behind the enjoyment of horror films vary.

Additionally, those with a high level of empathy display more negative emotions after watching a scary movie. Some people find it difficult to witness other people's suffering, while others just accept that the suffering depicted in horror films is a work of fiction and are less affected by the content of horror films.

Horror movies are made to frighten us; they display our worst fears and can awaken our most basic instincts. Horror movies are popular, whether it's for the adrenaline rush, a peek into another realm or just a few hours of escape. Others find the frightening imagery in the movies intolerable. Characteristics of the two categories of persons could be used to distinguish them. A 16-personality test attempted to classify personalities as well as their preference for horror movies. Some personalities are more receptive to horror movies than others. The test revealed that Analyst personality types have a strong interest in horror movies, which was accounted for by their intuitive energy and detached attitude. As for Sentinels, they don’t enjoy horror films due to their lack of closure, as they are committed to order and societal norms, and horror films don’t provide that.

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Phobia, Real or Fake?

SafaMohammed

Phobias, we’ve all heard of them, maybe you’ve come across someone with a phobia, or even have one yourself. So what are they? Put quite simply, take a fear you have, got that? Now dial it up to eleven, and now dive headfirst into whatever it is! Now that should just about paint the pretty picture!

In scientific terms, A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling, or animal. They are vastly more pronounced in effect than mere fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or rather unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.

Some common phobias you might’ve come across are Social phobias the fear of social interactions, Thanatophobia the fear of death, Claustrophobia the fear of enclosed spaces, and Acrophobia the fear of heights.

So what happens when someone is exposed to their phobia stimulus? Take Marissa Wolicki, a twenty-five-year-old Toronto resident, and her recent brush with experiencing social phobia as a reluctant guest accompanying her husband to a wedding. "All of a sudden, the room started to spin. I started to feel nauseated. My heart went pound-pound-pound-pound. I grabbed my husband's hand and said we had to go. He said, 'We can't go. We're in the middle of a wedding!' He started getting mad at me. People who don't have these attacks don't understand. My legs started to shake. I had a fear of fainting and embarrassing everyone -- a fear I was going to die."

Amongst feeling nauseated, experiencing symptoms of anxiety, a sudden intensification of fear, heart palpitations, and loss of body coordination, other symptoms include increased precipitation, chest pain, feeling out of breath, ringing in the ears, and hot flashes. In conjunction with Marrissa's recount of the occurrence, many with phobias suffer from a lack of empathy and are often obloquy toward their existing condition. This brings us to the elephant in the room….is phobia real?

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Phobias are real," says Jerilyn Ross, who is a licensed clinical social worker, president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, and director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders Inc. in Washington, D.C. Ross herself can perceive this matter from two vantage points, both from the eyes of a patient and as a medical practitioner. Having overcome a fear of claustrophobia herself, and as someone with over a decade of experience in studying this phenomenon, she strongly asserts the opinion of a phobia is something quite real. According to Ross and the common consensus amongst the medical and scientific community, phobias may be caused by association with a particular incident or trauma, be it a learned response that a person develops early in life, or even possesses a genetic predisposition with a tendency to be more anxious to certain stimuli than others from birth. It is something that could strike someone at any given point in life.

With data from over twenty-five representative population-based surveys conducted in twenty-two countries from 2001–2011 as part of the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys initiative, it was discovered that the cross-national lifetime and 12month prevalence rates of specific phobia were, respectively, 7.4% and 5.5% with being higher in high and higher-middle income countries than in low/lower-middle income countries respectively. With the prevalence of a wide array of causes for phobias following Ross, and a percentage of nearly 15% of the global populace medically diagnosed with a phobia of sorts, one can be led to assume phobias would be rather hard to be passed off as mere phony phenomena.

In addition, several studies conducted on phobias showcase evidence accumulated from animal studies and human lesions where neuroimaging data indicate that the amygdala plays a pivotal role in innate fear. Functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans confirmed the involvement of the amygdala in fear, by displaying that viewing fearful faces activates this specific brain region (Wright et al. 2006). In another study (Mobbs et al. 2010), participants were placed in a neuroimaging apparatus and asked to position their foot with the shoe removed into an open-topped imminence box (they believed that they could observe, via a camera feed, the experimenter moving a live tarantula closer or further away from their foot in real-time). As the tarantula was placed closer to an arachnophobic subject's foot, there was increased activity in the amygdala demonstrating levels of activation far beyond that of normal levels of activity when exposed to a regular “fear” stimulus.

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Now, on the contrary, little evidence is presented to pass phobias off as fake apart from rather ill-founded social perceptions and opinions presenting a commonplace disregard or rather disbelief that the fear of something such as social interactions or spiders could be something so debilitating or severe. As with anything worth a cent of attention, the internet and pop culture would have it that phobias wildly conceived with instant shock value and nearly always unrealistic be made mainstream. An unruly phenomenon that would further incentivize disbelief on the layman’s social plane, and abet disregard for the matter as a whole.

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Now while fake phobias founded on utter malarkey were troublesome, one cannot deny the sardonic humour wrought by a few rather outlandish phobias that are simply too good to be left unshared!

Luposlipaphobia

Luposlipaphobia combines the Latin term for wolf along with a fear of slipping. This phobia is a fear of being chased by timber wolves while wearing socks on a recently waxed floor. The term was also created by Gary Larson for his Far Side comic.

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the fear of long words. The term “sesquippedalio” refers to lengthy words. Its origins may be traced back to the Latin word “sesquipedalis” meaning a foot and a half long. Now whoever came up with the term appeared to be going for irony as they purposely added “hippopoto” and “monstro”, short for hippopotamus and monster respectively to lengthen the word used to refer to a fear of long words!

On a more serious note, as hilarious as fake phobias may be, decades of research on the subject of phobias and their existence, their negative impact on those affected and the ones close to them, and their debilitating nature make void a possibility of a normal life speaks for itself. Phobias are real, they are conditions to be regarded with concern and it is imperative that we collectively must undertake everything possible to make life more bearable for those impacted.

It matters not whether one fears spiders, or heights, or death, or closed spaces, or falling, or snakes, or clowns, because at the end of the day….. It is night….

We must set aside the differences in the cause of phobias, band together to support those with a phobia, and work toward a brighter phobia-free, supportive and accepting future.!

SCREAM

JumanahShahnawaz

Horror d, and even di gs out this feeling of dread in the people through the terrorizing images and content. However, even though horror movies elicit these emotions in us, the horror genre somehow at the same time gives a person this sense of a euphoric buzz. I personally never enjoyed horror movies or anything horror in general, but my older brother has always loved horror movies and always seemed to experience this euphoric feeling after finishing a movie. Now the main question for this article is are there and what are the psychological benefits to watching horror movies?

Surprisingly, the horror genre has several benefits for people psychologically. Firstly, horror movies can enable people to develop coping mechanisms. It allows people to see and face their fear in the controlled world of fiction, and this allows people to contemplate beforehand how they would cope with fear in the real world far away from the world of fiction (Waldrop, 2022). Horror movies allow for fears to be captured on a deeper level which then allows the audience to explore the reality of their fear in a way that allows the audience’s feelings to be backed up. Additionally, horror movies can have important topics, that are discussed in our society, hidden in them which shows that horror is a genre that can psychologically benefit the viewers in aspects of life.

A study was conducted in April 2020 with 310 US participants after COVID 19 was officially declared as a global pandemic, and it was conducted to test the resilience of horror fans and pandemic movie fans during this stressful situation (Scrivner, Johnson, Kjeldgaard Christiansen & Clasen, 2021). The results showed that horror fans had this sense of morbid curiosity, and because of this morbid curiosity, the outcome was positive. Horror movie fans had a greater and more positive resilience toward the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In support of this study, according to Business Insider, it was found that in May 2020 the sales of horror movies on the Movies Anywhere app increased by 194% more than in the same month of the previous year.

Another benefit of watching horror movies is that it allows people to have a useful fear response. What I mean by that is watching movies helps exercise your fight or flight response which can be useful in situations that could be dangerous. Furthermore, it allows people to develop social interaction skills. Horror movies allow people to socialize, an example of this can be when a group of friends goes to watch a horror movie, not only do they come out jumping from energy and adrenaline but also converse with others excitedly who were also watching the movie. That is because there is this sense of collective horror between everyone, which makes it seems like a social event after going through a strong experience together (Clasen, 2021).

To sum this all up, even though it seems the purpose of horror movies is only to scare viewers, it has a lot of benefits for us that we are not even aware of. It discusses topics that are major issues in our society, allows people to socialize, allows people to practice effective coping mechanisms that will come in handy in real-world situations, and also provides a sense of a safe space for people when dealing with high levels of stress. It is almost poetic in a funny way that such a genre can scare and disgust people but also at the same time have these very positive attributes hidden within it.

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Negativity and unevenness in Energy in the realm of horror

Negativity and unevenness in Energy in the realm of horror

Aditya Thite

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The Pull

Siddeeqa Ashraff

Scream Therapy: The Mental Health Benefits Sof cream Therapy: The Mental Health Benefits of Horror HMovies orror Movies

– Suhani –Gupte Suhani Gupte

As children, we are told not to scream or make a fuss when things trouble us. It is considered socially unacceptable to let out our frustrations, and we are encouraged to keep our emotions to ourselves, even as adults. This can lead to our feelings being bottled up, causing anxiety, depression, and significant negative effects on both our physical and mental health.

American Psychologist Arthur Janov created ‘Primal Therapy’, which speaks of re experiencing childhood pain through ‘regression’. This trauma based psychotherapy attempts to resolve negative emotions experienced during childhood by re enacting and re calling them and expressing the repressed emotions “through spontaneous and unrestrained screams, hysteria, or violence.” Kanye West (or rather, Ye) praised this somewhat controversial treatment method and is also a huge advocate of the same. Scream therapy provides a way for the patient to connect with the negative emotions of anger and frustration and release them through talking, crying, screaming, or even hitting. Primal Therapy aims to free yourself from negative frustrations and resolve the past issues of one’s life.

With ‘Spooky Season’ around the corner, many theatres are welcoming several horror movies, with people flocking to watch them all. However, watching horror movies can actually be relaxing, or even therapeutic for many people. Seems almost counterintuitive, but allowing yourself to feel threatened and experience fear in a cozy

and comforting place like the cinema can be described as a “contained trigger” and acts as a form of catharsis. Studies also show that horror movies can teach us how to handle real world stress. The pandemic invited several to engage with the horror genre, which allowed people to be hyper focused on particular anxieties, rather than worrying about the uncontrollable fears in our environment. For some people, especially those sensitive to anxiety, horror movies can have a negative effect and even cause stress.

While watching scary movies, your heart rate and breathing increase, and your nervous system release the stress hormone cortisol. This helps to build valuable anxiety management skills, since active voluntary exposure to scary stimuli helps exercise our ability to cope with scary situations and feelings of fear and panic, making us mentally stronger. Horror movies teach us how to face fear, survive it, and live through another day.

So, the next time you're stressed, grab some popcorn, put on that scary movie, and scream your fears away.

NashitaTarub

– Anthra –Cirimulla Anthra Cirimulla

It is a universal truth that having too much or too little of anything is never good. So how much horror is safe? People who love watching horror movies are adrenaline junkies are always high on sensation-seeking personality traits. These types of individuals usually score low on conscientiousness, one of the big five personality traits (McCrae, 2002), which suggests that these individuals do things without weighing the pros and cons and seek thrill in what they do. Moreover, morbid curiosity is a key concept behind such interest. This is the kind of curiosity that makes an individual curious about unsettling and unpleasant things like the poltergeists and death.

Scrivener (2021) conducted a study concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. the experiment studied the relationship between horror fans and non-horror fans with psychological resilience and pandemic preparedness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggested that horror fans had more resilience during the pandemic than non horror fans. This suggests that since horror fans are high on morbid curiosity and are exposed to films such as alien invasions and the zombie apocalypse, they have various coping strategies during threatening situations.

For Instance, while watching a horror movie, the brain temporarily forgets that there is no actual danger present and activates the physical reaction that would be suitable in that situation (Jordan, 2020). Furthermore, the brain sometimes finds it difficult to differentiate between fantasy and reality due to which the body gets into a fight or flight mode inducing brain chemicals such as dopamine that pumps up the body. In other words, haunted films serve as an example of how real life threatening scenarios could develop, which can primarily be a way of preparing themselves for a real-life situation.

Graff et al. (2021) experimented to find out the effect of an individual having company while watching horror movies on pupil dilation due to stress. His sample was widely narrowed to marital couples. He separated the subjects into two groups. For group 1, the subjects were made to watch a horror movie with spousal support through holding hands whereas group 2 was said to view the horror film individually in the absence of their spouse. The pupillary response results suggested that those watching the horror film with their spouse dilated a lot lesser than those who watched it in their spouse’s absence which meant that group 1 subjects had lower stress levels as compared to group 2. Thus, from this experiment, it can be observed that individuals are less likely to be affected by movie-induced stress when they are accompanied than when they are not.

Although watching horror movies does have certain benefits, there can also be side effects. A study conducted by Martin (2019) suggested that teenagers who preferred watching horror and action genres have influenced their mental health. They have been getting much more intrusive thoughts which they reported to have noticed further affected their social behavior.

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Furthermore, Cantor (2004) elaborated on how individuals who repetitively watched haunted films reported being much more nervous ever since watching the movie and many others have reported having sleep disturbances. Participants have also reported having experienced anxiety during specific times such as while being home alone. From this, it can be understood that horror movies do influence an individual’s mental health which could lead to something worse.

Therefore, watching haunted movies to an extent can be good to fulfil that need for sensationseeking adrenaline junkies but watching them repetitively might have serious consequences on your mental health. Hence, if you are watching a haunted film, do it at your own risk!!!