bloated and purple
and with glassy, wide eyes.
She's rotting like meat
festering in the trash.
And then she starts to get up.
King provides a detailed
and really vivid description
of this moving corpse,
and as readers, we are forced
to hold that image in our minds.
That's bad enough.
But we're also given
a detailed description
of Danny's response to the situation.
We learn that he tries to scream
and wets himself.
We are made to mirror
his fear and revulsion,
and that strengthens our own responses
to the horrible image.
Our fear and revulsion
become mixed with sympathetic anxiety
for a character in danger.
It's a strong emotional cocktail.
Interactive and live-action media
turn the screw on horror entertainment.
Horror video games, for example,
make you feel as if you're the protagonist
in a digital world populated by monsters.
In a haunted attraction,
visitors walk through scary sets
populated by scare actors.
Here's a picture
from Dystopia Haunted House,
Denmark's scariest haunt.
What you see is a couple of visitors
who were confronted
by a big guy with a machete.
He's called "Le Chef,"
and you can take a guess
at what's on the menu here.
(Laughter)
Around 5,000 people
pay for this every Halloween,
and around 300 visitors never make it
all the way through the haunt.
(Laughter)
They have to abort their visit
because it's too scary.
They have fainted from fear,
and they have wet themselves in terror.
Why do they do it?
Why do people pay good money
to experience true fear
and genuine terror
like the people in this picture?
They do it because they have
an evolved appetite
for vicarious experience
with threat scenarios.
And those scenarios,
our horror entertainment,
work because they are structured
to target the evolved fear system.
Just consider the monsters
that populate our horror entertainment,
from scary folk tales
to haunted attractions.
Such monsters are universal
in the human imagination,
and the most horrifying ones
reflect ancestral threats.
Just think of the enormous
white shark from "Jaws."
You know -
(Hums "Jaws" theme song)
doo doo; doo doo; doo doo.
The threat depicted here is the threat
from an enormous, man-eating predator.
That kind of threat really captures
our attention and sparks our imagination
by engaging the evolved fear system.
Now, the film itself
is pretty unrealistic,
but that doesn't matter.
Horror monsters don't
have to be realistic to frighten us;
they have to engage
the evolved fear system.
They have to have qualities that match
or overmatch those of ancestral dangers.
And the white shark in "Jaws"
has that in spades.
It's like an ancestral predator on speed -
faster, bigger, stronger,
and much more dangerous.
Media psychologists have documented
how thousands of people
were traumatized by "Jaws."
Many viewers even became afraid
of swimming in pools and freshwater lakes
after watching the film.
(Laughter)
Consider another well-known
and highly unrealistic monster:
the zombie.
Now, zombies don't exist
in the real world,
and we have no archaeological evidence
to suggest that they ever did.
But every well-raised child is able
to mimic the behavior of a zombie.
You know, their groaning,
(Zombie groans)
the outstretched but limp arms,
and the classic stumbling walk.
The monster has really infected
our popular culture in a big way.
A zombie is a terrifying concept
because it effectively targets
the evolved fear system.
In fact, the zombie targets
the fear system from two angles
because it combines
the threat of predation
with the threat of contagion.
A zombie is a predator -
it wants to eat you.
It is also contagious -
it will infect you with its disease.
It is visibly decomposing,
creeping with rotten pathogens.
I mean, look at the poor creature.
(Laughter)
Shoo.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
You can tell that these horror monsters
engage the evolved fear system
from the behavioral
and physiological effects
of the good horror film.
You know, the goose bumps
and the hammering heart and the screams.
These are all evolved defensive reactions.
Goose bumps are a relic
from a distant past,
when we were covered in fur.
The goose bumps, or piloerection,
would make our fur stand on end
and so make us look bigger
to scare off an attacker.
Cats do the same thing, by the way.
Our hearts beat faster
to pump blood to the big muscle groups
so that we're ready for fight or flight.
And screams send a signal
to other people -
a signal for them to help
or get the hell away.
Horror taps into the evolved fear system,
but that's not all.
Horror can help us calibrate that system.
It's like when you take your car
to the mechanic for a checkup.
The mechanic carefully goes through
all the vital parts of the car,
and he or she will make sure
that the airbags and the anti-lock
braking system work.
Hopefully, you'll never need them,
because you don't want
to get into a situation
that requires an airbag to deploy,
but you certainly want them to work.
Same with the fear system.
Through exposure to horror,
you give it a test run,
make sure it works properly,
and keep it nicely tuned.
Horror lets us learn
what it feels like to be truly afraid,
and it lets us learn
how to handle negative emotions.
It lets us maintain
and refine coping skills
that we may apply in critical
situations in our own lives.
There isn't yet much
experimental research into this,
but we do have some support
from psychological science.
One study suggests
that hardcore horror fans
require more extreme stimulation
than do less avid fans,
which means that the hardcore fans
build up some resistance
to fear-provoking stimuli, with exposure.
Other research suggests
that by exposing ourselves to horror,
we build a sense of mastery,
which may be transferred to our own lives.
In this way, horror can help us find
and even expand our limits
for how much negative
stimulation we can handle.
I'm not sure I'd be standing here today
if I hadn't forced myself
to watch all those horror films
in the name of science.
Sure, my heart is hammering
and my palms are a little sweaty,
but you guys are a lot less scary
than Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
(Laughter)
So horror can help us
calibrate the fear system,
and horror can help us
refine our coping skills.
That's why so many of us
are drawn to the genre
even if we don't like
to watch horror films alone.
The next time you are terrified
of a novel, a film, a video game,
or in a haunt,
just remember that you are, in fact,
tapping into and calibrating
an ancient biological defense system.
Never mind the fear
and the screams and the nightmares -
who's up for a horror film tonight?
Thank you.
(Applause)
