Is this Halloween safe to ask for candy?
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(CNN) -
I'm scared, no doubt.
I've never seen "Halloween" (none of them).
Or "Scream" or "Saw" or "The Blair Witch Project" or "It".
My kids know not to suggest it;
I've embarrassed them too many times by screaming loudly at the movies when some little scare appears out of nowhere.
(Yes, all the movies always laugh at me).
I also don't go to Halloween haunted houses, although I created one for the neighborhood kids for years as part of my son's birthday celebrations.
Most did not consider it very scary, because it was not.
And yet all around me are people screaming at Halloween scares - out loud, with utter abandon and enormous delight - and then come back for more.
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What makes me so scared when they aren't?
"I don't think it has to do with the fact that people enjoy being scared," says Glenn Sparks, professor at Purdue University's Brian Lamb School of Communication.
She has been studying the effects of the terrifying mass media for years.
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"By definition, fear is a negative emotion," Sparks said.
"When we are afraid of something, we experience that our well-being is under threat, and people do not enjoy it. What they enjoy are the things associated with that experience that usually happen after the scare has passed."
The Conqueror
One of the reasons we are drawn to fearful experiences is the satisfaction of conquering a threat.
For example, roller coasters.
"You may not enjoy thinking about the car falling over and throwing you to the ground," says Sparks.
"But when the ride is over and you can look up (at) the height of the roller coaster and say to your friends, 'I did it, I did it,' that's nice."
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Mastering the terrifying haunted house provides the same gratification, says Sparks.
And if you are with good friends when you conquer your fear, that can turn your emotion into an experience that you want to repeat.
"We call it the arousal transfer effect," he explains.
"If you come out of a scary movie or haunted house and are laughing and talking to your friends, that pleasant feeling you have can be intensified by the still lingering excitement of your fear."
The sensation seeker
We are all programmed to look for new things in our environment, a holdover from our old days of checking for danger.
"There is an innate survival system in humans," says Joanne Cantor, a retired professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin.
It's like passing a crashed car: you don't want to see it, but you can't help looking at it. "
"Then there are others who like to play with those emotions and take risks," says Cantor, who has spent 40 years researching the emotional reactions of adults and children to the media, including fear.
"In psychology we refer to that as a sensation-seeking personality," Sparks explained.
"It will be those people who go skydiving and bungee jumping who are also looking for a threatening source of entertainment."
"They may have a very low arousal threshold, so they are constantly craving experiences that raise that arousal and flood the system with adrenaline," he said.
Boo!
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The fearful
Okay, this explains a bit why some people love to be scared (or think they do).
But why am I so averse to feeling scared?
"First of all, there is a big gender difference in who loves these things and who finds them hideous," says Cantor.
"Men tend to like it more than women."
This is likely due to the different ways children are treated in infancy, he added.
"Girls are more likely to admit that they are afraid, while boys are taught to say 'I'm fine,'" she said.
"Children may not be as willing to admit that they are as scared as they really feel."
In fact, in her research, she found that almost anyone - including children - can tell of an experience with a scary movie that haunts them long after it's over.
"About 90% have something to tell," says Cantor.
"It's very, very common to have at least one scary thing that really stuck with you."
(Aha. Mine was the movie "Alien". To this day I can see that * thing * tearing at the poor man's stomach).
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The role of youth
If you were young when that scary moment happened, Cantor said, it's more likely to stick with you and shape your future preferences.
"Very young children think that what appears on the screen is really there," he said.
"If a vicious beast approaches them on the screen, a little boy is going to freak out."
And because of the different ways that little ones see and understand the world, parents may not understand at first just how scared their child is, Cantor added.
"It is important to calm a frightened child and help him cope," he said.
Little by little, children learn the difference between fantasy and reality, but that doesn't mean they get over their fears, Cantor said.
Unfortunately, they learn from the news that terrible things happen in the real world.
"There are a lot of things you see in horror movies that can actually happen," Cantor says.
"Freddy Krueger may not be real, but there are 'homicidal maniacs' in the world."
Finally, if a child is very empathetic and relates to the characters on the screen, then that child is going to be more scared, and the fear can last much longer.
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"It is possible that you feel the fear more intensely and that it accompanies you, even throughout your life," says Cantor.
"Our research found that a really strong experience can literally last forever."
Cantor's early research, for example, showed that people who saw the movie "Jaws" before the age of 13 still had a recurring fear, not just of sharks, but of lakes and pools or any body of water in the world. that they couldn't see their feet.
"That's the unfortunate consequence of this really deep traumatic feeling that is stored in the brain," Cantor said.
"All this physiological reaction: heart rate, blood pressure, anxiety; when you get older you say to yourself 'How can this be?', But your brain does not shut up."
Fears
