The Psychology of Horror In Video Games and Movies

Hugh Pickens writes "Jamie Madigan writes in GamePro that psychologists and experts on fear are trying to understand why so many gamers enjoy being terrified by horror-themed video games and movies. Researchers say some people are sensation-seekers attracted to any emotional high, be it from sky diving, shark-punching or horror films. Other personalities are drawn to situations showing the disruption of social norms in ways that will probably never happen in real life. But a more encompassing explanation of horror's inherent appeal is how it helps us master our fears. 'Watching a horror film gives us back some control,' says Dr. Andrew Weaver. 'We can experience an adverse event through film, and we know that it will end. We'll survive it. We'll go on with our lives.' Interestingly, horror only seems to work if the player or viewer knows that what they see is fake. In one famous experiment, researchers had subjects watch a movie featuring authentic scenes of live monkeys having their brains scooped out and of children — I kid you not — having their facial skin peeled away in preparation for surgery. 'The vast majority of the study's participants refused to finish watching the films despite that more grotesque movies playing at the theater down the street could outdo those scenes,' writes Madigan. 'We seem to need to know it's fake.'"

Comments

News at eleven.

[inAbsurdum]

People are human, and react humanely when subjected to imagery consisting of people actually suffering.

Re:News at eleven.

[Anonymous Coward]

If all you are doing is relying on intuition and "common sense" to keep on knowing what you already know, it's not science.

Validating things that seem obvious is just as worthwhile as investigating mysteries. Often a mystery will turn out to have a boring explanation that fits in very easily with your existing theories. If you can demonstrate that something you previously believed was actually wrong all along, that's progress.

Re:News at eleven.

[Opportunist]

Do you prefer the government grants going to "studies" that "prove" how simulated violence leads to real violence?

I consider the information important and relevant, after all those "studies" that led our politicians to beat the "ban violent games and we have no more school shootings" drum.

Re:News at eleven.

[buruonbrails]

Then why were public executions (often preceded by torture) so popular throughout Ancient, Medieval and even Early Modern times? Surely, not everyone attended them, but similarly not everyone enjoys watching horror movies now.
I suppose that some people are just more violent than others.

Re:News at eleven.

[hairyfeet]

I'd say that is the biggest problem with what they call "horror" games today, they think spewing guts and blood equals horror when it just equals gore porn.

Yahtzee at Zero Punctuation nailed the problem when reviewing Dead Space 2 I think. Instead of building tension with sound and glimpses of the monster the game gets two inches from your face right from the start and has some guy's face melt in front of you. That isn't horror that is just gross out. He said the game reminded him of a child that beats its head against the wall for attention, no subtlety at all.

The last truly scary game I got to play was Nosferatu: the wrath of Malachi which with VERY primitive weapons you were let loose in a castle to try to rescue your family and there was no way to memorize because the rooms would shift, even between saves. Walking into a room and finding you've got THREE coffins and have less than 2 minutes to run through there and stake their asses (because once a master vamp rose your ass was grass, damned near impossible to drop with their speed and strength) while extremely creepy but subtle music floats around in the background? Now THAT is scary!

Interactive or no

[penguinchris]

I can relate to the "sensation-seeker" aspect. I don't feel very many emotional highs or lows in normal life, and enjoy actually feeling something... anything... sometimes. No, I'm not an emotionless robot, it just takes a lot to arouse my emotions :)

However, I don't like horror games. I don't get really freaked out or anything (although particularly good games have occasionally had that effect), I just am discouraged from continuing from something inside me. For example, I played the demo of Dead Space 2 a few days ago... I played for about three or four minutes. Killed a couple of creatures and I had enough. Wasn't too scared to continue (the bit I played wasn't much different from any other shooter with scary monsters)... it was something else.

I got the same feeling playing Half Life 2 - I think I got about 80% through that because the gameplay was great, but I also kind of lost interest in the story there. It has that horror atmosphere, though, that doesn't sit well with me. The Ravenclaw sequence didn't really bother me - I had heard it was supposed to be really scary - but most of the rest of the levels did.

The thing is that I really, really love movies that can evoke emotion. I don't generally watch a lot of horror films (they don't evoke anything in me unless they're really excellent), but I love suspense films and dramas (and even good romances). When I do watch films that are supposed to be scary, I never get that negative feeling I get when playing scary games. I'll watch the film, possibly be genuinely scared by it (and maybe even jump when the killer pops up), but I don't get that desire to shut it off (unless it's just a bad film, which is often the case). The horror films I like are mostly Asian ones, for what it's worth.

So, being interactive or not is a major factor I think. Naturally I didn't read TFA, but the summary seems to make it sound like they're interchanging the experience of playing a game and watching a scary movie. I think it's fundamentally different, and hope that further studies look into it.

Also, the study where people were shown gory films seems a bit odd to bring in to this. It's about context... a video game where you brutally kill hundreds of people, with blood and guts flying everywhere, is not particularly disturbing. But a video game where you scoop out monkey brains and peel the skin off of childrens' faces, with no reason for doing either thing, would certainly disturb a lot of people.

Re:Interactive or no

[daid303]

I don't see HalfLife2, or DeadSpace2 as a horror game. They just try to shock you. If you want a true horror game, try amnesia, http://www.amnesiagame.com/
Play it at night, in the settings they recommend (lights off, no distracting sounds, headphones)

I stopped playing the first time after 1 hour and 20 minutes, because I was just to freaked out.

Zero punctuation says it better then me:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2092-Amnesia-The-Dark-Descent

Re:Interactive or no

[Opportunist]

Pretty much this.

Horror is a mind game. It's in your mind. Your mind will come up with far more freakish and way out options than anything that could be shown to you. Moreover, it is much more "personal". Something you yourself come up with and try to integrate into your thinking is much more terrifying than anything you could be shown, where you are only the spectator, detached from the actual horror happening.

There is a reason why horror is a fairly "dark" genre, meaning that the lighting usually is nothing even close to broad daylight. And it's not for the big nasty surprise attack from the big gore monster. That can lead to some entertaining splatter effects, but face it: The horror is over exactly this moment. Observe yourself watching such a horror/splatter mix. Isn't is a "relief" when the killing finally starts? Isn't the tension suddenly dropping sharply as the monster finally gets its prey? Take Alien as a prime example. Isn't one of the tensest, most intense moments of the movie when the Alien is but a shadow zipping through the tubes, zeroing in on our hapless hero? It's not the resolution, even though a lot of that is left to the imagination as well, the hunt is far, far more exciting than the outcome!

Showing shocking effects is a staple of splatter movies and games, true horror exists in your mind. An indication of "something" happening, a spooky shadow zipping past, an unnatural sound echoing in the hall, a faint smell where it doesn't belong, does more to freak your mind out than anything you could witness as hard, cold fact.

Re:Interactive or no

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I absolutely love Amnesia and the Penumbra series, they're some of the most well-executed horror games out there, precisely because they don't rely on shock value for horror. They have a very well done air of menace and dread and desperation that just works, rather than having monsters jump out of every closet going "BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA!". The total number of enemies between all three of them is probably less than 20, but you still feel endangered every step of the way through.

Although they're completely different games, the STALKER series has scared me shitless multiple times. A thunderstorm late at night in a swamp infested with bloodsuckers is quite an experience. I swear those invisible fuckers are just toying with me. The headlamp is wide but short-ranged and true to real life, night vision goggles are tricky at best and you know there's at least one of those monsters out there, but you have no idea where it is until you hear its ragged breathing and try to pinpoint its location from the sound alone.

But the underground labs are what really got me. The first time you go to each of them you have absolutely no idea what to expect other than you have to find some information or switch off some machine that's causing your friends to turn into mindless zombies. One of them seems fairly quiet for a while until you let you guard down and venture further in. That's when you notice a wooden box floating in a corner. After a few seconds it flies towards you and smacks you right in the face. Suddenly every single loose object in the room starts to float menacingly for no apparent reason. That's when I had to take a break.

It's tough to convey the sense of horror in words, but those games are the only ones that have really gotten to me as proper horror in a computer game. They're also damn good games in every other respect.

Re:Interactive or no

[GameboyRMH]

Yep STALKER is a truly scary game at times. Some of the scariest moments are in the first game.

The first is when you run into the first Controller. This is a humanoid creature with psychic powers, and the first psychic hazard you'll run into in the game, but you don't know that. You're just walking in a dark, silent underground tunnel when the lights flicker and you hear a noise behind you. And this thing comes slowly walking around the corner, you can't see it too well because of where the light is, and you think:

"What is that? Is it a person? It doesn't have a gun. Something looks wrong about it. It's moving pretty slow."

Then it turns towards you and starts raising its hand.

"I can't see it's face! What the hell is it doing? Its hands look messed up. I better point my gun at it, I don't trust this thing. If it gets any closer or does anything funny I'm gonna shoot it."

But it doesn't get any closer. It just starts messing with your mind. You can suddenly see its face and ITS SOME KIND OF MONSTER OHGODOHGODOHGOD AND WHAT IS IT DOING TO ME!?!?!??

Now you're seeing double and every time you try to shoot it, it messes with your mind some more and your vision becomes even more messed up. Also now it IS getting closer.

You'll probably be killed the first time you run into it, until you figure out you have to take cover behind a tiny metal partition so that it can't see you, and then pop out and shoot it in short bursts. After this you'll learn to hoard grenades for the next one you run into.

The other scary part is running into the first poltergeists as you described. That underground lab is mostly pitch-black and painfully silent, and then when you get deep into the guts of it, objects starts floating and crashing into your head, and they hurt like hell, so there's no time to think. There's no place to hide. You just have to run. Running really pisses the poltergeists off, and now every object in the room is flying at you. It's scary as hell until you figure out what the hell is hurting you and how to kill them.

Stalker SoC is a masterpiece, too bad the sequels brought technical/gameplay improvements, and had some scary parts, but fell flat on their ass where the story was concerned.

Surgery & Prep

[Onuma]

having their facial skin peeled away in preparation for surgery

I used to watch stuff like that on PBS and TLC/Discovery (back when those two channels ran more than just "reality" shows -- though I do love Dirty Jobs). I remember them literally having the face of a baby removed because he had some kind of deformation in his skull which needed to be surgically corrected, and I couldn't stop watching. Creepy as all get out, but also unequally interesting. Also saw a former Playboy model (then 50+ years old) get the outer layer of her facial skin singed off with a LASER.

There's a big difference between malevolent actions depicted in horror movies/games and things that are just unusual to see; reality or fiction does not have as much to do with it -- you know that the guy with the chainsaw is a psychopathic murderer, and that the doctor on the TV special is truly trying to save the life of the individual under his knife. They both cause equal or equivalent amounts of pain ("suffering" through surgery recovery is surely no comfortable process) but the intent and will of the actions, or at least our interpretations thereof, determine how we react and are excited or interested by such things.

Silent Hill 2

[bhunachchicken]

My favourite horror game of all time has to be Silent Hill 2. It worked on so many levels, the entire town becoming the James' own personal hell until he was finally able to confront the truth of what had really happened to him.

It was a game that genuinely terrified me at times, but not due to the gore, which there was not that much of, but the psychological fear it evoked, often making me wish that I could make James just turn around and drive away from that place.

I found myself not wanting to boat across the lake to reach the hotel, knowing it could only result in something utterly awful for him.

And that plot twist. Wow. Just... wow. Sounds weird, but I'll never forget staring at the TV screen, open-mouthed not believing what I was seeing.

Re:Silent Hill 2

[slim]

My favourite horror game of all time has to be Silent Hill 2. It worked on so many levels, the entire town becoming the James' own personal hell until he was finally able to confront the truth of what had really happened to him.

It was a game that genuinely terrified me at times, but not due to the gore, which there was not that much of, but the psychological fear it evoked, often making me wish that I could make James just turn around and drive away from that place.

It was fantastic, but even as a fairly hardened horror enthusiast, it was too much for me. I saved my game in the lobby of the hospital, because I was scared to go in and find out what was in there. Then whenever I contemplated going back for another session, I was held back by genuine fear.

Brilliant :D

Horror or gore?

[Drakkenmensch]

The words horror and gore seem to be getting used more and more interchangeably these days, though we need to remember that they do not mean the same. Horror does not need skin ripping and blood to make us terrified, only our imagination of what terrors lie on the other side of the door. Likewise, gushing blood is not always a terrible sight, as Leslie Nielsen's Dead and Loving It proved. What works so well in horror, what will always work... is the unknown. The gnawing darkness of ignorance at the outer edge of well-lit areas. Nothing can ever terrify us more than the notion of dying suddenly without even knowing why.

Re:Horror or gore?

[RogueyWon]

Very, very true. If I hadn't posted already in this thread, I'd be modding insightful.

I sat down with the significant other a couple of Sundays ago to watch a few movies. We finished off the evening with Alien. I noticed two things while watching it:

1) Dear god that movie is scary. The effects may be dated in places (and Ripley's hair-do definitely is), but the film has lost none of its ability to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up for pretty much its entire duration.

2) There is only one scene in it which involves any noticable quantity of gore (well... human gore); the chest-burster scene. The rest of the time, the movie relies upon suggestion to do its work for it. And because the gore is limited to a single scene, said scene is legendarily effective.

I've not watched it for quite a while and can't claim to have been looking for gore levels last time I did, but my recollection is that Aliens is pretty much the same. Sadly, too many movies since then have thrown all subtlety to the wind and, as I've said elsewhere in the comments, seem to aim for disgust rather than fear.

Endings

[RogueyWon]

I like horror - games and film. Or at least, I think I do. I do find myself increasingly wondering, which I think is exacerbated by some of the current trends in horror.

Now, I fully accept that, as implied by TFA, different factors may affect different people. But for me, one of the big factors that affects how I go away from a horror movie or game feeling about it is the ending. I like a horror movie/game that scares the life out of me, but then presents a resolution. What really irks me is the current trend to make the endings of horror movies/games as bleak as possible. For some reason, this seems to be seen as more "artistically credible" these days. I can tolerate an ambiguous ending, but an outright downer "everybody dies" ending just leaves me feeling "well, that was grim and depressing and now I'm not sure why I watched it at all". It was clever and novel when Night of the Living Dead did it, but it seems to be pretty much de rigeur for any horror product these days. I think it reduces the cathartic value of the genre pretty massively.

Actually, there was a recent well-known horror-themed game that provided a welcome exception (not going to name it for spoilage reasons). Although even that made sure to leave the door open for a sequel.

Oh, and again, just my personal tastes, but while "scary" is great, watching people doing nothing more than pretending to be in pain or to inflict pain on others actively disgusts me. There do seem to be whole new subgenres of "horror" which aim for disgust rather than fear and - while perfectly happy to defend the right of others to watch it - I want nothing to do with it myself. Alien - fantastic movie. Saw - you can keep it.

Re:Endings

[slim]

There do seem to be whole new subgenres of "horror" which aim for disgust rather than fear and - while perfectly happy to defend the right of others to watch it - I want nothing to do with it myself. Alien - fantastic movie. Saw - you can keep it.

Saw is a clever, entertaining, thought provoking and imaginative film. It's just a shame about the sequels (I gave up after the third, and wish I'd done so earlier).

The horror . . . the horror . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Researchers say some people are sensation-seekers attracted to any emotional high, be it from sky diving, shark-punching or horror films.

My girlfriend (German) got hit by a car when she was a child, and had to undergo some nasty operations on her leg, which left her with "Frankenstein" scars on her leg. On a business trip to Austin, Texas, she tagged along. She was concerned about how she should describe to the local yokels, what happened to her leg. I told her to tell the folks, that she was attacked by a shark, but that she fought off the shark, buy punching it in the head. It worked for five minutes, until she started giggling, and one of the guys that I worked with screamed, "Bullshit!"

Re:Bravo.

[slim]

I don't want this to be a shock to your system, but . . . the people in Hills Have Eyes are merely actors and not really having horrible things done to them (though the visuals may be disgusting to watch). And the people in Silent Hill aren't even real *people*!

Mmm, but in many forms of theatre, film and videogame, the actor (or animator's) job (and that of the director, editor, etc.) is to make you forget that, so that you engage emotionally with what you're seeing. You watch a romance in order to have your heartstrings tugged; that won't happen if you keep reminding yourself they're only actors. Depending on the kind of horror, you watch to either empathise with the victim, or revel in the violence, or perhaps a bit of both, and again, you won't get the full emotional impact unless you suspend disbelief for the duration.

Poor acting, ropey sets, continuity errors, etc. all remind us we're watching a movie, and that's why they're frowned upon. And look at the fairly recent trend of using shaky cameras to make choreographed and/or computer animated scenes look like reality TV. You're *mean* to forget you're watching a fiction.

I find it fucking sick that these jackholes would even think of using footage of those things for some sort of a study. It sounds like they're the real psychopaths, here. Also, if you said "do you want to see real video of monkeys have their brains scooped out and children having flesh ripped off their faces". I wouldn't refuse to watch more. I would refuse to watch it to begin with, just based on the description of it. Fucking sick.

I empathise with you, but let's examine that. The footage exists, and whether you watch it or not won't undo that. So what difference does it make whether you watch the "real" footage, or a very convincing fake of the same scene?

Difference between "horror" and "horrifying"

[Nidi62]

In one famous experiment, researchers had subjects watch a movie featuring authentic scenes of live monkeys having their brains scooped out and of children — I kid you not — having their facial skin peeled away in preparation for surgery.

That's not scary, that's just gratuitous gore. A lot of people can't watch those surgery/ER tv shows; not because they're scary, but because the people can't handle the gore. They are horrified by it, it makes them sick, but they are not afraid of it. True horror means you do not know what happens next, you are afraid to continue. Horror is a psychological reaction, not a physical one. Watching Saw 27 and seeing a bunch of people chopped up into little pieces by demented contraptions isn't scary, because you expect it to happen. To genuinely invoke fear in people, they have to be unable to predict what is going to happen. You can leave clues as to what MIGHT happen, and allow the audience to scare themselves as their imaginations run wild with all manner of possible scenarios. You want to scare someone, you make it so they CAN"T distance themselves from what is going on. That's one of the problems with most of today's "horror" films; things get so over the top that people can just sit there and know it could never happen to them.

Basically, horror is not blood and gore. A true horror movie(or game) does not need a single drop of blood or dismembered limb. If you want to scare someone, don't allow them to distance themselves from what is going on. Make them think it actually COULD happen to them, and make them scare themselves. People are afraid of the unknown. If they know what to expect, you lose the horror effect./P

Re:Never been scared by a videogame, not once

[rekrowyalp]

I find horror movies completely un-scary, however scary video games frighten the crap out of me. I have a strange compulsion to buy them, but I never get close to finishing them.

System Shock 2
FEAR
The Penumbra series

All of them scare me so much I have to stop playing, for some reason my imagination runs roit and I end up cowering in a corner (in-game :D ) unable to force myself to move into the next room with the scary noises or whatever...

I think the difference for me is being in control of the action, rather than in movies where I have no control so it doesn't scare me?