50 “Oddly Terrifying” Posts That Are Not For The Fainthearted (New Pics)

Bored Panda’s previous article also mentioned a Washington Post interview with director Mathias Clasen. He classified horror fans into three types: adrenaline junkies, dark copers, and white knucklers. 

Psychology professors Haiyang Yang and Kuangjie Zhang identified another personality type: someone who lacks empathy. Here’s an excerpt of their piece for Harvard Business Review in 2021. 

“Those who are not so empathic can enjoy horror more. This is because those with a higher level of empathy tend to feel more negatively about the distress situations others experience, like people being tormented by a devious murderer in a film.”

Author G Neil Martin, an Honorary Professor of Psychology at Regent’s University of London, supported the “lack of empathy” theory. He published an article in 2019 entitled “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films.” Here’s an excerpt: 

“Low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror films but … specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people’s responses than are others.”

Gender also plays a role in the fascination for anything morbid. As Martin noted in his article, men are more likely to get a kick out of horror films than women, and here’s his explanation:

“Men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy, and seek our horror more than do women and girls. Women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men, and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror.”