Created back in 2009, nowadays, the r/Creepy community has nearly 15 million members. It is safe to assume that they enjoy the rather bizarre content fellow redditors share, but some netizens might be boggled as to why that is.
“Sensation-seeking is a common motivation for individuals to pursue horror and disgusting material,” Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology at Indiana University, neuroscientist, and author of Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play, Shirley M. Mueller, told Bored Panda during a recent interview.
“We have different levels of need for sensation-seeking inherent in our personalities,” she suggested. “Along these same lines, people with low empathy tend to gravitate toward horror more than those with high empathy.”
A piece in Business Harvard Review about why we love or hate horror seconded the idea that experiencing stimulation is one of the main reasons we consume seemingly dreadful content. It also suggested that exposure to it—or sometimes even the anticipation of it alone—stimulates us in opposing ways, as it might make us feel scared or anxious, but it can also make us excited in a way. The reason for that is the biochemical reactions that happen in our bodies during fear-inducing moments—we release adrenaline, which results in heightened sensations and surging energy.
“[Viewing creepy images or watching horror movies] makes the ordinary person fearful and gives them a shot of adrenaline. The amygdala, known as our fear center, is active in this case. Without it, however, individuals could well be resistant to fear,” Shirley M. Mueller told Bored Panda.
“For example, a 44-year-old otherwise normal woman with bilateral amygdala injury was less fearful than others in regard to fear conditioning. She also showed impaired recognition of fear in judgment of faces and social-related fear. The pièce de résistance was that she also was repeatedly immune to horror in films.”
Another reason we might seek something horrendous, according to Business Harvard Review, is gaining novel experiences; for instance, reading about the main character’s spine-chilling adventures and taking part in them vicariously. Not only does it allow us to go on all sorts of adventures, it lets us do it without having to deal with any actual dangers; we can safely explore the dark paths of the human mind, which is another reason people tend to view such content.
Neuroscientist Shirley M. Mueller also discussed the complexity of the push-pull effect creepy content often has. “Winfried Menninghaus and colleagues at German, Norwegian, and Netherlands scientific institutes tackled this issue. They came up with the Distancing-Embracing Model to explain the intense emotional involvement that can be felt when experiencing what some would term disgusting. Their model broadens the area of art that might be considered on the dark side; for example, Marcel Duchamp’s urinal or some of Lucien Freud’s paintings of naked obese individuals, etc.”
#15 19th Century Hydrocephalic Foetus Skull, Royal College Of Surgeons Museum, Edinburgh
“The distancing effect relates to a potentially distasteful scene or object portrayed as art,” Mueller continued. “In this way, the offending stimulus is kept at a safe distance, so personal safety is not an issue, and the viewer can turn away at any time. This sets the stage for the second part of the Distancing-Embracing Model: embracing the object.
“The paper's authors describe this as ‘rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally more beautiful.’ In brief, Menninghaus and colleagues say that simultaneous positive and negative emotions can help integrate negative feelings into a pleasurable sensation.”
Keeping the offending stimulus at a safe distance is a crucial part of what makes certain negative emotions a pleasurable sensation. Harvard Business Review covered that deriving pleasure from consuming horror can only be possible under certain circumstances, the first one being the need to know that we’re physically safe.