Playing with fear: a field study in recreational horror
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Haunted attractions are illustrative examples of recreational fear in which people voluntarily seek out frightening experiences in pursuit of enjoyment. We present findings from a field study at a haunted-house attraction where visitors between the ages of 12 and 57 years (N = 110) were equipped with heart rate monitors, video-recorded at peak scare points during the attraction, and asked to report on their experience. Our results show that enjoyment has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with fear across repeated self-reported measures. Moreover, results from physiological data demonstrate that the experience of being frightened is a linear function of large-scale heart rate fluctuations, whereas there is an inverted-U-shaped relationship between participant enjoyment and small-scale heart rate fluctuations. These results suggest that enjoyment is related to forms of arousal dynamics that are “just right.” These findings shed light on how fear and enjoyment can coexist in recreational horror.
Date Issued
2020-12-01
Online Publication Date
2020-11-23T09:47:30Z
Date Acceptance
2020-09-10
ISSN
0956-7976
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Start Page
1497
End Page
1510
Journal / Book Title
Psychological Science
Volume
31
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Identifier
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620972116
Subjects
1701 Psychology
1702 Cognitive Sciences
Experimental Psychology
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-11-02