A Scary Date Can Help You Find a Good Mate
A Scary Date Can Help You Find a Good Mate
Playing with Fear
The popularity of scary entertainment has presented a puzzle to philosophers and scientists for quite some time. Why would we intentionally seek out fearful experiences for recreation and entertainment?
My own take on this problem — which comprises most of my research — is that scary entertainment is a good testing ground for yourself. By safely simulating a dangerous scenario, like a masked killer chasing you through the woods, you learn your own reactions to fearful situations.
You can, in a phrase, play with fear.
Playing with fear can be useful because it allows you to learn how to regulate that feeling. The emotion of fear can be physiologically uncomfortable and unsettling; your heart is racing, your palms begin to sweat, your stomach might knot up a bit. If you aren’t practiced at dealing with those feelings, you might overreact or respond in a way that isn’t productive.
I’ve studied this phenomenon in haunted attractions across the world, from Denmark to Detroit to Austin. What I find is that many people who pay to be scared aren’t just getting a kick out of the thrills — they’re also learning about themselves. Information about how you react when afraid is useful, but it can really only be obtained by finding (or putting) yourself in a scary situation. This is why scary play can also be a useful form of therapy for anxiety.
Okay, so I can watch a scary movie or go through a haunted house, and reflect on how I react. That’s great, and it’s useful to me. But, it might also be useful to people who are around me. They can also see how I react to stressful or frightening situations.
The Snuggle Theory
In 1986, Dolf Zillmann and his colleagues published a paper in which they shifted to focus of “why horror?” from a psychological perspective to a social perspective. They write,
“On the premise that the control of panic and incapacitating fright has adaptive utility, we propose that most human societies instituted rites, or something akin to them, to promote the mastery of fright. Reports of such rites in hunter-gatherer societies (e.g., Gennep, 1972; Miller, 1928) leave no doubt that those who were to confront life-threatening situations (i.e., the hunters) were prepared (a) by exposure to iconic and/or symbolic representations of the threats and (b) by being rewarded for showing no fear.”
The authors argue that men who express mastery of fear will be seen as more attractive to potential female mates because this mastery is a sign of a capacity to protect themselves and others in times of danger. They go on in the introduction to say that modern adolescents rarely face true life-threatening situations, but that symbolic representations of those situations are plentiful in the form of horror entertainment.
To test this idea, Zillman and his colleagues had participants watch clips of horror films with confederates (i.e., researchers who pretended to be other participants). Male participants watched the movies with female confederates, and vice-versa. In each condition, the confederates displayed either mastery of their fear, indifference toward it, or distress in the face of it.
Female participants enjoyed the horror clip the most when watching with a male who displayed mastery, while male participants enjoyed it most in the presence of a distressed female. For males confederates whose photographs were rated less attractive, displaying mastery increased how attractive they were perceived by the female participant that watched the clip with them. In other words, women enjoyed a scary situation more when they experienced it with a man who displayed mastery of their fear, and those men were, in some cases, seen as more attractive than men who displayed indifference or distress.
This phenomenon, whereby men use horror entertainment as a way to show mastery of fear, has been termed the “snuggle theory” of horror.
Revisiting the Snuggle Theory
I’m a fan of this theory, and think it helps explain some of the dynamics of horror entertainment (though I disagree with some of the ultimate social causes that Zillman provides). One thing I’ve noticed in all of my haunted house studies is that a lot of people go on dates. In fact, if a haunted house is open outside of the Halloween season, it’s usually open around Valentine’s Day.
As far as I can tell, nobody has tried to replicate the snuggle theory since that paper was published almost 40 years ago, so that exactly what my colleagues and I decided to do. We were interested in particular in whether or not scary play might be a type of proving ground where mates can test each other’s reactions under distress. The paper is still bring written up, but I can give you a taste of it here.
Okay, so I can watch a scary movie or go through a haunted house, and reflect on how I react. That’s great, and it’s useful to me. But, it might also be useful to people who are around me. They can also see how I react to stressful or frightening situations.
Myself and a small team of researchers set up a research station outside of House of Torment in Austin Texas during the haunt season. Over the course of two weekends, we recruited 256 male/female couples who had come to the haunt. We gave them a pre-haunt questionnaire to complete, filmed their behaviors at particular scares inside the haunt, and then gave them a post-haunt questionnaire.
We were mostly interested in whether or not males would exhibit more protective behaviors and how this would influence the female partner’s attitude toward them. We are still analyzing data, but here are some of the preliminary findings:
Males enjoyed the haunt more in the presence of a distressed female partner
This replicates Zillman’s finding using confederates and clips from horror movies.
However, Females did not enjoy the haunt more in the presence of a brave male partner
Men who acted brave during the haunt were seen as more attractive to their female partners
This replicates Zillman’s finding and is a stringent test of the hypothesis. Zillman only found the attractiveness boost for males who were rated as less attractive. Since our participants were all in relationships or on a date, presumably the females already found the males reasonably attractive.
This finding was marginal (p = .055, r = .20 for the scientists reading this), but interesting: females were less satisfied with their relationship after the haunt if their partner was less brave than they expected them to be.
Women who grabbed their male partner during a scare saw them as braver than expected
Women who were more satisfied with their relationship were more likely to scream during the scares.
So far, the haunt data is mostly supportive of the snuggle theory. It’s important to note that these were people who were already in relationships, so presumably some testing has already been done in other areas of life. This means the variance is likely lower among our participants than it would be in two strangers (like in the Zillman study). It would be really interesting to look at new relationships and see if reactions during the haunt predicted relationship satisfaction/dissolution months later.