The Evolution of Scary Play
Why do we engage in such a thing as scary play? After all, isn't play supposed to be fun?
As soon as there was life, there was danger.
This is one of those quotes that is commonly attributed to a famous person (Ralph Waldo Emerson in this case), but the source is actually unknown. In any case, it’s a great quote that captures much of the reason why scary play exists. From the moment of birth, every organism faces an onslaught of dangers. Disease, predators, aggressive conspecifics, precarious environments. Much of the world is out to get us.
Fortunately, nature has endowed species with what I've called morbid curiosity to help them navigate the dangers of life.
Curiosity About Danger in Animals
Even Darwin recognized morbidly curious behavior in animals. In The Descent of Man, Darwin writes:
"Brehm gives a curious account of the instinctive dread, which his monkeys exhibited, for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion”
Almost in disbelief of this story, Darwin ran an experiment of his own. He put a bag with a snake inside it in a cage full of monkeys at the London Zoological Gardens. Darwin observed as the monkeys would cautiously walk up to the bag, slowly open it, and peer down inside before shrieking and racing away. After seeing one monkey do this, another monkey would carefully walk over to the bag to take a peek, then scream and run. Then another would do the same thing, then another. Almost in a playful fashion.
Morbid fascination is common in the animal kingdom. One key way that prey animals learn about potential predators is by engaging in a behavior called predator inspection. Given the right constraints, prey animals will often stop and observe their predators, learning about their appearances and behaviors. Predator inspection serves other functions as well, such as letting the predator know it's been spotted. However, this alone doesn't explain the peculiar trends in who tends to be doing the inspecting among the prey.
Zoologist Clare FitzGibbon spent two years in the Serengeti observing interactions between cheetahs and gazelles. What she found was that, while Gazelles of all ages engaged in predator inspection, it was the adolescents and subadults who spent the most time observing predators.
Fitzgibbon argued that it was the adolescents and young adults who had the most to benefit from engaging in predator inspection since they were healthy and fast enough to escape, but had less exposure to their natural predators than the adults.
Relative safety and inexperience are two of the most powerful moderators of predator inspection behaviors.
In most of the animal kingdom, prey can really only learn about their predators first-hand, by observing them. The costs of this are often high, which counterbalances the curiosity and potential benefits the prey may reap. This limits morbidly curious behavior in non-human animals.
Humans are another story.
The Most Morbidly Curious Animal
Stories provide incredibly safe ways to expose yourself to information about danger, including dangers that you have little to no personal experience with.
Depictions of natural predators are found in stories passed along through oral traditions around the world. Leopards, tigers and wolves are frequent antagonists in folklore. In many cases, the stories involving predators are an entertaining form of pedagogy.
Take for example, Little Red Riding Hood. Think back to some of the key lines of the story:
Here, the young audience learns what wolves look like: they have large legs, large ears, large eyes, and large teeth. The story also tells the reader what these parts of the animal are for:
“Grandmother, what big arms you have!”
“All the better to hug you with, my dear.”
“Grandmother, what big legs you have!”
“All the better to run with, my child.”
“Grandmother, what big ears you have!”
“All the better to hear with, my child.”
“Grandmother, what big eyes you have!”
“All the better to see with, my child.”
“Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!”
“All the better to eat you up with.”
Wolves use their big forelimbs to grasp their prey; they have strong hindlegs that allow them to quickly chase down their meals; excellent hearing and large eyes allow them to locate animals from a distance; big teeth that will prove fatal if they catch you.
The story also takes place in the woods, where you’d be most likely to encounter a wolf. Even the main character is constructed to be relatable to the intended audience. Little Red Riding Hood herself is a naïve child: exactly the kind of person who is likely to fall prey to a wolf.
However, humans also consume stories about monstrous fictional predators such as ferocious werewolves, mighty dragons, clever vampires, and bloodthirsty ogres.
Though they may not exist, these predators often mimic features of large terrestrial carnivores that have hunted humans for thousands of years. The key features of our natural predators are large teeth, sharp claws, formidable size, and the ability to either run fast or be stealthy.
And if you look at almost any horror villain or monster, they mimic features of human beings' natural predators. Most either possess sharp natural weaponry, like teeth or claws, or they wield sharp weapons that function like those biological features.
A machete isn’t the best weapon if you are trying to kill a bunch of teenagers at a summer camp. A chainsaw might sound scary, but it’s heavy and requires gas to function. Neither of these are the best tool for the killer’s job — that is, unless the killer’s job is to terrify. These large, sharp weapons claw deep into our minds, activating evolutionarily old neural circuits for evading predators.
In fact, I have an entire post about how horror villains and monsters are really just cats.
Our fascination with things that can harm or kill us is not limited to predators. We also can be morbidly drawn to tales of large-scale frightening situations such as volcanic eruptions, pandemics, dangerous storms and a large variety of apocalyptic events. This is where the magic of a scary story really shines: it's the only way to learn about and rehearse responses to dangers we have yet to face.
Playing with the Apocalypse
Human kind has faced a number of apocalyptic scenarios over the years. Some of these were localized, and some have been more global. The most recent, of course, happened in 2020.
COVID had thrust the world into a global pandemic. Governments were restricting movement, businesses were closing, supplies were being plundered, and the standard way of living came to a screeching halt.
And yet, as uncertain as everything seemed, some people had seen something like this happen before.
Nine years before COVID-19 thrust the world into disarray, Meningoencephalitis Virus 1 (MEV-1) made its debut. MEV-1 resembled COVID-19 in several ways. Like COVID-19, MEV-1 was thought to have originated in bats in Asia. People infected with MEV-1 typically had a terrible cough, fatigue, headaches, and fever: all symptoms that are also commonly associated with COVID-19. Even the social response to MEV-1 eerily mirrored that of COVID-19. Travel was banned, businesses closed, and essential stores were plundered for household supplies.
The MEV-1 pandemic looked like the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in nearly every way imaginable. If you don't recall this global pandemic, perhaps you haven't seen the film Contagion.
In fact, many people hadn't seen Contagion. But, by April of 2020, Contagion was the most popular movie in America — far more popular than it was during its initial release.
Intuition tells us that people will seek out escapism during stressful times like the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. When you have a lot going on in the real world, it can feel good to escape into a new world inside of a book, video game, or movie. But why were so many people escaping the stresses of a real pandemic by jumping into a stressful fictional world that was also plagued by a pandemic?
Perhaps, they were playing with their fears.
Of course, not everyone was seeking out fictional dangers at that time. It was those who were higher in trait levels of morbid curiosity that were seeking out pandemic movies the most in those early months of the pandemic.
Interestingly, morbidly curious people were also seeking out scary films in general during a scary time in their life.
And their morbid curiosity may have helped them out. People who had seen at least one pandemic movie in the past reported feeling more prepared for the pandemic and all it brought.
In fact, those who had seen more scary movies in general reported greater psychological resilience in those tumultuous early months of the pandemic and lockdowns.
Scary play in the form of horror films may have had a positive effect on some people's resilience to a real life stressor.
And this makes sense, because engaging with emotions like fear and anxiety in a safe setting, such as a film or game, allows you to practice regulating those emotions. It is, in essence, a form of home-brewed cognitive behavioral therapy.
Yes, (Scary) Games are Good for You
In fact, scary play may work about as well as traditional CBT in treating anxiety. The Games for Mental and Emotional Health lab has created a game called Mindlight under this very principle.
Mindlight is a horror-themed biofeedback game that incorporates an EEG headband that measures brainwaves associated with relaxation. If the player gets too anxious during the game, the EEG picks this up and sends a signal to the game that gives players tips on how to regain their sense of calm and overcome the feeling of anxiety. Once the EEG detects increased relaxation, the player can continue through the game.
There have been several studies on the efficacy of Mindlight showing that it is at least as effective at treating anxiety in children as traditional CBT. Importantly, children report that Mindlight is fun to play, which leads to greater therapeutic completion rates among patients.
So, scary play can help kids build skills for dealing with fear.
And this seems to work in adults, too.
My research at haunted house attractions shows that many people report learning about themselves and feeling that they experienced personal growth during the experience. In particular, many people report learning how to manage their fears — or at least that they need to learn how to do that.
A couple of quotes translated from Danish participants here:
“I think I know more about how I react in stressful situations and know that I now have to work on myself.”
“I have to trust myself (my instincts), then everything will be alright. Even though I'm scared/frightened, I have to create a sense of calmness and perspective as well as possible. I feel like I got better at that along the way."
Even serious organizations like the US military and the CDC recognize the importance of scary play in resilience training. The DOD found that officers learn about disaster management much better when their training is situated within the fictional and entertaining context of a zombie apocalypse. Likewise, the CDC developed a zombie apocalypse section to help people learn how to prepare for all-hazard emergencies (though they apparently had to take the original down because people thought there was an actual zombie apocalypse).
So, don't be afraid to get out and embrace all of the scary play opportunities life affords. It might just be good for you