Coltan Scrivner

It was great.

It was perfect.

We were interested in how do people have fun when they're feeling afraid and what does that look like?

And so we measured their heart rates.

We looked at their faces to see what they did during the scares and after the scares.

We interviewed them to have them talk about the experience and did they think it was play or fun or were they too scared?

Did it meet their expectations?

And what we found is that people have kind of a sweet spot of fear where their fun is maximized.

So if you imagine on your x-axis here, you've got 1 to 10 for how scary something is.

And on your y-axis, you've got 1 to 10 for how fun it is.

You get kind of a normal distribution.

Right.

But it's a bit skewed.

It's got to be a little bit scarier.

So like a seven or seven and a half out of ten.

Not a five.

Not a five.

Not a ten, which is interesting because if you look at marketing campaigns for horror movies or haunted attractions, they always try to say this is the scariest thing you'll ever experience.

And that's not necessarily what people want.

It's not necessarily when they have the most fun or when they enjoy it the most.