Short Stuff: Why does it feel good to be scared?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, sitting in for a day. And this is Stuff You Should Know.
What is the difference between fear and being scared?
And we're here to answer a perennial question that everyone wants to know. Just why in the gosh darn heck do we make ourselves scared on purpose?
Yeah, here, scare me real quick. Do something. Let's do a little exercise.
you're starting to look old.
No, no, no. Okay. Really scary. Say boo or something.
Oh, okay. That's going to scare you more.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Boo.
Why do we intentionally seek out scary experiences?
Oh my God. Oh boy. As it turns out, that was really exhilarating and I feel great now.
Yeah. Well, you overcame a fear, a real threat.
Yeah. It is an interesting question though. And thanks to our old friends at house of works.com, as well as psychology today and the American brain foundation, uh, who have all, as well as other places, looked into that weird question like you were talking about. Like, why would anybody pay to go into a truly terrifying haunted house or a truly terrifying movie?
And like, yeah, we all know anecdotally or personally why But like if you step back and look at it from a rational standpoint, it makes zero sense whatsoever. Like we're purposefully stimulating what's meant to be like an unpleasant experience, unpleasant response in ourselves. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. You know, we'll get into that in a second. We need to sort of delineate, though, like what we're talking about. We did an episode on fear a while back. It was a long time ago, I think. It was a pretty good one, if I remember correctly. But we're not talking about anxiety. Like there's anxiety and there's fear. Anxiety is the stuff that keeps you up at night, like existential threats or am I getting old or is our country being ruined or is there a looming – War coming to our country like things that haven't happened yet that you're truly upset and anxious about is not the same thing as as fear of something that is like somebody jumping out and saying boo something that happens right in front of your face.
Exactly. Right. So you got that. And fear is about something jumping out right in front of your face. It's about like an immediate threat to your well-being, maybe your life. And it triggers the fight or flight response.
Yeah, for sure.
So a little more about that. When you have the fight or flight response, your pulse increases, your blood pressure increases, you just get ready to run or fly, which is the only time you can fly is when you're scared.
That's right. There have been people that research this stuff. There's a book that we want to shout out called Scream. Scream! With an exclamation point from Margie Key and her colleague, Dr. Greg Siegel, who is director for the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at University of Pittsburgh. But their description of what we're talking about, like paying to go to a haunted house or something or a really scary movie, is voluntary engagement with negative high arousal stimuli. So, in other words, it's like, yeah, I'll give you my hard-earned dollars to go into Netherworld in October because the thrill of getting the doo-doo scared out of me is, like, I enjoy that experience.
Yeah. So, yeah, that's a great, great term for it.
Why do we enjoy scary movies and haunted houses?
I say we take a little break, Chuck, and then we come back and we go step by step how this whole thing goes for us.
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:15
2
What is the difference between fear and being scared?
0:15–0:41
3
Why do we intentionally seek out scary experiences?
0:41–3:34
4
Why do we enjoy scary movies and haunted houses?
3:34–8:16
5
How does the fight or flight response relate to fear?
8:16–8:40
6
What physiological changes occur during a scary experience?
8:40–14:09