I watched The Woman In Black this weekend. When I say this weekend, I mean this morning, in broad daylight, from behind a cushion. I don't generally like scary movies, at least not the paranormal ones (Saw-style blood and guts I can just about deal with, but ghosts and haunted houses? No thank you!). But this movie was actually really good, had an interesting story and I'd recommend it.
And while I was watching it, I thought about how people actually enjoy being scared - I mean, the movie did creep me out, but I kind of liked that feeling. Weird, right? It just seems a little counter-intuitive to make ourselves feel scared - which is generally thought of as a negative emotion - on purpose.
So I've done a bit of digging online, and essentially, it seems to come down to the fact that we know movies aren't real and they can't actually hurt us, but they still give us that adrenaline rush that comes with the psychological "fight or flight" reaction. If something makes us jump, it gives us that feeling, and we enjoy it - maybe we even laugh at ourselves for being scared. So in a way, when we're scared by things that aren't real, like movies, books and video games, we're experiencing positive and negative feelings at the same time - it's a negative emotion we're feeling, but we like it. I guess in that way it's like watching a sad movie - it upsets us, but at the time that's what we want it to do.
Also, a lot of people probably aren't half as easy to scare as I am!
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