Enactive Horror An Evolutionary Analysis of Haunted Attractions

Mathias Clasen, Aarhus University

Scary entertainment is culturally pervasive because it is uniquely suited for satisfying fundamental human needs, most centrally the evolved need for simulated experience with threat scenarios (Clasen, 2012). Such experience allows for calibration of the evolved fear system and the development of coping strategies that apply in real-world situations. Horror works by engaging psychological mechanisms that evolved gradually and adaptively over millions of years, and the genre itself changes in response to cultural variation, including technological developments. New technologies enable interactive and highly immersive horror experiences such as those afforded by horror video games and haunted attractions (Clasen, 2017).

Horror and Evolution

Interactive horror media give users agency in a mediated world of horror. They let us feel that we are protagonists, unlike traditional narrative horror media such as novels and films which let us empathetically engage through observation. Through interaction with the game world, we become highly immersed (Lynch & Martins, 2015). So-called survival horror pits the defenseless player against dangerous monsters in a hostile environment and typically use a first-person perspective to sustain imaginative transportation (Clasen & Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, 2016). Other horror games use a less immersive third-person perspective but also give players agency in the game world. Immersive virtual reality (VR) technology provides an ecologically realistic stereoscopic view of a high-resolution computer-generated environment. With such technology, the feeling of immersion can be near-total. This kind of horror experience will soon be perceptually indistinguishable from real-world encounters with horror and thus unattractive to most users looking for vicarious fun with fear. The mostly safe thrills offered by haunted attractions, however, are increasingly popular.

Interactive Horror

Haunted attractions are a booming industry in the US and beyond, with about 4,000 commercial haunts operating in the US and annual revenues of ~300 million. Like video games and VR, haunts allow the consumer to become the protagonist in a horror story that unfolds in real-time, but in an empirical environment with auditory, visual, tactile, and even olfactory cues of danger (Clasen, 2017). Haunted attractions provide a unique setting for empirical and experimental studies of negative affect, but have not yet been used significantly in psychological studies. Conversely, there is almost no research on haunted houses (but see Kerr, 2015).

Haunted Attractions Dystopia Haunted House is Denmark’s biggest haunted house. It is open throughout October and attracts 5,000 paying costumers annually. About 5% willingly abort their visit. Visitors have fainted from fear and wet themselves in terror. The haunt is effective because it uses a range of elements that are successfully calibrated to target common evolved fears. Such elements include

Darkness • confinement • heights • sudden noises • corpses and broken

bodies • diseased-looking individuals • isolation • monsters • creepy-crawlies

These elements, most notably cues of predation and cues of contagion, predictably target evolved defense mechanisms with roots deep in vertebrate evolution (Curtis, Aunger, & Rabie, 2004; Öhman & Mineka, 2001). Like other interactive and highly immersive forms of horror media, haunts are well-equipped to provide visitors with simulated threat experience through the elicitation of negative emotions ranging from disgust and shock to dread, anxiety, and fear.

How Haunts Work

Evolutionary analyses of horror media have tremendous explanatory potential. However, evolutionary thinking is still not widespread in the humanities, with notable exceptions (Boyd, 2009; Carroll, 1995, 2011; Carroll, Gottschall, Johnson, & Kruger, 2012; Dutton, 2009; Grodal, 2009; Smith, 2017). The new journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture provides a unique forum for such studies. The evolutionary approach to horror is only emerging, but it promises to dissolve the paradox of horror and to provide an explanation for the appeals and functions of horror that is lodged in cutting-edge evolutionary social science (see

Kjeldgaard-Christiansen et al.: “Can an Evolutionary Analysis Dissolve the

Paradox of Horror?” on Friday at 12.40-1.00pm).

Evolutionary Humanities

Boyd, B. (2009). On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Carroll, J. (1995). Evolution and Literary Theory: University of Missouri Press. Carroll, J. (2011). Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. Carroll, J., Gottschall, J., Johnson, J. A., & Kruger, D. J. (2012). Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories. Review of General Psychology, 16(2), 222-229. doi:DOI 10.1037/a0027918 Clasen, M. (2017). Why Horror Seduces. New York: Oxford University Press. Clasen, M., & Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J. (2016). A Consilient Approach to Horror Video Games: Challenges and Opportunities. Academic Quarter, 13. Curtis, V., Aunger, R., & Rabie, T. (2004). Evidence that Disgust Evolved to Protect from Risk of Disease. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 271(Suppl 4), S131-S133. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2003.0144 Dutton, D. (2009). The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution (1st U.S. ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Press. Grodal, T. K. (2009). Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. Kerr, M. (2015). Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. New York: PublicAffairs. Lynch, T., & Martins, N. (2015). Nothing to Fear? An Analysis of College Students' Fear Experiences With Video Games. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(2), 298-317. doi:10.1080/08838151.2015.1029128 Smith, M. (2017). Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, Phobias, and Preparedness: Toward an Evolved Module of Fear and Fear Learning. Psychological Review, 108(3), 483-522.

References

First-person POV inAmnesia: The Dark Descent (2010)

Visitors encountering ”Le Chef” in Dystopia Haunted House, 2015. (c) Baldursson Photography.

Run or hide? The choice is yours in Until Dawn (2014)

Diseased-looking scare actors in Dystopia Haunted House (2015).

Contact: mc@cc.au.dk Twitter: @MathiasClasen Forthcoming in October

Scare actor ‘Mr. Piggy’ (Dystopia).