An Evolutionary Approach to Horror Media

doi:10.1017/9781108131797.045

44 - An Evolutionary Approach to Horror Media

from Part X - Evolution and the Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2020

Mathias Clasen and

Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen

Edited by

Lance Workman ,

Will Reader and

Jerome H. Barkow

Show author details

Lance Workman: Affiliation:
University of South Wales
Will Reader: Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
Jerome H. Barkow: Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia

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Summary

People generally try to avoid negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and terror – and unsurprisingly so. These negative emotions evolved to motivate defensive avoidance behavior and are elicited by threatening stimuli. Common sense tells us that nobody desires to dwell on such stimuli, and yet a good chunk of the entertainment industry is devoted to manufacturing products designed to instill negative emotions in consumers. Horror cinema, horror literature, and horror video games are all thriving industries. Every season sees a new crop of novels, films, and video games depicting rotting monsters, moaning ghosts, and terrifying situations. Why do such media products draw large audiences? This chapter proposes to answer that question by invoking an evolutionary explanatory paradigm that builds on the evolutionary social sciences and encompasses sociological and historicist approaches to horror (Clasen, 2012, 2017).

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior , pp. 538 - 547

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108131797.045 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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