Psychology and Neurobiology of Horror Movies

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Lauri Nummenmaa Professor, Turku PET Centre, Finland lauri.nummenmaa@utu.fi

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Abstract

This article covers the neurobiological and psychological aspects of horror movies. Cinema audiences are not exposed to real threats, thus the movie should pass the brain's “reality check” systems and emotion regulation to engage the fear responses. This is achieved through vicarious simulation, proximity of threats, and unpredictability of the fearful events, and using universal sources of fear such as illness or isolation. Paradoxical appeal of horror movies stems from universal curiosity toward morbid and threatening subjects, mixing of emotions of fear and excitement in the brain, and the capability to learn about dangerous situations safely in the context of movies. These findings are summarized in a conceptual model for eliciting fear through cinema.

Contributor Notes

Lauri Nummenmaa completed his PhD on neurocognitive mechanisms of social attention at University of Turku in 2006. After that, he worked as a post-doc at the MRC CBU in Cambridge, UK, studying neural mechanisms of face perception. Nummenmaa returned to Finland in 2008, to work as Academy of Finland junior fellow and subsequently as senior fellow and Assistant professor at Aalto University mapping brain basis of emotions during cinema viewing. Currently Nummenmaa works at Turku PET Centre, Finland as a full professor in modeling and medical imaging. His group studies functional and molecular neural mechanisms of emotions and social interaction using whole-body positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and behavioral recordings. Email: lauri.nummenmaa@utu.fi; ORCID: 0000-0002-2497-9757

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The Journal for Movies and Mind

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