Why Some People Don’t Like Horror Movies

Back in 2021, I received an invitation to appear on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s podcast as an expert on recreational fear and horror. Although I was badly star-struck, I think I did a reasonable job of explaining the kind of research we do at the Recreational Fear Lab. There was one question that I bungled, though, and it’s been eating at me ever since.

The question was this: Why do some people not like horror movies? We know that most people say they enjoy horror, but there’s still a sizeable chunk of the population — somewhere between a quarter and a third — who say they don’t like the stuff (Clasen et al., 2020).

A few months later, I was riding on a train to Copenhagen. I was sitting next to a woman who was contentedly knitting. Puzzling, I thought. What could be the appeal of knitting? I could see the utility of creating something useful, but this woman was obviously enjoying the process itself. Then it occurred to me that maybe my love for horror movies would be as puzzling to the woman as her apparent love of knitting was to me. Maybe it comes down to exposure and experience, to insight into the phenomenon, to actually knowing what you’re talking about.

That, I think, is the first piece of the puzzle: Some people who say they don’t like horror movies don’t actually know what they’re talking about. They hear “horror movies” and think of drunk teens screaming in terror at films depicting teens being chased by bad guys wearing silly masks. To those people I can only say, why not check out a good horror movie, and see if your preconceptions might be challenged a bit? Something like, say, Hereditary if you have a high tolerance for horror and maybe something funny-scary like Scream if your tolerance is low.

The Sweet Spot of Fear

Prejudice and bias can’t be the only pieces of the puzzle. Of course, there are people who have given the genre a real chance, checked out the cream of the crop, and concluded that it wasn’t for them, thank you very much.

So, another factor is individual variation in what my colleagues and I have come to call “the sweet spot of fear” (Andersen et al., 2020). We have found that if you look at the relationship between fear and enjoyment in the domain of horror, it’s not linear — rather, we see an inverted u-shaped relationship, as in the graph below. People don’t want their horror to be too scary, but they also don’t want it to be not scary enough. It has to hit the sweet spot. The thing is, people have different sweet spots. Some have a very high tolerance for fear — the thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies, for instance. Others need very little stimulation to hit their sweet spot.

Pernille Lærke Munk-Hansen, used with permission.

Why do we see this variation? Presumably, the individual sweet spot is a function of one’s personality, such as how much of a sensation-seeker one is, how open to experience one is, or how high in the trait "need for affect" one is (Bartsch et al., 2010). It may also be tied to the sensitivity of one’s perceptual system. That is not to say that the setting of your sweet spot is hard-wired from birth, at least not entirely. Presumably, the sweet spot of fear is calibrated over time and with experience. If you watch a lot of horror movies, chances are that you build tolerance. You habituate to horror, and so will come to need stronger doses to reach the sweet spot.

The sweet spot may also vary in response to other factors. Maybe if you’re exhausted or stressed or anxious, your sweet spot moves to the left. If you’re well-rested and feel on top of the world, your tolerance may slide in the opposite direction. But we don’t know because there is no research on this yet.

My point is simply this: Individual variation in the sweet spot may explain why some people don’t like horror movies. They may still enjoy less intense forms of recreational fear. Maybe they’re big true-crime buffs, maybe they love thrillers, maybe they’re inveterate roller-coaster connoisseurs. But it could be that the stimulation provided by horror movies is, on average, too much for them, like somebody who will accept a few jalapeño peppers on their pizza but will take a hard pass on the Carolina Reaper sauce.

My Answer to Why Some People Don't Like Horror Movies

So, some people who stay away from horror movies do so for good reasons. They know or intuit that they won’t enjoy the stimulation provided by horror movies, and most such people probably find other ways to tickle their recreational fear bone.

Others stay away from horror movies simply because they have an impoverished understanding of the genre, similar to how I was puzzled by knitting. If you’re one of those folks, my advice is to check out a horror movie, and see what the fuss is about. Find something that is likely to hit your sweet spot. Chances are you have a friend who’s a horror buff — they can help you find something appropriate. Keep in mind that there is increasing evidence to suggest that watching scary movies (and engaging with other forms of recreational fear) may actually be good for you.

And if Neil deGrasse Tyson is reading this, I do hope I have now answered your question, even if part of the answer is “we don’t know yet.” But I think the sweet spot of fear is a key piece of the puzzle, and once we have more scientific insight into the phenomenon, I promise I’ll write a post on it.