The Horror Movie Aphrodisiac

it made a huge impression on both of us. And I remember, even though he was older, he was like, you gotta walk me down the hall, you gotta look behind the shower curtain. And so I began to really have that feeling like something was out there lurking. But I gotta say, in terms of dating, it wasn't like a you know, a fifties drive in. I wasn't like, oh, let's go watch something. It wasn't like the beginning of the Thriller video, which I was like, oh it's scary

hat here. Well. Um, Interestingly enough, I anytime my wife and I are trying to determine how long we've known each other, we have to look up the Saw movies on on Internet movie database. Um not because the Saw movies are particularly near and dear to our heart. Um, you know, the first one was okay in some respects,

but it's you know, it's not something I cherished. But we shortly after we met each other, we went and saw the first Saw movie in the theater, so we know that if we can determine for a while, they were putting out one a year, so we knew that we could see which which Saw a movie they were on, and that would tell us how long we've known each other. But now we have to do a little math. But we have to find that starting point by answering the question when did the first Saw movie come out? Wow?

So that just shows I think it's very reflective of your deep history with horror movies and that genre in general, because my husband and I would probably look at the Coen Brothers movies and be like, Okay, which one was the one that we saw together but didn't know it's at the beginning of the relationship. But you yes, that

vast history of the genre. Well, even though I you know, I certainly hold the Cohen Brothers films far above most bits of horror that I've seen, But for some reason, a horror movie that I don't even particularly like all that much is the signifier. But but you know, from an early age, I remember being hit over the head with that trope though of if you're going on a date, what do you do? You take the person to a movie, and and generally it needs to be a horror movie

because you saw this. You see this in films. You see this. I horror movies as well, especially the older ones that would come on, you know, on TV in the middle of a Saturday. You'd see these old films which would show uh, people in the nineteen fifties and sixties going to the drive in, right, going on dates and seeing a horror movie. Yeah, I mean, you're right. This is something that has actually sort of woven into our cultural fabric and it's a rite of passage in

a way. And so I love that you guys that you and your wife's first date was a horror flame, because we're gonna talk about the ways in which it might influence our amorous feelings for others out there. Yes, and leading to the big question, does this actually work as an aphrodisiac? Does the haunted house actually empty into

the bedroom? Uh, etcetera. So so we're gonna back up just a little bit and and talk about the effects of fear on the body, on the mind, because at every basic level, Uh, this should come into no surprise to anyone. We did not evolve to watch horror movies. Horror mos, we didn't. We we evolved to deal with frightening and or dangerous stimulation. But the horror movie in many cases stands as an example, as an example of

supernormal stimuli, and and it's also a simulation. So we we have this unreal experience with fear that plays on our minds and on our bodies in the same way that actual lethal threats to do. Right. So you have a tiger, which is an actual threat and at one point when humans were part of the food chain, would have been a real problem, right, And we have bodies

that can respond to that. On the other hand, we have the paper tigers of our mind, which come to life in the form of movies, and sometimes in mind is like, hey, I can't distinguish between the two. So we should talk about what's happening in the mind. And we'll also get to who this might be affecting the most. All right, So let's just let's just run through what happens. You're in the You're in the movie movie theater. You're and and therefore you are in the movie in a sense,

you're immersing yourself in the experience. You're you're watching these fearful sights, you're hearing fearful things. Um, maybe you're spelling something fearful, depends on what kind of gimmick the the theater is throwing at you. But for the most part, we're talking about your ears and your eyes. So horror is running into your ears and your eyes to an

almond shaped clump of neurons called the amygdala. There is located front and center in the brain, and it's vital to instantaneous emotional processing, especially surprisingly enough, love and pleasure. Uh So we've we've conducted in the past spring experiments on rats that have shown that damaging the amigola interferes with their capacity to feel fear as well. And this suggests an overlap between these seemingly opposite emotions of pleasure

and fright. And we've touched on this before. Um and and when we see this kind of dual purposing a lot because because ultimately with the brain, uh, you know, some some cases you can point to a certain region of the brain to say, well, this is this lines up with this. But in many cases we see double duty. You see that that the different areas are involved in

the processing of different different feelings, etcetera. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that we see, um, we see love and pleasure, we see fear and tear wound up in the same mechanisms. Yeah, we talked before about how the amingela processes pain, emotional pain and physical pain, and that the two are just so bound up together. So again there's there's no big surprise here that there's an

overlap and pain and pleasure as well. So if you think about Freddie emerging from behind the door, or that chainsaw getting closer and closer to your neck, you think about your magdala getting all juiced up, unleashing a brain embody energizing cocktail of hormones energizing. Remember that you know, and while all this is happening, you also have your prefrontal cortex getting in on the game and saying it's okay,

it is just a movie. And the result of that is a just kind of wave of pleasure because you know that you're in this domain where you're not actually going to get hurt, and yet you're you have all those energizing hormones and chemicals flowing through you. Yeah. All in about three seconds, You're amgala is is unleashing this this hormone cocktail. UH is prompting an already already busy

adrenal glands to turn out cortisol, the stress hormone. High levels of cortisol can't impede insulin, causing a rising blood sugar a little extra fuel if case you need to punch something in the face or run away in the hills, You're you're gonna you know, breathing faster. You're taking in more oxygen. That way, your heart is racing to get

that oxygen into your muscles. UH. Your your appetite stalls because you know the energy your body would use for digestion is diverted towards getting away from the mass maniac UH in your mind, if not in real life, You're you're potentially starting to sweat. Pupils are dilating, and the car the cortisol has saturated your blood stream at this point and feeds back into the amgala to boost the

perception of danger. UH. So in this way, you know, reinforcing memory for the of the initial fright sittings may end up actually feeling a little jumpy afterwards. So anyway, all this is hitting within three seconds, which which really makes you look at the horror movie or any kind of artificial scare in a way. It's it's kind of like a drug. It's this artificial stimuli we take in

and it and it causes these these physical responses. Yeah, and one of the more counterintuitive findings in the science of fear is that the stronger the negative emotions we're talking about, like anxiety and worry and fear, um, the more the person will enjoy that movie, that bit of horror in front of them. And that's where you see that the distress and delight really are interconnected because it

is intrinsically a cathartic moment for the person. And another big thing to point out here is that within five seconds of of of bringing in this fearful stimuli, your nerve cells start to release endorphins to combat the injuries that you have probably sustained from the the act building maniac on the screen, and so your brain is also releasing dopamine. The neurotransmitter best known for giving you that

feel good rush. Uh and also some property a neurotransmitter that we bring up a lot on the podcast because it's one of those, uh, those those key substances that plays a role in so many different emotional responses to the world. Yea, and that reminds me to you have mirror neurons in on the game as well. We've talked about that before, the mirror neurons that are essentially aping what they see in front of us in our brains.

So I always think about this with a clockwork orange that the moment in which his eyes are being peeled back, I will instinctively, you know, cover my eye and try to prevent it because it feels like it's happening to me. Yeah. I mean, even if it's a bad harmard with poorly defined characters, we can't help but invest a little of ourselves in that character. And then all the more so if they actually bothered to to to to develop the character and or have somebody you know, competent play that

character and bring them to life on the screen. And uh. And the and the eye thing is interesting too to note because you see a film that just has injuries that consists of say, arms gett chopped offs and its getting chopped off. I mean, that kind of gore can can certainly have an effect, but so often it's those little moments that make the most sense to us and touches the most. The character uh scraping their their hand or or you know, something jabs into their side or

they step on some glass. Those little injuries that are far more relatable because for the most part, you and I cannot relate to an individual getting their arms chopped off, their head chopped off. It's uh, you know, it's it's a real world injury, but it's not something that we can say, it's not necessarily WinCE worthy. But it's those little injuries that we can relate to, and those and when the more we relate to what's going on in

the screen, the more we can immerse ourselves and what's happening. Yeah, that's why the idea of something like saying needle going into your eye is so horrific because all of us have probably at one point or another hat and needle pierce or skin, so we are familiar with that or even poke in the eyes. So like the the immediate danger to the eye is not something that's beyond the scope. Yeah, and you pair that with a vulnerability of the eye, and it just becomes like this terrible thing that you

can't even imagine, but you can't imagine. So there you go. That's our next science on the web. We'll just deal with one only has clips from horror movies in which injuries are done to eyes. I know, if you guys thought that your wax footage about what looked like to be like a steak of croissant being pulled out of a ear was terrible, then you know, you just imagine this next video. Who is the really artsy filmmaker who did the scene with the razor blade in the eye

that was it was? Ah, I don't know, but did you see I just so just to summarize again, do you can think of the horror movie experience or even the haunted attraction experience as a drug. So bear that in mind when we're talking about um people on a

date partaking of the horror movie. If you're one person asking another person out on a date to a horror movie, you're basically saying, hey, do this drug with me, this drug that will have this this physical emotional effect on me and you right, and will both experience this to other There'll be this communal aspect and we'll both survive it together. It will come out on the other hand, And if you frame it that way, when you ask the madame a date, they I don't know. It depends

on the individual. They might be more inclined to say yes, but they might be more inclined to say no and never speak to you again. But that is what the proposition actually is. When someone says, Hey, um, I know you're in my my physics class and we haven't really talked, but why don't you go watch the new Friday to thirdeenth movie with me? Let's metaphorically survive this together. Yes, yeah,

I don't know. I might, I might go all right, So who might be watching these kinds of movies the most Well, we've talked about the type T personality before. We're talking about the new philiacs who crave new experiences. They get more of a jolt and they release more dopamine. So it would follow that perhaps a type T personality would be more amenable to getting the pants scared off of them. Yeah, someone who just is who just goes into the theater and says, just push my boundaries, push

my buttons. You know, they're not They're not worried about any of their triggers being pulled on a particular movie. If anything, they want their triggers pulled, and they want all the triggers possible to be pulled. Yeah, they were like,

I just jumped off a plan today. Bring it on what you got, And it's it's often hard to relate to people like that when it comes to U two movies to fiction written fiction, even because there they seem to have at times drastically different expectations of the subject matter. You know. But anyway, that's another digression for for another time. I think, um, now, who else might be juiced up

by this? Teens and twenty somethings, which flows in nicely with the again the trope of the teenagers going to the drive in theater and watching something scary and winding up arm in arm and lip and lip at least lip and lip. I like that. Research fear research expert Edward Campbell says that older people have stimulation fatigue, like, for instance, do you have these these real horrors of life scaring you? There are things that are actual real threats.

When you get older, like you know, there's looming tough that's always unpleasant. Also, you're just more aware of what's going on in the world. I mean, like I feel like I I see a trailer for a film, especially a horror film, that has to do with home invasion, It's like, I'm not going to see that. If I want to get frightened about the possibility of home invasion, you know, I'll just set in my house and listen to the news or something that's that doesn't take me

out of my own experience. I know. My brother keeps saying, you gotta watch Cabin in the Woods, you gotta watch the Strangers, And I'm like, you know, I don't want to because I like to go to the mountains in a cabin a lot, and I don't want to now freight my experience there with these paper tigers. Well, Cavin in the Woods you should maybe see. Just know that there's a lot more going on than than meets the eye.

It's not just a Cabin in the Woods film. It really plays with that trope a lot and goes into and ultimately goes into a more fantastic area. All right, Well, both of you have really great judgment when it comes to media. So I'm obviously gonna have to see this now. Although you promise this will not ruin my experience in the mountains. Unless you're going to a really weird mountain, I think you'll be fine. Okay, alright, So anyway, would it would make sense that older people are like, you

know what, I don't need this necessarily. I don't find it as entertaining as I used to, because you know, when I was a young buck of sixteen, I was more likely to look for really intense experiences. Yeah, I mean just physically, you get older and you're maybe not up for the adrenaline pumping roller coaster ride of of a horror film. It's just you just don't want to feel it in your body. Um. And uh, And I'm not I'm not quite there yet, but I've I've I've

certainly heard people make that argument. They say, I just can't do it just makes my heart race. I just don't want to go through it. And and I can understand that, especially again, when you think of the horror movie, the is the the artificial fear experience as a full

body event. Yeah, it's funny. Um, I think I've mentioned this before, but before the birth of my daughter, I could watch anything, and it really wasn't that difficult for me to watch, um, you know, because I could very much say, oh, yeah, this is the willing suspension of disbelief, it's not real, so on and so forth. But after her I had her, I was everything was sort of like, oh, this is difficult to watch, including horror movies. So I've come out of that a bit, but it's not the

same anymore. And it's also not the same for the people who make it obviously either. I remember reading an interview with Clive Barker where he was talking about looking back at some of his younger writings and and about how, you know now is as an older man, who's who, who's known people, who's who has died, you know, death

has become more part of his reality. And therefore, looking back on his view of death in his earlier horror films, he says, you know, sometimes it's harder to relate to that. It just seems is a different person. Indeed. All right, so it's not just me out there having a different perspective on this. All right, We're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, we are going to

talk about the thematic power of these movies. All right, we are back, and uh, you know, all that snack talk remind me that we are actually going to talk about products that eat during scary movies. But before we do that, let's talk about the thematic power of scary movies. Yeah, because that's another huge thing to think about, because, as always um with humans, there's this sort of animal level, there's the I'm seeing something scary and then I'm bodily

responding to it. But of course horror movies have a lot of baggage with them as well. Even a bad horror movie is is generally coming to you on the backbones of long standing tropes, long standing folk tales, long standing cultural fears. I mean, it's a it's a complex there's a complex undercurrent there, even if the director or actors or whoever responsible for this piece don't really have

a clue what they're doing. Yeah, I feel like, um, I feel like writers and directors are tapping into these very ancient stories that we have been telling each other as cautionary tales. So you begin to see, obviously the tropes pop up again and again. Yeah, It's one of the reasons why I probably enjoy bad horror movies and bad genre films as much, if not more than than good ones, because you do see these accidents of genius.

They'll be a bad film and like somehow they'll they'll have like a perfect scene, or the monster will will will somehow connect on a on a level that it's just out of keeping with the rest of the film, because they'll they'll they'll accidentally at times get it right. Um, they'll they'll tap into these these at times primal feelings. Now, I should also say that when we talk about this, we're talking about a very sort of hetero norm situation

going on here that horror movies appeal to. So let's say, for instance, that your walk during a movie and all the guys in it generally are cads, right, there's no sort of night and shining armor. There is this idea, according to the site Killer Film, that that might put

your male date attendee in a really good light. So, for instance, you could be watching all of this terrible uh sort of things unfold in front of you, and you might have this guy next to you who just took twenty dollars out of your wallet, but you don't have to worry about him hopefully gutting you like a

fish later. Yeah, that's true. Um, you know, we're looking at an article how watching horror movies on dates can help you score by Serena Whitney at Killer Film and and she does bring up a number of interesting points, again in a very heteronormal uh sense here, but but yeah, you're watching a horror film. All of the men are horrible,

even the ones that aren't bearing machetes. And then oftentimes there is at least this misguided attempt to have a strong female because you have that you have that lone survivor that one female that makes it to the end of the film. And granted, the character development is generally not gonna beete there. It's not gonna it's not going to be the kind of character that that feminist essays are written on, written about for years and years and years.

But there's an idea of of female strength and male lacking there. Yeah. I was thinking even in the scream films, or at least the first one, the male that is supposed to be the one who is sensitive and perhaps the hero turns out to be actually the purp yeah. Yeah, so you know, could you can find examples of these all day long. Yeah, some of your more interesting films are aware of these tropes and then begin to play

with them on some level or another. So so yeah, yeah, alright, Um, then you also get this kind of like symbolism that that's that's couched in there. So if you look at a movie like Predator or even the Alien franchise, what do you see? You see these creatures who have uh, there's no sensitive way to say this. They have these Jenna Talia like looking creatures that evoke the idea of vagina dentata ven jhona dentata. I feel like we've probably mentioned here a couple of times, is the idea that

of Jinna might have teeth and attack you. And it's this very sort of grotesque rendering of the female body, and it taps into this fear of females and this rendering of females as monsters, as unholy and evil. And so it's interesting that in horror movies, uh you'll see some of this embedded. Yeah. Yeah, the monster's feminine plays a huge role in in more more horror films than we could We could count more horror properties and more horror tales. Um. So, yeah, when you're when you're going

into a film, you're encountering the monstrous. The monstrous always has some level of symbolic power, right, because you're you're involving the animal and the hybrid coming together, and that ends up having some sort of symbolic meaning that you end up deciphering on on some level or another. And then when you throw in all of this uh, you know, yonic or or phallix symbolism, then suddenly there's there's gender politics. They're sexual issues at way. Uh again oftentimes just going

on completely under the surface of the film. And and maybe the filmmakers themselves were not even aware of the symbols they were playing with, which I feel like plays into this idea of of hey, hussy watching you know that that you're a hussy, so why don't you just you know, submit to it. I mean, obviously they're not really command saying it, but there are those undertones there, which then are compounded by the fact that most scary

movies have a ton of actual sex going on. Yeah, it's generally a great place to throw in your gratuitous nudity and uh and really. I mean I remember as far as like seeing nudity on film, like all the earliest examples of it. I feel like we're in horror films um or even like not even quite nudity, but

just semi nude bodies. It would be like that scene an alien with the underwear, So that that in and of itself is kind of a a conflicting area where you end up having your your early ideas about sexuality are partially molded by films that are also full of bloodshed and problematic displays of sexuality and or gender, and along with with with poor character development. But at the very least, it's a very good possibility that when you go in to see a horror film there's also going

to be a little bit of skin. Yeah, And I think it's writing on the coat tails of what we talked about before, which is a certain amount of vulnerability wrapped up in nudity, which we've talked about before. Um, I'm even thinking about this. Have you ever seen that

nineteen seventies French film called The Beast? No, but I've I've always wanted to because the VHS cover always calls out to me when I go to video Drone, the of course mecca of of of vhs and DVD rental here in in Atlanta, because you see that be steel hand reaching after a woman's bottom or is it just

her flesh? I can't remember remember the cover art for it, but what I came away from that is that you know, there's of this beast, you know, stalking this woman and in the forest, and she's naked a lot of the time. And so it really comes down to sort of the rudimentary brass tacks of horror. You've got your vulnerability, You've got this creature that's after you, and you're in the woods,

you're in unfamiliar territory being stalked. Now, I also want to throw in that that the Sigmen Freud, of course suggested that horror was appealing because it traffics and thoughts and feelings that have been repressed by the ego but which seemed vaguely familiar. So again, all of these symbolic ideas are are embedded in the meat of the horror, even if even if the creators were not aware of it.

And just and when you play with the monster, when you're playing with the with with images of the monsters, you end up playing with weird uh alignments of these symbols. Um. I want to read that just a quick passage here. I want to read a quick passage here from Monster Culture by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. It's one of the Essays and Speaking of Monsters, which is a collection of wonderful essays about the monsters and film monsters and fiction monsters

and culture in general and what they mean. I recommend checking in that book out if this is it all your thing, But anyway, Cohen says, the monster is continually linked to forbidden practices in order to normalize and to enforce. The monster also attracts the same creatures who terrify and interdict can invote potent escapist fantasies. The linking of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing

as a temporary aggress from constraint. The simultaneous repulsion and attraction at the core of the monster's composition accounts greatly for its continued cultural popularity. For the fact that the monster seldom can be contained in a simple binary dialectic. We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time we envy its freedom and perhaps it's sublime despair. The habitations of monsters are more than dark regions of uncertain danger.

They are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation. Their monsters served as secondary bodies through which the possibilities of other genders, other sexual practices, and other social customs can be explored. And you know, right before we started the podcast, we were talking about literary criticism when we were talking about Jacques Lacan and Deridav who both took on language as saying, it is a coda for for the rules of how we behave in society or the

ideas that we have, and it's heavily patriarchal. So it's interesting to think about that, um, the way that we are forming the symbols, which is part of language to inform the actual story unfolding before us. Indeed, all right, so we have this idea that we have the really powerful themes, and we have these mirror neurons working in

our brains. We're responding to this chemical cocktail inside of us, and perhaps we inch closer together in a symbolic act of defending ourselves from the terror before us on the screen. Is there any evidence that watching scary movies can increase acts of humping. Well, that's that's the big question, right, And fortunately we do have a pretty key study that sheds some light on this. It doesn't necessarily answer all the questions, but it continues to stand as a as

a pivotal study into this this question. Uh and uh. In this we're talking about the misattribution of arousal, which is the process whereby people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused. And it all comes down to this. Uh, this article heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. And this is the study by psychologist Donald Dutton and author Aaron Um And it all has to do with in what is in a sense kind of a physical manifestation of a horror movie. Hey,

a dangly bridge bridge. Yeah. And it's sometimes known as the Catalano suspension bridge experiment because they had eighty five males between the ages of eighteen and thirty five who would walk across one of two bridges over the couple in a river in Vancouver, Canada, and afterwards they were interviewed. Yeah, it's a little bit more layered than that. Yeah, So

you have the two bridges. One is The is definitely the scary bridge, the horror movie bridge, five ft wide, foot long bridge construction of wooden boards attached to wire cables. Perhaps you've walked on one of these before, but I

can't stand them. They sway and there and then and it's it's hard enough when you're alone, but then inevitably there's gonna be some some jerkwad's gonna come come on the under the bridge right behind you and start jumping around and some type tea yeah, and then and then you're starting to freak out, and you know, crawling across the rest of it, I mean basically the rope bridge in the the second Indiana Jones movie. You know, that's that's the experience. Okay, so some people use that bridge.

Other people though that we're going across the Control bridge, which was a solid wood bridge that was a little further upriver, and this is the constructed a heavy seater. It's not going anywhere. Nobody's jumping on this thing to make it sway around. It's solid. So they both crossed. Both groups crossed the bridges, and at the other end of the bridge, they're interviewed by a female conducting a survey and giving them all these these questions they have

to answers. The guys who had crossed the scary bridge filled out their questionnaires with stronger sexual imagery than the men who had crossed the safe bridge. Now this is where it gets very interesting. Both groups were given a number where they could reach the female assistant in case they required any clarification on the surveys that they took, which would obviously give them a chance to follow up

with her. Right the guys on the suspension bridge where five times is likely to call her the next day. So what's the idea here, I mean, what's going on? Well, the idea is that your body is aroused by the tear. You know, we're talking about this basic physical arousal again. You know, think back to what we're talking about with your your your heart is raising, your breathing faster, and you have all this dopamine rushing through through your system.

You're feeling all of that, and then you're encountering this member of the opposite sex, and and you end up misattributing the cause of that arousal to the woman instead of the scary bridge. Uh and and this is all, of course all uh and of course all this has to do as well, supposedly with the with the chemical dopamine, which is gushing out when you feel that first rush of attraction or terror. Again comes back to the dual nature uh and the and the shared machinery for these

positive and negative emotions. Yeah, because it's funny. Even though there is an uptick in dopamine, it's not like a gushing uptick. There is the feeling that it's gushing and you're gushing, and you feel emboldened by this. So it makes sense that the men were more likely to call because they're looking at this experience and thinking about it. Um. Now, there was a another I wouldn't say it was an

experiment because it was on ABC's Catalyst program. There was an episode called The Science of Dating, How to Catch a Mate, in which the suspension bridge experiment was reversed. They had two groups of women who were tested to see if the same thing would happen. So the reporter on this, Dr. Paul Willis, recruited six women to ride what he called the Terrifying New Superman roller coaster, and then another six to go on Marvin the Martians Rocket,

which Marvin the Martian is like a kitty ride. There's nothing thrilling, thrilling or scary about it. It sounds pretty fun. I would probably prefer that it does have sort of an adorable quality too, but I think I would ride both. Actually, So what happened next is that Willis hits on all the women on camera, So obviously there's some amusing stuff going on there. Now, five of the six women who rode the roller coaster were up for a drink after filming Good for You, dr Willis, while only two of

the Marvin the Martian women accepted his invitation. Moreover, when they filled out a survey and they used um language. The women on the roller coaster that was much more sexually charged and Marvin the Martian. Now that's not to say that there are not some potential holes in this article. It's been brought up by critics over the years that that some of this doesn't hold up as well when you reverse the genders, when you start trying to replicate

the exact results. Uh. In particular, we're looking at an article titled attraction at first Sight What data and Aaron really demonstrated almost forty years ago. A two thousand twelve article by Katazan Suzuka, and she pointed out that some of the funds have done in arab um created in subsequent experiments could not be replicated by both a nineteen seventy nine study by Kendrick, Kale, Danny and Linder and

a ninety three study by Reardon and Tatsishi. That's right, and so that's when when we talk about studies and we talk about experiments, UM, it's always helpful to know the context of it and to know whether or not the data could be duplicated. And so in this sense, it really does kind of cast a little bit of doubt over what was going on here. Also, you have to wonder about the person um who was participating. Was that person a neophiliac, a type T personality who was

open to more experiences? Would that person be more apt to try to pursue some sort of relationship or dating opening, Yeah, I mean you could even get into cultural differences. That first study was its Canadian So does that end up playing a role in subsequent studies They're not, Uh, that don't don't involve Canadians or their cultural differences that play a role. And it also in terms of applying that study to this uh, people on a date at a

movie theater scenario. Um, you have the added complexity of the individuals on the date are going to be stimulated and aroused by what they're watching, but they're also potentially going to be stimulated by each other. I mean, they're they're on a date, so they're they're thinking about this other person. They're looking at that other person. They're conceivably feeling some level of physical arousal just by being in their company. So you're having these two competing uh sets

of stimuli. Well, maybe not competing, but complimentary, which is really interesting when you stop to consider one study that had to do with products kind of hitching a ride on those feelings. Oh yes, this one's great because what do you do when you're at the movie theater. You're seeing this horror movie and you don't have this other person to to jump into the arms of, Right, you cling to whatever you're drinking or you're eating as a

source of comfort. Yeah, and you go for the brand. Right, you don't go for TWI, you don't go for Red Vine, you go for twists. You go for the You go for the good stuff, the strong stuff, the stuff you care about. The brand you can trust for all plastic candies. Yeah, you don't go for it. Was that hydroxy versus oreos. That that one always troubled me. Just the name hydrox sounds like the version of oreos that Walter White cooks up in his lab beneath the chicken plant. Right, never

eat anything that Walter White makes. That's just a rule in life. There's a two thousand and four study in the Journal of Consumer Research that looks at this idea that that when you don't have person to person support when you're experiencing something that's scary, that you will replace that person um with something else, like a actual physical object.

So they had a couple of studies, but in one they had one in which participants were asked to drink the juice or this kind of juice during a movie and they were asked to wait or given a choice to drink at leisure. Now their choices were horror action

or a documentary. And the study results showed that the most increase in emotional attachment to the juice and participants who viewed the horror movie and who were allowed to drink at leisure or asked to wait until the end of the movie, So again we see some sort of emotional connection to that, which I have to say, I don't know if you've ever done this when you watched something that, you know, a movie that was scary or just ramped up your sense of anticipation, um, and you

just kept going for the popcorn over and over again, because, as we've talked about before, food is a source of comfort. Yeah, and then when you're in the popcorn, of course, you're you're you're eating it and it's getting the salty, the sweet, the fat. I mean, it's it's it's in itself kind of a super normal stimuli as well. But but yeah, I've certainly had that experience where you're watching the film

and you just can't stop eating the popcorn. Now, this study was conducted because there's this idea that you could have negative associations with brands and then you would turn away from them. At least this is what a lot of industries like coke and and other manufacturers of snack food thought, and so this experiment was interesting because it kind of turns that paradigm on its head and if you're interested in learning more about it. The studies called

the Impact of Fear on emotional brand attachment. It was published in the June fourteen edition of Journal of Consumer Research. I feel like I can I can definitely relate to that because just Monday evening I watched the nineteen seventy nine horror film Tourist Trap and if your film dunkies. It starred Chuck Conners, you know, the rifleman from the old TV shows, as this kind of like psychic hillbilly mannequin obsessed. It was kind of a it was did

you say mannequin? Oh, yeah, it's it has creepy mannequins in it and psychic abilities and uh and in fear of of rural folk and old versus their whole true detective. No, it's it's not so elegantly crafty. It's it's not a good movie, but but there's but it has some flip scenes that are legitimately creepy, and it has a say where there's a Dr Pepper machine in the background while our lone survivor girl tries to figure out what she's gonna do, and it's just, you know, she's terrified and

she's standing around and there's a Dr Pepper logo. And at the time I was just kind of like, oh, what's that's kind of weird that Dr Pepper machines there. I wonder what they thought about it, if they, if anyone in the corporate level ever knew that their logo showed up in this film. But even even still thinking back on it, uh, the other evening, I started thinking

about Dr Pepper. I started thinking about how it takes and even though I haven't haven't consumed a Dr Pepper in years and years and years, I did kind of want one in that moment. Did you know what goes with it? Really? Well, what's that? I kid you not, My sixteen year old self will tell you that that's a beautiful flavor combination. Okay, well, well I'll have to keep that in mind for next time for sure. Okay.

We talked about these things, and then often we try to find examples in nature, and lo and behold, we did find an example of perhaps the scary movie effect with us trailing birds. Yes, particularly we're talking about uh the splendid fairy wrens, which sounds pretty uh fantastic, but this is an actual thing. Particularly the male splendid fairy wrens um alright, sexually promiscuous, small bird, and they are known to kind of peggyback onto the calls of predatory

birds such as butcher browder birds. So the butcher bird lets out its predatory cry, and in any any potential prey in the area are instantly going to go, you know, And that's that's a bad sign. That's the sound of something that could potentially kill me. That is a scary bird call. What is the male ferrier ndo He packs on his own little uh love cry onto the end of the predator's cry. Yeah, And it's in fact, he does it so quickly that it is sometimes considered a duet.

At least vocally it sounds like that, and this is called vocal hitch hiking. And by the way, I love the fact that this predator bird is called a butcher bird. And I can't help but think you might build a butcher with this glorious mustache. So so that's what I think of flying around out there. Well, if it's perfectly right, there's a butcher. There's a horrible killer in our midst

and it's calling out to us, it's shrieking. And then here is the male of this species, the splendid fairy, splendid fairy wren saying hey ladies, Hey ladie, what's going on? And it is specifically, it's called a type to call that the splendid fairy wren makes, which is specifically a mating call, and that's really important. Um. And they were out in the field. They did tons of painstaking research

on this to figure this out. So essentially what they're doing at the very basis here is trying to get the female's attention, and that is much easier done if it is preceded by this terrifying predator out there. Indeed, it's almost sending that message. Life is horrible, life is full of dangers. You could die, don't when you like to have a little comfort, wouldn't you like to have a chance, maybe even to fulfill your genetic mission on this planet before you wind up in the belly of

a butcher bird. That's right, there's no time like the president to get it on, ladies. I think that's what they're saying. Now. Less you think that these male birds are competing for a Darwin Award out there in nature, Um, it turns out that this singing after a predator call may actually be really safe. Male fairy wrens know where the predators located first of all, and he also knows that the predator isn't actively hunting at that moment, but is instead seeing it's hard out as if it were

in the shower. Oh man, See this makes me think of a perfect pitch for for a horror movie. You have your basic slasher scenario, right, He's a slasher killer, and he you know, he pops up, you know periodically, it's some you know late camp or you know, similar haunts. But then you also have uh, males, male humans that are essentially like our splendid fairy wren who realized, hey, if they have a shot at the ladies, they had best go hang out in regions where the slasher killer

uh happens to to frequent. I don't know, I don't know. I mean that's that's it's an idea here. Yeah, it would be a nice reveal because because again, we love the horror movies where all the men are horrible, So there would be that reveal. We realize the male characters who seem like they're trying to help our female, they're basically just looking to score and they're they've they've they're using the presence of the Flasher Killer to their advantage cats all of you. All right, Um, this is the

single kids that they've found so far in nature. But the researchers um, and this is headed up by Emma Greig and she's a PhD. And she's one of the first authors of the study. They suspect that there are more cases like this out in nature. They just have to find them. And if you're interested, the study is called Danger may Enhance Communication Predator calls alert females to

male displays. Alright, so there you have it. Now, based on everything we've we've told you here, I feel like this would be a good time for us to give you some some recommendations. If you're looking for a manipulative dating movie experience, you want something you want to watch, some horror that would perhaps have some romantic results, though we by no means guarantee results. Yeah, if you want to try to scare the pants literally off of your date, uh,

no matter whether gender. Okay, my picks love actually what the notebook? What on Golden Pond chilling? They're those are not horror movies, Julie, I've seen none of them. No, I take that back, I have seen love actually and it was a horrifying experience. Yeah, so that's your Rationaley, this will this will frighten people into gene fond It is just terrifying. She is She's an excellent actor, great in Barbarrella, but terrifying in on Golden Pond. That's all

I'm saying. Okay, Well, my recommendations um would be High Tension two thousand three horror film from Alexandra Aja. And this one is interesting. It has it has a twist that doesn't quite hold up to repeat viewings, but stylish, really well done, and it plays with gender expectations in

kind of a unique way. And another film that came to mind, and this was based on the fact that in Sereno Whitney's article for Killer Film, she mentioned that that it that at times like a horror movie can be almost like going to a funeral, so after which you're so disturbed that you you kind of have to cling to other, to to another person, like you need real human contact. You almost have to mourn for what has happened. Um which would probably indicate either a really

good or really bad movie watching experience. So um Oculus comes to mind. Two film about a haunted mirror from Mike Flanagan. Uh. Not everybody loved it. I thought it was really well crafted. I thought I did some wonderful stuff with with the way Maria works and uh in taking the past and the president mixing them together. But it ultimately leaves you in such a devastated place because you care about the characters and all of these these horror movie events happen, and and at the end you

kind of needs somebody to hold. Indeed, I do stand by the beast. I gotta say the seventies French one, Um, it's campy. And if anybody goes out and they see it on my recommendation, I apologize in advance for the beast penis that I have to say. So warning may

contain beast penis. Yeah, exactly all right. As always, you can find this and all the other podcast episodes on our homepage Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, and I'll try to include links to related contents on that landing page for this episode, as well as some outgoing links to some of these resources that Julie made mention off.

Also on the website, you can find all of our videos, are blog posts, and links out to our various social media accounts all right, and if you have any thoughts brewing about this, if you think this is just some sort of hetero noi orm who we a relic of the past, or if you think there's a basis to it, let us know. You can do that by emailing us at below the mind at how staff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com