Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling Center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's cris service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911. Go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Again for Brain Matters, the official radio show of the UA counseling center. We are broadcasting from the campus of the University of Alabama. Good evening. My name is Dr. B. J. Gunther, and I'm the host of the show, along with my colleague and producer Catherine Howell. And in case you don't know, this show is about mental and physical health issues that affect college students and in particular, UA students. So you can listen to us each Tuesday night at 06:00 P.m. On 19.7 FM or online at wvuafm ua.edu, or you can download the Mytuner Radio app and type in Wvuafm 19.7 if you want to listen to us that way. Also, if you have any ideas for upcoming shows, please email those to us at brainmattersradio at wvuafm ua.edu. And I'll consider using your show topics. I always like to know what you all are thinking out there. And if we haven't done a show topic, I feel like we've covered everything just about, and then something else comes up that I'm like. We've never done a show about that, and tonight is sort of like that. We've had some interesting shows for Halloween, and I don't think this one will be boring at all. I think this is a very interesting topic and we've had shows in the past just about fear and different things having to do with Ghost and whatnot. I think I've tweaked a few of the shows to make it kind of pertinent on Halloween, but tonight we're talking about the science of fear and folklore. And I can't wait to get into this because you all know me if you've been listening to the show for a little while. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I cannot wait to talk about anything to do with fear. Folklore is different. That's going to be a new one for me tonight. I can't wait to get into this at this very moment. Think about it. People are lining up probably at Disney World somewhere to scare themselves, be it with a thrill ride or a horror movie. But you might wonder what could possibly be fun about being scared? So tonight, Dr. Margie Kerr is going to help us talk about that. She's a sociologist, an author who specializes in the study of fear. She also teaches and conducts research at the University of Pittsburgh, where she examines how and why people engage in scary experiences like haunted attractions, horror movies, and paranormal investigations.
She's also a consultant for haunted attractions, helping them create terrifying experiences for their visitors. She's written a book called Screen Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear where she explores the science and psychology of fear in different contexts. Thanks for being on the show, Margie. That's a mouthful.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: No, thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Is October your busiest month?
[00:03:27] Speaker C: Oh my gosh, yes. It starts around September and then just keeps going through about the second weekend of November.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Do you ever get tired of talking about it?
[00:03:36] Speaker C: I don't, because there's always something new to see in the industry, but also in just how fears might be changing across different places.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Before we get into it, tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself, where you're from, some more of your credentials that I didn't mention, and also why you're interested in this topic.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Sure. So my background did not start with a focus on the study of fear or why people like to be scared. I was very much steeped in the background of social movements and sociology in general, specifically the relationship between health and illness and society and different systems of health care and the history of the medical profession, the history of psychiatry. And so it was a very different path that I started on. And the connector was my dissertation research, which looked at the social movement of health, social movement of parents who organized around the idea that vaccines cause autism. And this was back in 2004. And in my research, what I found as a very prominent factor in organizing and just a motivator to action was the use of fear.
And not always in a very agenda driven way, but just the fact that it's scary. It's scary to think of something harming your child. And so it was in that research where I started to really think about the role of fear in society and how much perceived fear influences our decisions. And I'm thinking about all of these things and how fear is often the layer underneath of things like discrimination and hate and all of that. And so I had a very negative viewpoint on the role of fear. And then I had one of those nights I was in the final revisions of my dissertation, it was September and I was like, I've got to get out of my head. I've got to go out and do something. And my first impulse was to go to a haunted house and standing as I owe this time of year. That's what you do?
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yes, it is.
If you're mean when I tell other people that, they just kind of look at me like, what's wrong with you, lady?
[00:06:04] Speaker C: So it was there that I started thinking about the fact that fear isn't all bad. There are all of these people, including myself, who are dedicating a lot of time and money and just energy to do something that is meant to scare us. And so it was that thought that honestly just changed the whole path of my life because it just really was something I did want to investigate in myself. Because you can't help but ask yourself, why do I like to be scared? What is it about me? But then the broader picture, too. Why do so many people like to be scared? And is it just certain things that people like to be scared with or just really wanted to start investigating the entire arena of fear and how complex it is?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: It's very complex.
When I was researching to do this show, I think I invited you last year to come on the show and you were already booked. I waited too late. I started earlier this year because I knew I had done a little bit of research, and I think the first thing I saw that you had your name attached to it was a Ted Talk.
[00:07:24] Speaker C: Oh, yes.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: You had written the lesson.
It's an animated little five minute Ted Talk for those of you listening. It's so interesting and fascinating and it basically just gives the gist of just what you said. And it was just very clear in it about why people the science of it really like the brain chemistry. And I kind of want to get into that a little more, but I want to go back to the introduction because I did not realize that you consulted with some haunted attractions about this kind of stuff. Tell me more about that. I don't even have that on my question list.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, it's so much fun. It's really taking the science of fear and applying it to creative design and world building, and it was just so much fun. So basically a lot of my consulting revolved around identifying good ways to both activate the startle response and tell the designers about things like Saturation. You can't just keep bombarding somebody with flashing lights. They're going to eventually just kind of check out or have a right yeah.
And story building and basically just finding new and novel ways. What I have seen a lot is the tendency to get into for not all designers, but some to get into a mindset of, oh, if I need to make it scarier, I need to make it more violent, I need to make it more bloody or gruesome. And that's not really the case. A lot of times. It's about finding novel ways, and novel just something that is different, something that is going to surprise us. Because maybe your demographic lives in the city and you can bring in a whole bunch of things from rural lands. The smell of hay, the smell of sawdust. Things that will activate all of our different senses in ways that we're not anticipating.
Most of the consulting work is trying to find ways to engage the systems to mess with balance, mess with attention, and use what we know from a lot of different research to build really great experiences.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of like anticipatory fear, if that makes sense. I just made that up. But I read in one of the articles that I was researching a little bit today in preparation for the show. Alfred Hitchcock was very good at what you're describing. He was very good. Know, there's some horror movies that just are awful. They're just very violent. They're very bloody and whatever. If you like that, you like that. But he was skilled in suspense, which is different, and it's much more of a lead up and that the article was talking about. It's fascinating to read that and put that together with some of his movies. I mean, he took a novel, safe idea of taking a shower and made it eerie.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: Exactly.
It's all about the anticipation, because the moment of the big reveal, the moment of the big catastrophic event, the fear is known. And as soon as the fear is known, then there's a sense of certainty. I don't want to say relaxation or anything like that, or relief, but now it is known. And one of the biggest things about fear is it's all about the unknown in every regard. If you are unable to anticipate what's going to happen next, then we can't prepare for it and we don't know what to do. So that anticipation is so key. And that's where the fun is, too, in the right environment.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: I think so, too.
I got to ask you this. This is a sidebar, but what is the best I'm going to say the best haunted house that you've ever been to. Not the scariest, necessarily, because and then we're going to take a break. I want to know this from you, like the expert on fear.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's the one I went to in Japan, and it was the first one that involved some gaming in it.
And I went through by myself, and there was only one actor. So you go through by yourself with one actor who is chasing you. So you heal this very personalized experience. You have a task. You're trying to save a child. And the way that they did it just I think the focus of the task keeps you in a suspended state of, I'm in this world, I need to do something. And so then the scares just hit really powerfully. And in the end, the ghost ran towards me, which is not something you see a lot of in us haunted houses. Because the goal is to keep the people moving through. So you don't want to do anything to have them stop.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: I cannot imagine, like, stopping and just like you say, being be. That would really be.
And I'm about to take a break. But in the past several years, I had Dr. Alan Brown on the show. He's a professor here at a university near here, the University of west Alabama, but he's written several books about haunted places and ghosts. And I asked him his most haunted experience, and he listed waverly Sanatorium in Lexington. No, Louisville. Louisville, Kentucky waverly. And I've been there. And actually, I waited, I'm embarrassed to say this, 3 hours to get in for people like us, but when you tell other people, they're like, is it really that good? Yes, it was really that good. It was worth it to me, the setting was amazing and the history there, it was amazing. It was fun. So on that note, let's take a break. Let's take our first break. And when we come back, I want to ask you with regards to fear, some people enjoy being scared. That's what we're talking about. But why is it especially on Halloween? So hold that thought. We'll be right back. You're listening to Brain Matters on 90.7 the capstone.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Tuscaloosa this show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's cris service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: You're back listening to Brain Matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm Dr. B. J. Gunther, and we're talking tonight with Dr. Margie Kerr, and we're talking about the science of fear and folklore. Dr. Kerr has so much experience in this area, but you didn't start out with she told us how she started this just fell in your lap. And it really has become like your niche, I think, and I think you enjoy it. It sounds like before the break, the folklore aspect. Talk a little bit about that, define what folklore is and how it's related to the science of fear. What does that mean?
[00:15:29] Speaker C: Well, I'm not a huge expert in the history of folklore. I know that that's its whole discipline unto itself. But I do know how it relates to Halloween and to the enjoyment of fear. And it's in that world building and in that creation of something that you can invest yourself in. And the stories, folklore that really resonates with people is typically specific to their general location or there's some tie in factor that this folklore is meaningful to you because it's where you live or it's a part of your family's history or there's a tie into it. So now you have a personal investment in this story, and the stories are engaging, whether it's something magical that happens or paranormal or more often, scary, you have the intensity of the build up and then the climax and what happens after. And in a lot of the folklore stories, what happens after is that people are coming together. And so you can experience this movement from uncertainty and not knowing what's happening, something tragic happens and then everybody is coming back together and you feel a sense of unity and can celebrate that togetherness and feeling like you're part of something bigger. And that's really just the feeling that you are part of something bigger.
Underlies so much about well being in general because it's attached to our fear.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Of our think that I think the video and the lesson that you wrote that's on Ted Talk, that's one of the things it mentions and I actually wrote that question down. Can fear bring people together?
[00:17:23] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. And in positive, well, I should say they bring people together both by sharing positive or what I call fun scary experiences, but also the not fun scary experiences. There is that bonding that happens and part of that bonding is connected to what happens in our bodies. When we're with a lot of people and we're experiencing intense emotion, we have a shared focus on something and all of the different changes that are happening in our body are connected, sync up. There have been many studies looking at how even things like heart rate will sync up when people are in a shared activity, doing something consistent, whether it be chanting or drumming or any kind of group, intense experience of emotion can work to solidify bonds that are already there. There has been some interesting research on how the opposite can be true if there's a sense of distrust. So just as they can bring together people who are already close or neutral, it may work to separate if there's not that underlying it's. Very interesting how it that is very interesting.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Before the break, I ask you to try and think about fear and how some people enjoy being scared. That's what we're talking about. But why is it especially at Halloween, do you have to know the history of Halloween? Are we going down a rabbit hole right now?
[00:19:02] Speaker C: Right. Well, that is where the folklore comes into play because so much of the fun of Halloween is built on the fact that Halloween is a whole experience full of stories, full of history.
And it's changing too over time. If you look at the origins and the pagan worship to what we have now, the very commercialized Halloween, you see that even though it's changed, there's still a group of activities and ritual that happens around Halloween in a very fun, often fun kind of way that brings people together. So even if it's just decorating your house now, that becomes a part of a ritual and a part of a friend and family building activity. Of course, the trigger treating can also be understood as a ritual with chocolate and then bringing people together, feeling a sense of fear and then just enjoying the fact that you're not actually in danger at Halloween, you can generate this fear and then really celebrate the fact that you're not in fear. It's kind of like you need the dark to have the light.
In the right context, we can generate that fear and then celebrate the fact that we're okay, we're with friends.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Isn't it just OD, though, that we give candy to people who come to our house who are dressed up? I mean, if you really just think of the practicality of it, it's just OD. But it's fun. It can be so much fun.
Do you run into skeptics, like, when you tell people what your research is on and I want to talk about your book, too, so don't let me forget to ask you about that, but do you run into people who are skeptical and look at you like, what is wrong with why do you study this? What's the big deal? Aren't you afraid to study? Know that kind of attitude?
[00:21:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I think know my colleague Greg Siegel and I have applied for a grant in the past, and we still want to in the future. And the biggest challenge is trying to help people understand why it's important to understand why people want to voluntarily engage with negative material. Because we believe that there's a lot to learn that can be translated to helping people who don't want to be scared, people with a lot of anxiety. If we can better understand what is happening when people want that, then maybe we can use that to help people who don't but would like to challenge their fear or reduce their anxiety, things like that.
It's not necessarily skepticism, but more of why does this matter? Why is this important? Why should we give you money for this?
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Do you find that there is this may be a weird question, but it made me think what you just answered. Do you find that there is a psychopathology with people who want to be scared?
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Not that we have seen, no. In fact, what we find is that.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Pretty much everybody thank goodness I was holding my breath.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: Yes, well, it was one of the driving factors of why I got into this research was to try to figure out is there something wrong with me? And I'm happy to say, based on research, that no.
People like engaging with material that is meant to generate some sense of fear and anxiety, whether it's in the form of a bloody gruesome horror movie or a fun action adventure movie or putting on some skis and flying down a hill. You find all these different instances where people want to engage that physiological response in the context of challenging themselves, but without a high degree of risk. And that risk varies that people take.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Let's talk about the title of the show is The Science of Fear. That's the title of The Ted Talk also, I believe, and I think you've written probably many articles about this, but what literally is the science? The brain chemistry, what does it do?
[00:23:26] Speaker C: Right? So that is the most challenging thing, but also where there's so much to explore. Because when we talk about the science of fear, we're talking about the science from a psychological perspective. How can we study people's need for sensation or sensation seeking behavior? How is that related to the experience of fear and the seeking of thrill? We can look at the physical and mechanisms of what's happening in the body when we're scared and we can look at the social then too. So we can study the science of fear from all of the different levels. And it really depends on the question that you want to ask because there's going to be a lot of different answers. If you try to define fear, it's really challenging because you can take a whole host of physical responses heart rate, sweating, brain activity, all of these things that you see that are happening when someone is in a self described state of fear. But then you look at someone who's in a state of surprise and it will be similar or a state of pain and it will be similar. So trying to tease out a person with this heart rate or this certain measure of this neurochemical, that fear can't really do that. So we talk about it in studying the different domains of fear that have been organized under the NIH.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: What's the neurotransmitters that are related to fear?
[00:25:05] Speaker C: Well, there's a lot and the ones that get talked about most often are dopamine.
But what is happening with all of the study of the brain and the neurochemicals is that the more we learn, the more we see. We don't know because it's not as straightforward as saying a person who is thrill seeking, they must really be lacking in dopamine and they want to do something to increase that. It's not as straightforward as that at all. And it's the interaction of the different neurochemicals and the context that we're in. All of it is important and none can be pulled out individually to say, okay, this is the thing that directly leads to this behavior.
It's just a very complex picture.
But when we do talk about kind of the physical responses that are happening, what we see at haunted houses and amusement parks is that increase in sympathetic nervous system activity and then the adrenaline and all of the things that are kind of putting us into that Go state where it's similar to climbing a mountain, running.
Our body is just on Go. And in the right context, that can be great when you're with friends, when you want to be there, when you have an expectation of having fun, when you feel safe. That can be experienced as awesome in a different condition. Walking down the street alone at night, feeling unsafe, feeling like good to run for your life, not fun.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: That's the scary part of fear. That's the real scary part is it true that when our bodies are primed for danger, like we're talking about, that we achieve some kind of weird sort of high.
[00:26:58] Speaker C: Well, what we've found and my colleague Greg Seagley is a cognitive neuroscientist, and so part of our research did involve measuring brainwave activity before and after people went through a haunted attraction. And what we found that would be fun. Excuse me.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: That would be so much fun to be a part of that research. Yeah, I volunteer.
[00:27:22] Speaker C: What we found, though, is that afterwards there was a decrease in reactivity to the different stimuli we exposed them to. So we had them do a series of tasks before and after and measured their brainwave activity, and we found that there was just generally less reactivity to it. So when we exposed them to loud sounds or asked them to think about negative things and ruminate, there didn't appear to be the indicator that they were getting very cognitively kind of hung up, and that lower reactivity was associated with higher reports, self reports of mood. And so what it might be happening is that we do have these intense physical experiences that make ground us in the moment in our bodies, and so we're just not caught up in our head. And that can feel good again in the right context when we're kind of the inner dialogue has been turned down and we're just here in the moment, similar to the runners high or even really intense states of meditation, just the groundedness in the present moment.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: And too, I'm thinking about, like, riding a roller coaster or something. It's weird because it's like you have the anticipatory fear, like I was talking about a minute ago. But then sometimes when you get on the ride, it's going so fast that it doesn't kind of catch up with you. Sometimes it doesn't happen until after.
[00:28:52] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's when we studied the people's brain reactivity. So it was after it was over. And so it would be really interesting to study activity while someone's on a roller coaster. I know it's really challenging because there'll be so much noise.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: So much noise. Let's take our second break, and when we come back, I want to ask you if certain personalities gravitate toward this kind of stuff, toward haunted houses and roller coasters and thrill seeking. Okay, so, yeah. You're listening to Brain Matters on 90.7. We'll be right back.
[00:29:42] Speaker C: WVUA FM Tuscaloosa this show is not.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: A substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling Center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's cris service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to Brain Matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm BJ Gunther. We're talking tonight about the science of fear and folklore and my guest is Dr. Margie Kerr. We're going to talk about your book in just a minute, but let me give out the email in case you have questions for tonight. And also, if you have any ideas for upcoming shows, email those to me at brainmattersradio at wvuafm ua.edu and I'll consider using your show topics. Margie, when we were going to the break, I asked you if there's certain who or biological traits even who lean more towards being scared or there are certain catalysts or themes. I mean, this is interesting because I bet I fall into that category.
[00:31:09] Speaker C: Well, based on there have been a lot of studies done on sensation seeking and looking at who has higher rates of sensation seeking and connecting that to some of the physiology. But ultimately, as far as the most recent literature I've read, it's still not a very clear picture where you can say a person who has this is going to love fear because so much is based on our previous experience and that's going to be unique.
Just anecdotally I've talked to a lot of people who have served who really either love quantitative houses or hate them. For some who have been in war zones, the thrill and the excitement is too triggering in a negative way. For others, they enjoy it. And so we can't even say that someone with a traumatic history is not going to like being afraid. In fact, it may even be that the case that people who have had trauma want to seek out fun, scary experiences because it's an opportunity to reclaim all of that intensity that is in your body, that feeling of intensity and feel a sense of control over fear.
It's really interesting. Now, we haven't published on this yet, so I'll preface with that. But we did ask people a couple of different scales in 2015 and then most recently in 2022. One of them is called the Distress Tolerance Scale, which is a measure of people's tolerance of stress.
Now, again, this isn't published yet, so we still need to cross our T's and dot our I's, but we didn't see any strong relationships with that measurement and outcome measures of mood and how they were feeling. So to us that said that it generally is that these experiences can be kind of for everybody who shows up is going to enjoy it. We did find that people who scored more highly on what's called the Need Inventory of sensation seeking, that was related to higher mood, but we didn't see any relationship between people's need for affect, which is just a general measure of are you a person who kind of likes the drama? It's a really nice scale because it's not specific to sensation, it's just that's neat.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Well, for people who have been diagnosed with ADHD. Or attention deficit disorders. Sometimes you read about the research that they are thrill seekers sometimes, or just overstimulated or seek that. And I wonder if there's any connection with the science of fear and those type of diagnoses.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: I think it's an excellent question. I wish that I had answers to it. But in fact, my colleague is also interested in that.
And again, this is not based on research. This is just pondering and thinking about whether it might be the case that in a place like a haunted attraction, we don't have to choose what to focus on with Add, which I have.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Right?
[00:34:48] Speaker C: Yeah. And so I don't have to decide what I pay attention to. I have an environment that is telling me, look over here, look over here, look over here. And it's almost like a freedom of being carried from one thing to another. And it just doesn't feel like there's any effort in it. That's just my experience. But there is interest in looking at the relationship between attention and these activities.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: And these activities. I was reading an article from Science World and the title of the article is The Science of Fear. I guess everybody's using that title, but it was from 2017 and it talks about there's benefits of fear also. We can get into that in just a minute. But this is interesting. I had never heard of this and I wanted to find out if you heard of this and let me just read you the excerpt. Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be fearless? And this, says an American woman, and they didn't give her name, is one of the few people in the world who lives without fear. She has a rare genetic condition called Erbok Weiss. I don't know how to pronounce that. Urbach Weiss disease, which causes part of her brain to harden and waste away, including the parts that generate fear, which can be very dangerous. It talks about it in the article about if people don't have any fear, it just can be very dangerous. Have you ever heard of this or have you ever interviewed anybody with this?
[00:36:16] Speaker C: I have not interviewed anyone, but I am familiar with SM, I think is how she's described. They don't give her a real name and her experiences and how it points to the fact that our threat response, our automatic defense response, is responsible for our survival. That we absolutely need it. We need to have a functioning threat response so that we can run away, we can fight, we can freeze, we can do something in the face of threat and even acknowledge, be able to identify threat when it's happening. And without that, then our species, every species would just die.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Because back in the Stone Ages yeah. Okay, let's talk about your book. I'm dying to talk about screen chilling adventures in the Science of fear. When was that book published?
[00:37:16] Speaker C: 2015. Wow. It used to feel like just yesterday. So it's been a bit yeah.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: Is it mostly about what we're talking about now? What are the chapters like? Is it mostly talking about your research?
[00:37:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it's divided up into chapters that focus on different aspects of fear. So the first handful of chapters are really focused on what's happening in our body and how it's related to our thinking.
And I believe the first chapter, I talk about my experience on the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, which is a tower that's 117 stories high, and you can hook yourself up to a harness and actually walk around the outside.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds terrifying to me. I like the haunted houses, but that kind of stuff. No.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: Yeah. And what was interesting to me is I did that experience as part of my research for the book, and I wasn't anticipating any fear at all because I'm not afraid of heights. And I went skydiving. And I loved it. I thought it was the most just amazing. It felt like flying. And so I didn't actually think I would be afraid because I'm like, I'm just going to walk around on this thing. I'm tied by a harness. This will be fine, and it'll be an experience.
But something took over as soon as I walked outside, and I was terrified. I mean, it didn't matter what I had rationalized, what I knew or thought I knew about myself. Confronted with that drop, it did something to me that was entirely surprising. So I talk about that, and then in other chapters, we get more into the psychology of it. And what is the difference between a space where you can enjoy fear versus not enjoy fear? So specifically the role of control, the role of choice, and how powerful that is in not only the experience as it is happening, but in how you are remembering it, how you are kind of integrating it into your rolodex of fearful experiences.
And then other chapters talk about the social aspects of it and go into how different cultures have their own scary monsters and their own big bads, and how that also is tied into what's happening in any given society. One of my favorite things to talk and think about is the monsters metaphor.
What is this monster saying about what we're afraid of right now?
Pandemic oh, let's do a horror movie about outbreak.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Right. Oh, my gosh.
[00:40:04] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: When you said that about different cultures, have you ever seen the film Babadook? The Babadook?
[00:40:13] Speaker C: Oh, yes.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Oh, that was that was such a good film. And that kind of to me, that was a little bit like what we were talking about with Alfred Hitchcock, the suspense of it. You didn't really see anything. I don't want to give it away in case anybody wants to watch it. And I can't remember, was that an American movie or was that a foreign international movie? I can't remember. I want to say it was international. It's. Maybe British even.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: I don't remember.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: It was very but I can see.
[00:40:42] Speaker C: The visualizations in my head because it was so.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: It'S listed as a horror movie, but it's not like Blood and Gory or anything.
[00:40:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: In the Ted Talk that I keep mentioning, I keep referring back even though it was just five minutes, it was really interesting to me. It talks about how fear can also bring a sense of accomplishment and self esteem. And how do you explain that to somebody who is scared to go to a haunted house, for instance?
[00:41:18] Speaker C: Well, I relate it to why people like to run marathons or go rock climbing or take on any of these physical challenges.
And a big part of it is because, you know, you're pushing yourself. You're pushing yourself to do something that is going to make your body react in a certain way, that will stress your body in different ways. Even if it's just psychological watching a horror movie or something, it pushes you to tolerate and so you're tolerating some level of discomfort, which may be experienced as comfort, but the body is in a stressed mode.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: And then you make it through it, and there's real celebration in that. There's a real sense of like, oh, my God, I tolerated that. I was able to do that. And so it can be a way of reassuring to yourself that you can do it, that you are a strong person, that you are competent and capable and strong, and that you're able to push yourself. And it's okay if it's in a completely absurd way like going to a haunted house or watching Skydiving. Yeah, it's still a sense of I tolerated this, and I can feel then that relaxation in my body as the threat is over and I'm still here, and that means I must have done something.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Catherine's, I'm outnumbered. For what? Catherine's been skydiving too. And Catherine, were you terrified? Did you ever get scared? I mean, can you relate to what Dr. Kerr's talking about? Not to put.
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. And I think there was a point where I was trying to talk myself out of the fear, like, when we were about to jump out of the plane, but it was like my body's reaction was like, Why? Why would you do like, this is not okay. And then I had to be like, yeah, but it's something I want to do.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: Did it give you more self confidence? Did it help with that feeling of self accomplishment like we're talking about when you landed safely?
[00:43:24] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: That's cool.
Hey, let's take our final break. Okay? And when we come back, let's talk about any resources, any cool podcasts. You have ideas for that. Also, I want to talk about the trend of movie themes or scenarios getting scarier and what you think about that. So hold that thought. We'll be right back. We're going to our last break. You've been listening to 90.7 the capstone brain matters. We'll be right back.
[00:44:04] Speaker C: WVUA FM tuscaloosa.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling Center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's Cris service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to Brain Matters. I'm Dr. B. J gunther. It's 19.7, and we're talking tonight with Dr. Margie Kerr, and we're talking about the science of fear and folklore. And we left off really kind of talking about how doing some things that you're afraid of can help with self esteem as long as it's not putting you in danger or I think there's a difference between what we're talking about and risk taking, don't you?
Like, what does that mean, the risk taking, what we're talking about?
[00:45:21] Speaker C: I think that it's all kind of a form of risk taking, but across a very wide spectrum. So if you think about that moment of hesitation that you come up against at any point in time, it could be something like just leaving the house.
It's that point of, I feel uncomfortable right now. I don't really want to do something, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's a decision to take a risk. And just as a side note, that's what has been shown to be so important for early childhood play is to allow children the opportunity to take, in their own mind, calculated risks, to say, oh, I think I can make this jump, but maybe not. And that they need to make the jump so that they learn, like, okay, I was wrong.
I can do this. Yeah. So it's that range of risk taking. And the key, though, is that it's your decision to do it.
Once our autonomy is taken away, then it all changes. It becomes trauma or can become trauma.
It's really in those chosen moments where we're really choosing to push ourself, that we can see that sense of accomplishment. Of course, it can happen in truly life threatening situations as well.
Absolutely. Somebody who survives and makes it through any difficult experience is going to have their own emotional feelings afterwards, which can include feeling competent and sufficient. But with these chosen activities, it's more of a guarantee that I'm going to do this. I'm not going to die. I'm going to be pretty okay and still get a little boost in self dopamine.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: What about we talked before the break. I was going to ask you about the scary movies and the themes, horror movie themes, scenarios. I know they've changed over time, but it seems like there's a trend of them to be like the scariest or scarier. What do you think about that?
[00:47:34] Speaker C: I think that there's so many things that have changed in movie making in the past 20, even really in the past ten years. And for most of the history of movies, we were pretty limited in what was actually available to us. We either had to go to a movie theater and then we had eventually, like Blockbuster Video stores. But our choice was very narrow.
It was not like today where you have all of the networks and all the big studios need content, need a lot of content, need a lot of diverse content. And so we have a greater choice. And in that we'll naturally see, oh my gosh, there's some really super ridiculously, scary, just even barbaric stuff out there now.
The Body horror, for example, I can't manage.
It's not scary to me. It's just gross.
So you see, with the increase in choice, there's now a lot of different pathways. Like how many additions of Saul have there been? And they just get more and more gruesome. They're just gruesome because in that vein, on that path, that's what they have to do.
This is a world dedicated to thinking of how many different ways we can torture someone.
And so there are those kind of spaces where it becomes a one upmanship and how, look what I can do, look what I can get on TV or how bad it can be. And there's a real point, a tipping point, just like there is with roller coasters that beyond which it's not fun anymore. And for example, we have roller coasters and thrill rides that can take you beyond 5G, that can go up to six G in gravity, that feeling of gravity pushing against you. But we know that really, at that point, most humans are going to have a very negative reaction. Yeah, they'll pass out, they'll throw up. Their body is saying no. And similar with our tolerance for just how much awfulness we want to expose ourselves to before we say, you know what? I did not enjoy that. And I think that we're finding that point because now those options are available.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: To us to actually see there's a limit. There is a limit.
[00:50:00] Speaker C: There is a limit.
[00:50:02] Speaker B: Are you writing any new books on fear?
[00:50:05] Speaker C: I'm not writing any new books. We're trying to get some more research published. That is the focus right now, trying to get more research out there and published into the world and think of ways to further study how people are experiencing fear in these different environments.
I think it is really interesting to compare the things like paranormal investigations and haunted houses because they kind of get wrapped up in the Halloween world.
But the emotional experiences of a paranormal investigation are very different than a haunted house. The ones that I've been on, there's not the intensity of boom boom, boom. Startle. There is the deep kind of reflection of a space in a time and consideration of the ghosts that are there. And I am a skeptic, but these haunted spaces are historical places with deep histories, often atrocities.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Macabre yes, atrocities. What's a recent one? Leave us with this little nugget. What's a recent one you've been on that really scared you?
[00:51:16] Speaker C: Oh, gosh. I haven't been on a paranormal investigation for a while, and I know you get skeptics.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: I know people are skeptical when you say stuff like this to them, and.
[00:51:29] Speaker C: I'm a skeptic, too. I'm always open to new ways to try and see if there are ghosts around, but I have yet to see evidence of a ghost. But I do believe that something unique happens in these spaces. I think it was the Queen Mary was the last one. And what happens in that space? Yeah, this was a couple of years ago. I don't even know if you can get on the Queen Mary anymore.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Did you go on the Queen Mary for this purpose?
[00:51:58] Speaker C: Well, it was a little bit for that purpose and to stay there. And it was during their haunted attraction season, too, so it was when the hotel was still functioning. So I stayed there and then did the whole exploration. And when you really put yourself in that environment, you kind of suspend your disbelief. You're there. You can feel the presence of the people who filled the rooms, and especially when you start hearing the stories and you become invested in these people who were really there and really walked these decks. And the history of the Queen Mary is so you don't need real ghosts to have a good paranormal experience because you do get into kind of an altered state of consciousness even without real ghosts.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: Without real ghosts. Dr. Brown, who I referenced a little bit ago from the University of West Alabama, when I asked him about some of his scariest locations, he did mention I believe it's the was the I guess they shot the film The Shining there as the overlook in Estes Park, Colorado. And he did mention go ahead.
[00:53:16] Speaker C: Oh, I was going to say it's where Stephen King wrote The Shining.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:53:21] Speaker C: And I actually did a paranormal investigation there and studied people did a survey while I was there. We never published.
[00:53:27] Speaker B: What do you think?
[00:53:29] Speaker C: Well, it was very interesting. You go to each of these different rooms, you hear a story of what happened. There usually a death or something, and then you sit in the quiet.
And what I found from respondents is that there was this really cool thing that came out of it that people were sad and happy. So it was a case of they were happy to feel sad, and it was this meditation on these tragic stories. But they were with their friends, and they were doing something they wanted to do, and they were caught up in the mystery and history of it all. And so it generates a sadness but also a gladness. Kind of like a lot of dramas, a lot of tragic love stories.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: It's probably on some people's bucket list.
[00:54:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
It's beautiful. Yeah.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for being on the show. It's gone by so fast.
[00:54:25] Speaker C: It has.
[00:54:26] Speaker B: I feel privileged that you've been on the show because I know you've got a busy October plan.
[00:54:31] Speaker C: I'm happy to.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: Yeah, this is great. Any suggestions for any podcast?
[00:54:37] Speaker C: Well, I am a big true crime fan, so I do morbid Podcast is the top of my list there.
That's the one that I can think of now. I did just see the movie, You're Not Safe Here, which is completely there's barely any dialogue. Really? No dialogue at all. It's about aliens that doesn't give anything away, but it's really good. Another one of those surprising, wow. Nobody has said anything for this entire time, but I am on the edge of my seat. Whoa. I do recommend that.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I just went to see a haunting in Venice on Friday night, and it's an Agatha Christie.
Christie? It was fantastic. And there was a twist. Like, it was just a real suspenseful. It was just fantastic in the settings, in it was it was wonderful. It was everything I wanted it to be.
[00:55:32] Speaker C: So that was oh, cool. Yeah.
[00:55:34] Speaker B: Thanks again for being on the show. I'm going to make a couple of announcements. Oh, sure. And have a happy Halloween.
[00:55:41] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:55:44] Speaker B: Don't forget if you're listening, don't forget our shows are recorded and podcasted on the Apple Podcast, audioboom.com and Voices ua.edu. Just type in Brain Matters and you'll find some of our past shows. There's also a link to Voices ua.edu on our Counseling Center's website, and it's counseling. ua.edu. I'd like to thank some of the people who have made our show possible. Dr. Greg Vanderwal. He's the executive director of the counseling center. Here my producer, Catherine Howell and my colleagues at the counseling center, the Wbua staff, and of course, my guest tonight, Dr. Margie Kerr. Don't forget, we're on next week again, and our show next week will be an interesting show and one that I have students who have told me they've labeled themselves as People Pleasers. So the show is actually going to be called people Pleasing when making other people happy is Making you miserable. So tune in next week. And again, thanks for listening tonight. Happy Halloween and good night.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: This show is not intended as a substitute for professional counseling. Further, the views, opinions and conclusions expressed by the show hosts or their guests are their own and not necessarily those of the University of Alabama, its officers or trustees. Any views, opinions or conclusions shared on the show create a relationship between the host or any guest and any listener, and such a relationship should never be inferred. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, please contact the UA Counseling Center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective County's Cris service hotline or their local mental health agency or.
