An expert on fear explains why we liked to be scared
Margee Kerr knows what scares you.
Kerr is an expert on fear. She has a Ph.D. in sociology, and she specializes in the study of fear — why we crave it, and what it does to our bodies and minds.
For Kerr's new book, "Scream," she traveled to some of the scariest places she could imagine. She spent the night in an abandoned prison in Pennsylvania; she hung by a cord from the highest tower in the Western Hemisphere, and she went deep into what's known as Japan's "suicide forest."
Kerr joined MPR News' Maddy Mahon to talk about what people find scary and why. Her expertise on the terrifying has put her in high demand — especially this time of year.
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ScareHouse, a Pittsburgh attraction that's regularly ranked as one of the scariest in the country, taps Kerr's expertise ever year. She helps them craft the unique terrors that achieve maximums screams, using data from the lab.
Using survey data, she identifies the trends in what's terrifying.
"In 2008, I could see zombies becoming more popular," she said. But their reign didn't last. "Around 2012, zombie mentions started going down in the survey data. Creepy kids and doll started gaining popularity. A turn to the creepy, rather than gory."
What people find scary, Kerr said, is a reflection of current societal concerns. In the 60s and 70s, it was all about the aliens. Space exploration planted the seed of hostile invaders in many people's minds. Then came nuclear fears: Mutated monsters filled matinees — and nightmares.
"With zombies, it was fear of the societal breakdown and what would happen in a true apocalypse," Kerr said.
These fears, of course, are cultural — a product of American pop culture and politics. Kerr traveled to Japan while working on her book to investigate fear in other cultures.
Japanese haunted houses, Kerr described, rely more on ghost stories. "Most of the monsters are ghosts or spirits or things that have remained behind after a bad death," Kerr said of Japanese haunts. "I didn't see as much of the blood and gore."
But there's one big question: No matter the type of haunted house, why would one willingly go into it? Why do we want to be scared?
"So many of us are living lives that don't offer an opportunity to push our emotions to an intense range. We have very routine, 9-to-5 lives, and we just want to go out and feel more intensely," Kerr said. "That's very much part of our species. ... That's who we are: We want to go out, we want to explore, we want to challenge ourselves. Part of that is being scared."