There was a fantastic article published in October 2019 by G. Neil Martin titled “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Response to Horror Films” in the journal Frontiers of Psychology. I’m going to write multiple posts about this one article because it is robust with information about the psychology behind liking horror movies. The author completed a comprehensive literature review of all the studies he could find to that point that explored the factors that are related to the enjoyment or lack of enjoyment for horror movies.
For today, I’m going to start by talking about one of the more clearly defined factors that was related to the predictability of responses to horror movies: sex. In this study, the sex of the individual was defined as the sex assigned at birth. There were no gender distinctions and it was not clear whether any participants in any of the studies were trans, so we can only assume that the data pertains specifically to individuals whose sex assigned at birth remained the same up to the time of participation in the respective study. Therefore, in this post, I will be referring to males and females as those whose sex remained the same at the time the study was conducted as it was assigned at birth.
The most noticeable and significant difference between males and females that was evident across multiple studies was that more males enjoy horror than females, and males tend to enjoy horror more than females. Remember, this does not mean that females don’t enjoy horror. It means that, across multiple studies, more males reported enjoying horror than females, and males reported enjoying horror to a greater degree than females.
Another finding was that females tend to be more affected by horror movies and experience more physiological symptoms. Females report or register as experiencing more fear, disgust, non-sexual arousal, and anxiety when watching horror movies. For many females, watching horror movies can be an arduous undertaking which may help to explain why fewer females than males like horror movies.
What about those females who do enjoy horror movies? Well, there was a significant preference for scary or fearful horror movies over gory or torture horror movies. In fact, enjoyment of horror movies by females consistently went down as blood and gore become more “extreme,” whereas there was little to no change for males.
Another interesting dynamic that was found between males and females was how horror movies are enjoyed when in the company of a peer of the opposite sex. Sexual preferences and orientations of the participants were not noted. Males tend to enjoy horror movies more in general when they are watching it with a female companion. Males tend to find horror movies more distressing if their female companion is distressed. Females tend to enjoy horror movies more if they are with a male who they find appealing and who is less affected by the horror movie. So, if you’re on a date night and you take your date to a horror movie, their enjoyment of it may tell you how they feel about you!
This article reports much more about the differences between sexes and enjoyment of horror movies than I have included here, but the information above was what I found most interesting and was among the most conclusive findings. Next time, I’ll write about their findings on age!
Thanks for reading,
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