Horror Fans Were Ready for the Pandemic

One group of movie lovers handled the COVID lockdowns better than anyone else. Can you guess who they were? When COVID hit in early 2020, most people were blindsided. The lockdowns, the uncertainty, the dread. For many, it was the most psychologically destabilizing event of their lives. Researcher Colton Scrivener surveyed hundreds of people during the first months of the pandemic, and he found that people who regularly watched horror movies reported less psychological distress. They felt more prepared, more resilient, less overwhelmed by uncertainty. Why? He believes that horror movies serve as a kind of rehearsal. When you watch a movie about a global pandemic or visit a haunted house attraction, your brain is running a simulation. It's practicing what it feels like to be scared, to face a threat, to sit with chaos. And when a real crisis arrives, you've already been there— not literally, but emotionally. People who spend years voluntarily scaring themselves build a psychological toolkit for exactly this kind of moment. In other words, so many of the things that scare us on screen could be training for the things we might experience in real life. For more insights about the science of the mind, tune into Hidden Brain on Apple, Spotify, or hiddenbrain.org.