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Welcome.

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My name is David Petrozowski.

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And I am David Pinsoff.

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And David, what is this?

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Uh as far as I'm aware, it's Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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And what is the tagline again?

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The tagline is two guys nerding out about evolutionary psychology.

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Oh no, that was the alternative.

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You said the subtext there.

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You should have said the actual.

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You mixed them up.

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Oh, okay.

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So uh it's uh evolutionary psychology the podcast, uh actual evolutionary psychology

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by actual evolutionary psychologist.

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Right.

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And you know, it really is two two guys nerding out about evolutionary psychology, but we

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don't say that because it's not a very appealing title.

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Typically with a guest.

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Yeah, usually we have a guest.

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And we have a day we have a guest.

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We have a great guest, a scary episode, uh, but we'll tell you about that in a second.

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David, uh you know, I love this time of year because um I don't know, I

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always fall was always my favorite time of year.

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Um even in Southern California, I still like the idea that like Halloween's coming around

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the corner.

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Yeah, I think Halloween is my favorite holiday because it combines spooky things with

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candy, which are two of my favorite things.

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I think I mentioned I think I made that exact same joke in the episode, so you'll get to

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hear this joke twice.

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Lucky you.

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You know, I w I once had a teacher who I thought was a really good teacher, and then it was

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in college, and then she literally forgot that she had done the class beforehand, uh

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beforehand.

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And so she just started doing it again.

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And it was literally word for word, and it freaked me out.

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It was like it was like robotic.

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I mean, she was quite old.

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I mean she was lovely, but I think she had just sort of, yeah, but it was interesting.

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But anyway, it was uh yeah.

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Well well that response being freaked out is uh uh what what this episode is about.

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So who do we have uh in this episode?

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We have uh Colton Scrivener and he studies morbid curiosity and horror movies and

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horror genre and fiction.

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He does basically the evolutionary psychology of horror and you know, things all around

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that.

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Yes.

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And today is the day that his book, Morbidly Curious, is coming

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out.

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So you'll get to hear all about his research and decide whether you want to buy his book,

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which spoiler alert, you absolutely should because it's a great book.

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Yeah.

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And David, it sounds like you read it already.

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Yeah?

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I did.

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I got an advanced copy and I blurbed it.

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So if you so another bonus is is if you if you buy the book, you'll get to see my awesome

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blurb.

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Look at this jet setter getting true advanced copies of books and blurbing them.

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All right.

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Uh without further ado, it's a really fun uh episode.

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And if you're if you're interested in uh scary things or if you're anxious, um, I would I

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would say this is a great episode to listen to.

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Yeah, no, we get a lot into into the mechanics of anxiety and how horror can potentially uh

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be therapeutic for anxious people.

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So it's we we cover a lot of ground.

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It's a really uh awesome conversation.

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I had a blast.

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Uh and I'm sure you'll have a blast listening.

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One one quick thing to say.

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We do talk about how it's probably a good idea to like let people who uh are anxious or who

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want to consume uh scary things consume them.

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But one thing we didn't say that I think is worth saying is that does not mean you should

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force people into doing that, because that's a very different thing.

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You should let people uh satisfy their own appetites, which is a very different thing than

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forcing people who don't want to consume something scary.

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I just want to uh note that before, because we don't really mention that in the episode.

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Yes.

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Good caveat.

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Well, without further ado, let us begin the spookiness.

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Oh, that was skilled.

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Wow, David, that's a really good go.

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Is that a good good sound?

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So uh uh so David, happy Halloween.

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Uh happy Halloween uh to you as well and to you, Colton Scrivener, uh who is with us here

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to talk about all things uh spooky and horrifying.

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Yeah, why we celebrate Halloween anyway?

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Yeah, I I love Halloween.

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I don't know uh d how do you feel about Halloween, David?

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I love it's actually probably my favorite holiday.

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I mean, it's candy, it's spooky, like what it's the two of my favorite things.

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Yeah.

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Colton, how how uh we'll we'll say hello to you in a second, but we want to get right into

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how do you feel about Halloween?

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Like, did you have uh did you enjoy Halloween as a kid?

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Sure.

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I think most kids probably enjoy Halloween.

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Maybe for different reasons, I don't know.

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But uh, most kids at least enjoy the the candy aspect of it.

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And and you know, the play pretend aspect.

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I think that uh every kid probably enjoys that.

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Yeah.

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Were you uh did you have a thing where you like made your own costumes?

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Were you super into costumes, or was it like a last minute thing?

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I am not crafty enough to make my own costume and and make it any kind of fun for anyone.

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So uh, but I am in love love the costume thing, still do it as an adult for uh certain

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events here in town, but um yeah, definitely don't make my own.

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Cool.

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Were were were you did you dress like more of more in more of a standard spooky way, like

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you dressed as like a scary serial killer or monster, or were you more like the Spider-Man,

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Superman type?

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I think I was uh I was usually a dead something, like a dead army guy or a dead

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whatever, or a vampire, or just like things that were dead.

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Even is it even as a child.

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Yeah, like not real scary, but still dead.

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Okay.

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Interesting.

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We're just gonna ask you about your Halloween experiences.

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Yeah, just my kid.

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Just ask me about my childhood.

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That's exactly we orbit around that all the time on this podcast.

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So yeah.

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Yeah.

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No, honestly, um uh I'm glad we have you on, uh, just because my daughter is very morbidly

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curious and um understanding your research and the development of morbid curiosity has

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helped me to deal with that as a parent and sort of harness it and uh

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nurture it.

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Um but yeah, it's been it's been very cool to to witness.

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Um just uh one one anecdote.

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Um I was uh I was trying to get her to brush her teeth because she doesn't like brushing

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her teeth.

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Um and so I decided to show her pictures of rotting teeth to show her what happens to your

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teeth if you don't brush it.

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And it was actually a very effective way of getting her.

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Now she she always is willing to brush her teeth.

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But it had this um side effect.

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It had a side effect, which is now she just wants to look at pictures of rotting teeth for

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fun.

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And now I like I have to now I can use it as a reward.

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Like, oh, if you clean up your toys, I'll let you look at pictures of rotting teeth.

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In J David, in Germany, there's like a part of anti-smoking campaign is there's like yeah

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at the grocery store in the checkout aisle, there's like you can buy cigarettes and there's

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pictures of like really like, you know, d like I don't even know how to describe it, but

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like really gross like medical pictures that are the results of smoking.

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And I'm just imagining your daughter going, oh like grabbing the cigarette.

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I'll take two.

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Yeah, exactly.

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So uh David will be here all week for uh parent hacks.

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So cool.

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Yeah.

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Um Colton, uh can you uh so I don't know if you want to just talk about morbid

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curiosity as a broad thing, but one question I think a lot of people will have is so you're

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taking an evolutionary approach, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, to our interest in

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things that are gross or scary or sort of just to understand

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what swath of science or human phenomena you're carving out, how would you characterize the

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thing that you are interested in?

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That's sort of been the north star for your writing and your research and what you're

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thinking about?

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Yeah, I mean I was definitely trained, was trained as a in anthropology and biology.

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And so but I'm interested in humans and so in the the wonderful world of science, that

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means you do psychology things.

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But I do take a dip a different perspective, obviously, than most psychologists, but pretty

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similar to the two of you, which is I think that uh, you know, humans are evolved creatures

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and that influences um our psychology and can help if we use an evolutionary perspective,

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it can help us uh understand human behavior pretty well.

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And um, you know, there's been a lot of work on why humans are or the fact that humans are

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sort of drawn to threats or drawn to negativity or drawn to things that um

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they may otherwise try to avoid.

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But as far as I can tell, uh when I started researching this, nobody had really tried to

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explain that any further than, oh yeah, we uh negative things jump out to us, you know, um,

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or in some cases, like oh threatening things seem to jump out to us, even more than

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negative things.

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Um, and so what I've done is try to understand why why that is, but then also why we not

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not only why does it jump out to us, but why do we seek it out and create it and enjoy it

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even?

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Um yeah, and then and then further than that, I mean, um working on a paper right now with

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Edgar Du Borg, um looking at can we understand the horror genre specifically from an

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evolutionary perspective and sort of what inputs um is our mind taking from a horror movie

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that that make it interesting, that make it scary?

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Um, and how can we better understand the emotion of fear by looking at the entertainment we

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produce?

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Cool.

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Um, one of the things that Dave and I talked about doing um as just adaptationists is

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you just go around the world, and whether it's like the thing your daughter or your son is

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doing, or just people are doing online, is sort of just being an anthropologist about it

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and sort of thinking about well, what what are the combination or cocktail of adaptations

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underlying this thing?

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And um I I actually find myself being kind of doing that um

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implicitly, like about Halloween and horror stuff.

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And I don't even actually know what that category is.

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And I'm curious if you have some intuition about what that category is.

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But like to me, it's I find it interesting, for example, that like along with obviously

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things like, you know, scary, threatening things, there's also like things being old and

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like cobwebby.

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And just, and I don't know how much of that is sort of like, you know, universal, how much

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of it is just sort of like the cultural evolution baggage of just like this is

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traditionally what it's like, like a Victorian home, right?

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Like, right.

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But but it's also interesting that it's like an older architecture or there's evidence of

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like past agents and it's unclear.

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So like I'm just I am personally very curious about like, and I would love to hear

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like what is your it's if you if you've been thinking about like what's the grammar of what

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this category is?

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And is it incidental or is it like a feature that there's like

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cobwebs and dust, for example?

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Yeah.

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Well, I think, I mean, that's a big question, right?

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Because I think there's the question of what are the features of all the dangerous

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things we might be interested in.

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And then there are the features of what are those things that we seem to latch on to and uh

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produce in material culture, right?

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And replicate.

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So kind of what are those broad features?

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And then what are the ones that really seem to get our attention to the extent that we tell

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stories about them and then consume those stories, spend resources to consume those

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stories.

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Right.

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I think the cobweb thing and like abandoned buildings thing is interesting.

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I did an interview, I don't know, a couple of months ago about abandoned theme parks.

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And we sort of explored that question a little further because it's something that I hadn't

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thought about too much.

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I mean, I think one just sort of from my gut and having studied these things, one thing

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that it might be is that, you know, if you see somewhere that looks like it has a lot of

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resources, could be a good place to live, and you see that it's abandoned, you might ask,

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well, why would people leave such a rich place of resources?

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Right.

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And one answer is that, well, because it's actually more dangerous than it looks, right?

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I think we do that with ancient civilizations.

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I think that's one reason we find like the ancient Mayan civilizations and just ancient

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civilizations generally kind of interesting to us.

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It's like, well, if they built all these great things, they must have had great resources.

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So what happened?

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Or where did they go?

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And you know, the obvious answer, and the one that archaeologists often look to is

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disaster, right?

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And so if this great civilization in this case didn't see this

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disaster coming, like what did they miss?

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What got them?

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And could it happen to me, right?

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Could it happen to us?

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00:12:19,790 --> 00:12:21,720
Um, so that's that's my first instinct.

241
00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:26,520
And of course, cobwebs, at least in you know, I don't know, uh, I'm not a cobweb expert, so

242
00:12:26,520 --> 00:12:30,120
I don't know if they show up around the world and different kinds of uh materials, but you

243
00:12:30,120 --> 00:12:35,240
know, in the US at least, uh and in many places, cobwebs signify we we understand that that

244
00:12:35,240 --> 00:12:39,000
signifies it's been abandoned for a while or not taken care of, and so if we see them in a

245
00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:44,410
in a big beautiful house, like a big castle, Again, there's like all these resources.

246
00:12:44,490 --> 00:12:47,690
We understand all these resources were poured into building this beautiful castle.

247
00:12:47,850 --> 00:12:49,930
Someone of great power must have lived there.

248
00:12:50,090 --> 00:12:52,010
And yet they're gone and their family is gone.

249
00:12:52,090 --> 00:12:52,890
So what happened?

250
00:12:53,050 --> 00:12:53,290
Yeah.

251
00:12:53,450 --> 00:12:57,050
So I think there are those are more like cues, cues of danger in some ways, right?

252
00:12:57,290 --> 00:12:59,690
Like acc accidental or incidental cues of danger.

253
00:12:59,930 --> 00:13:00,090
Yeah.

254
00:13:00,170 --> 00:13:00,650
It's interesting.

255
00:13:00,730 --> 00:13:03,930
As you're saying that I'm imagining like the opening scenes of a movie and like what's

256
00:13:03,930 --> 00:13:04,490
scarier?

257
00:13:04,650 --> 00:13:09,130
Like imagining like all the three of us walking through a town and there's nobody in it.

258
00:13:09,370 --> 00:13:14,960
And you go into the houses and like even the stove is on, and you know, there's still food

259
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:20,480
cooking and burning, and like everything is perfectly, but everybody's gone.

260
00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:23,600
Well, that's exactly the first episode of the Twilight Zone, isn't it?

261
00:13:23,680 --> 00:13:25,840
Like he's walking around and it's just like an empty town.

262
00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:26,160
Right.

263
00:13:26,480 --> 00:13:28,560
It's very eerie, very creepy.

264
00:13:28,960 --> 00:13:34,800
Yeah, that's uh so I love that, and I love that that example then also highlights this

265
00:13:34,880 --> 00:13:39,360
sort of if you take a step back, and I love this about an evolutionary approach too, is you

266
00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:45,170
think about like were organisms, and it's we're talking we're starting to like get into

267
00:13:45,170 --> 00:13:45,410
that.

268
00:13:45,650 --> 00:13:51,170
What we're talking about is curiosity or information seeking about

269
00:13:51,810 --> 00:13:55,810
a class of things that might be relevant for it.

270
00:13:55,970 --> 00:14:01,640
Like in the same way a rat might be interested in like the things around a dead rat, so

271
00:14:01,640 --> 00:14:06,040
long as it doesn't like kill the rat for sort of obvious reasons, right?

272
00:14:06,280 --> 00:14:12,280
Um, and maybe that's too facile, but like I like that like I was thinking about, you

273
00:14:12,280 --> 00:14:15,000
know, like whenever we have somebody on, I sort of think about what to think about.

274
00:14:15,080 --> 00:14:21,000
And I think like what liking hu like horror or like liking things that are a little bit

275
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:26,430
gross or scary to me feels like very deeply human in the same way of like getting paper

276
00:14:26,430 --> 00:14:27,950
cuts or like sneezing is.

277
00:14:28,030 --> 00:14:31,470
You know, it's just like one of these things that's just very human.

278
00:14:31,630 --> 00:14:36,030
Um, is when I think importantly, though, there's a you don't have to like something to find

279
00:14:36,030 --> 00:14:36,830
it interesting either.

280
00:14:36,910 --> 00:14:40,590
There's actually like empirical evidence for that that you can distinguish liking and

281
00:14:40,750 --> 00:14:41,630
finding things interesting.

282
00:14:41,710 --> 00:14:43,150
Now you can have both, right?

283
00:14:43,230 --> 00:14:46,750
You can like something and find it interesting, but you can certainly find things

284
00:14:46,750 --> 00:14:51,550
interesting and be intrigued and drawn and have these approach motivations motivations

285
00:14:51,550 --> 00:14:54,320
toward it without actually enjoying it.

286
00:14:54,480 --> 00:14:54,640
Right.

287
00:14:54,800 --> 00:14:57,120
And I think morbid curiosity does a little of both of those, right?

288
00:14:57,200 --> 00:15:01,360
It kind of has, it's kind of got a two-pronged uh access to our minds.

289
00:15:01,520 --> 00:15:05,360
Um, and I'm still kind of teasing that apart, like what it looks like and why in some

290
00:15:05,360 --> 00:15:09,360
people it's approach and like or interest and like and why in some people it's just

291
00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:10,000
interest.

292
00:15:11,760 --> 00:15:14,880
So I feel like we um we sort of skipped ahead a bit.

293
00:15:15,450 --> 00:15:19,450
We didn't get to the foundation, the basic question that you that has been driving your

294
00:15:19,450 --> 00:15:23,050
research, which is why are we into this stuff?

295
00:15:23,290 --> 00:15:27,290
You know, from a naive psychological perspective, you might expect us to entertain

296
00:15:27,290 --> 00:15:32,410
ourselves with images of sunshine and rainbows and happy families and peaceful uh

297
00:15:32,650 --> 00:15:33,610
interactions.

298
00:15:33,770 --> 00:15:39,480
Um, you know, uh and yet uh if you look at the actual contents of the entertainment and the

299
00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:43,960
fiction that we consume, it is filled with with blood and gore and and terror.

300
00:15:44,120 --> 00:15:49,640
So why would we if we have the option to entertain ourselves with any kind of imaginary

301
00:15:49,640 --> 00:15:55,240
world that we want, why would we pick the scariest, darkest, most awful stuff to

302
00:15:55,240 --> 00:15:56,280
entertain ourselves with?

303
00:15:56,440 --> 00:15:59,000
Why why are we into this stuff uh to begin with?

304
00:15:59,480 --> 00:16:03,000
Well, I think it's because um, you know, historically we've encountered it in the real

305
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:03,560
world, right?

306
00:16:03,640 --> 00:16:08,630
And anytime you can learn about something cheaply, uh, from an sort of an ecological

307
00:16:08,630 --> 00:16:10,710
perspective, your mind snags that, right?

308
00:16:10,870 --> 00:16:13,430
It's just like the uh the drink that Dave is drinking there.

309
00:16:13,590 --> 00:16:15,190
It probably has a bit of a sweet taste, right?

310
00:16:15,270 --> 00:16:19,430
It probably tells his mind that uh it's just this is high calorie, it's good, you should

311
00:16:19,430 --> 00:16:20,150
consume it.

312
00:16:20,310 --> 00:16:25,510
Um, I think that similar thing happens with fear when we see uh something dangerous on our

313
00:16:25,510 --> 00:16:29,510
screen, or even we're imagining it or reading it in a book, hearing a story from someone,

314
00:16:29,750 --> 00:16:34,720
our mind is getting one set of input information that says, here's some important

315
00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:36,400
information, you should pay attention.

316
00:16:36,720 --> 00:16:40,400
But the sort of breaks aren't really applied that would normally be applied because we're

317
00:16:40,400 --> 00:16:44,240
not getting input saying the dangerous thing is in front of us, which is how we've, which

318
00:16:44,240 --> 00:16:47,200
is how almost every animal ever experiences threat, right?

319
00:16:47,280 --> 00:16:51,840
Is in order to learn about it, you kind of have to be there because they don't have

320
00:16:51,890 --> 00:16:55,730
material culture that they transmit and they don't have sophisticated language that they

321
00:16:55,730 --> 00:16:58,210
can uh tell stories about dangerous things.

322
00:16:58,290 --> 00:16:59,810
And so they kind of have to learn about them firsthand.

323
00:16:59,890 --> 00:17:00,290
And they do.

324
00:17:00,370 --> 00:17:01,650
You do see that in the animal kingdom.

325
00:17:01,730 --> 00:17:06,850
You see something like morbid curiosity in a lot of animals, but it's much more restricted.

326
00:17:07,010 --> 00:17:12,130
Like you only see it in certain circumstances, whereas in humans, we can consume it almost

327
00:17:12,130 --> 00:17:13,010
anytime, anywhere.

328
00:17:13,090 --> 00:17:14,850
So it's a it's a kind of like the candy thing, right?

329
00:17:14,930 --> 00:17:16,690
It's kind of like why do we like sweet things?

330
00:17:16,850 --> 00:17:18,880
Well, it's a cheap way to get calories.

331
00:17:19,040 --> 00:17:23,200
Even when we shouldn't want calories, sometimes it's a cheap way to get calories and we we

332
00:17:23,200 --> 00:17:24,400
latch onto that.

333
00:17:24,880 --> 00:17:25,120
Yeah.

334
00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:28,960
This might be a good place to talk about sort of uh signal detection or error management,

335
00:17:29,040 --> 00:17:29,840
too, right?

336
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:31,840
Is that sort of something you've thought about?

337
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:37,680
So, in other words, you know, if there's a really high cost or really high threat thing,

338
00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:42,480
it's not always clear whether or not you're gonna learn something, but there's two types of

339
00:17:42,480 --> 00:17:43,520
errors to make, right?

340
00:17:43,600 --> 00:17:49,350
One is you sort of pursue or look into this dangerous or scary or b or high

341
00:17:49,510 --> 00:17:55,190
cost thing and don't don't learn anything, um, versus you you you could have,

342
00:17:55,350 --> 00:17:56,390
but you don't.

343
00:17:56,710 --> 00:18:02,710
And uh, and then you know, so for example, um, you know, I'm when I lived in Berlin, I did

344
00:18:02,710 --> 00:18:05,190
open water swimming, I moved here to Santa Barbara.

345
00:18:05,350 --> 00:18:09,110
Uh, there's the the Pacific Ocean here is a great white nursery, right?

346
00:18:09,190 --> 00:18:14,000
So I was like, I'm gonna look into everything I can about great white sharks, um, you know,

347
00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:18,320
to just settle on am I actually going to go swimming and what's my relative risk?

348
00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:24,400
Um is that is that thing of sort of uh you know, because the question, one

349
00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:27,520
question is sort of like what lessons are people learning, if at all?

350
00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:32,800
And is that sort of like a klogginess of the system that all consume things that are scary

351
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:35,360
just because that's just the way the system is built?

352
00:18:35,520 --> 00:18:37,600
Or are people actually learning lessons?

353
00:18:38,080 --> 00:18:39,360
I think there's a little of both.

354
00:18:39,520 --> 00:18:43,570
I think um, you know, most people when they go to watch a they buy a ticket to a horror

355
00:18:43,570 --> 00:18:48,210
movie, you don't really um think about like, oh, I'm going to learn something from this,

356
00:18:48,370 --> 00:18:48,690
you know.

357
00:18:48,850 --> 00:18:50,130
Uh some people, some people do.

358
00:18:50,210 --> 00:18:54,290
I've actually talked to people in studies that uh, especially with true crime, they'll say,

359
00:18:54,450 --> 00:18:57,410
I watched this to kind of pick up on what I would have missed, right?

360
00:18:57,490 --> 00:18:58,930
Uh, if this were to happen to me.

361
00:18:59,090 --> 00:19:04,660
And there's some evidence that uh feeling vulnerable is correlated with um, you know, your

362
00:19:04,660 --> 00:19:08,180
chances of like truly feeling vulnerable and seeking out these things are correlated with

363
00:19:08,180 --> 00:19:11,860
your chances of being a victim of a crime or having been a victim of a crime in the past.

364
00:19:12,020 --> 00:19:17,140
And so I think some people do actively seek it out to learn something and they're sort of

365
00:19:17,140 --> 00:19:17,860
aware of that.

366
00:19:18,020 --> 00:19:22,180
But most people just do it because it's because it feels fun, it feels enjoyable.

367
00:19:22,260 --> 00:19:24,340
And then the question is: well, why does it feel fun?

368
00:19:24,500 --> 00:19:25,620
Why does it feel enjoyable?

369
00:19:25,780 --> 00:19:30,420
And one answer is is that um learning is intrinsically rewarding.

370
00:19:30,630 --> 00:19:34,470
Um, you know, if you're updating your model of the world and updating feeling like you're

371
00:19:34,470 --> 00:19:38,870
gaining valuable information on the cheap, that's intrinsically rewarding, even if we don't

372
00:19:38,870 --> 00:19:40,950
consciously recognize that.

373
00:19:43,910 --> 00:19:44,230
Okay.

374
00:19:44,710 --> 00:19:49,830
So so the reason why we're into horror is because we're learning things um and we're

375
00:19:49,830 --> 00:19:55,420
learning things cheaply um about really important things that we

376
00:19:55,660 --> 00:19:58,140
should want to learn about from an evolutionary perspective.

377
00:19:58,380 --> 00:20:02,380
If we're gonna learn about any those are like those are like really high value things, or

378
00:20:02,700 --> 00:20:03,900
things of very high importance, right?

379
00:20:04,060 --> 00:20:09,340
Whereas you know, food is important and mating is important, um, but they're not one-offs.

380
00:20:09,420 --> 00:20:13,500
It's like if you make a mistake with food or make a mistake with mating, usually you can

381
00:20:13,500 --> 00:20:15,420
get another chance to get an apple or a mate.

382
00:20:15,580 --> 00:20:18,940
Uh, if you make a mistake when it comes to a dangerous predator, you may not have another

383
00:20:18,940 --> 00:20:19,660
shot, right?

384
00:20:19,740 --> 00:20:23,590
And so they're like really high value uh targets are really high value information.

385
00:20:23,750 --> 00:20:28,070
And so um I think it's especially potent to us, which is probably why we see this threat

386
00:20:28,070 --> 00:20:32,630
bias that humans have where it kind of captures our attention above and beyond almost

387
00:20:32,630 --> 00:20:33,430
anything else.

388
00:20:34,070 --> 00:20:34,310
Yeah.

389
00:20:34,390 --> 00:20:35,830
Can I can I interject too?

390
00:20:35,910 --> 00:20:40,550
I think one thing there's and David alluded to this in an earlier episode, there's an idea

391
00:20:40,550 --> 00:20:45,660
that sort of there's a reason why we have episodic memory versus semantic memory.

392
00:20:45,820 --> 00:20:50,060
Episodic meaning for people who don't know is that there's the details of an event.

393
00:20:50,140 --> 00:20:53,740
So, you know, do you remember the first time you went on a Ferris wheel, for example,

394
00:20:53,980 --> 00:20:56,220
versus just the declarative statement?

395
00:20:56,380 --> 00:20:59,020
You know, I was on a Ferris wheel, but you don't remember the event.

396
00:20:59,180 --> 00:21:03,260
And it seems to me, and Colton, Colton, you can tell me if this is correct, is that if I

397
00:21:03,260 --> 00:21:08,510
think about it, you know, hearing about, you know, oh, sharks are dangerous, like that's

398
00:21:08,670 --> 00:21:09,310
super boring.

399
00:21:09,470 --> 00:21:10,110
I don't care.

400
00:21:10,270 --> 00:21:12,190
I would not like choose to do that.

401
00:21:12,350 --> 00:21:18,350
But if if I if you told me a story about a shark encounter or a video of it, I would

402
00:21:18,350 --> 00:21:19,950
be really interested in watching that.

403
00:21:20,030 --> 00:21:26,030
And I wonder if um one of the arguments for why we have episodic representations, it's

404
00:21:26,030 --> 00:21:30,430
sort of like a picture's worth a thousand words, is that there's there's a lot of

405
00:21:30,430 --> 00:21:36,120
information, and there's also information that uh you may not already, you, I mean, we just

406
00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:40,600
use this colloquially, but like that you may not know what lesson to draw from this

407
00:21:40,600 --> 00:21:41,160
episode.

408
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:46,280
So the most economical thing to do in terms of a evolved representation is store the

409
00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:47,000
episode.

410
00:21:47,160 --> 00:21:52,440
And it's the fact that it's related to this high fitness cost thing and it's stored as an

411
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:58,350
episode that there's sort of constant machinery running to sort of extract what is

412
00:21:58,350 --> 00:22:02,590
the inference, and with with with varying levels of certainty or uncertainty.

413
00:22:02,750 --> 00:22:08,430
And so maybe, and maybe it's no accident that we're really drawn to stories and episodic

414
00:22:08,430 --> 00:22:08,990
formats.

415
00:22:09,150 --> 00:22:12,110
And it's in fact that the lesson isn't super clear.

416
00:22:12,350 --> 00:22:15,950
And maybe if the lesson is too clear, it actually isn't that interesting.

417
00:22:16,030 --> 00:22:21,480
And part of what counts as interesting is it's this uh really kind of Goldilocks

418
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:27,400
middle ground of it's there's enough content in specifics to possibly

419
00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:28,760
extract something.

420
00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:34,920
But at the same time, it's not super clear what the bottom line thing is, you know, where

421
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:38,760
if it's sort of super obvious, I don't know if there's been research on this, but that that

422
00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:44,250
seemed to be like maybe uh sort of an alien's perspective of like what's the middle ground

423
00:22:44,330 --> 00:22:49,290
sort of sweet spot in terms of um what makes something quote unquote interesting.

424
00:22:49,610 --> 00:22:49,850
Yeah.

425
00:22:49,930 --> 00:22:55,050
And I think you know, you hear this a lot from there's kind of this meme online of you

426
00:22:55,050 --> 00:22:56,090
know, horror fans.

427
00:22:56,250 --> 00:22:58,890
And it often it's like with you'll see the meme with like women.

428
00:22:58,970 --> 00:23:02,090
It's like, oh, a lot of women will turn on true crime to relax at night, right?

429
00:23:02,170 --> 00:23:07,500
That's turn on stories of mostly men killing mostly women to relax at night.

430
00:23:07,660 --> 00:23:10,140
And I have I've had a lot of people ask me, like, how could that be?

431
00:23:10,220 --> 00:23:12,460
Like, why, you know, why would you do that?

432
00:23:12,700 --> 00:23:17,420
Um, and I don't have an empirical answer for it, but I have maybe like uh an intuition

433
00:23:17,420 --> 00:23:21,100
about what it might be, which is that if you watch a lot of, let's say, true crime in

434
00:23:21,100 --> 00:23:25,420
particular, because there tend to be um similarities between cases, right?

435
00:23:25,580 --> 00:23:27,580
And in true crime, people do pay attention to those.

436
00:23:27,660 --> 00:23:33,650
There is evidence that people find most interesting pieces of the story that

437
00:23:33,650 --> 00:23:35,890
tell you like how someone got away or how they didn't.

438
00:23:35,970 --> 00:23:39,810
Like those are the most, there's some really cool manipulation studies so those are the

439
00:23:39,810 --> 00:23:41,970
most interesting parts of the story to most people.

440
00:23:42,290 --> 00:23:46,450
Um and I think what happens probably is that if you watch a lot of those, you get really

441
00:23:46,450 --> 00:23:51,810
good at guessing who the bad guy is, why he did it, what the victim um should have seen

442
00:23:51,810 --> 00:23:52,770
that they didn't.

443
00:23:52,930 --> 00:23:57,740
Um and that can be really comforting to know that uh you're guessing all these things

444
00:23:57,740 --> 00:23:58,460
correctly, right?

445
00:23:58,540 --> 00:24:04,300
That can actually probably be relaxing, even if the material itself is horrible or

446
00:24:04,300 --> 00:24:06,540
dangerous or violent or whatever, threatening.

447
00:24:06,700 --> 00:24:11,020
Um, if you're just guessing it accurately, like bam, bam, bam, one after the another, one

448
00:24:11,020 --> 00:24:14,140
after another, it's gonna feel a little bit relaxing.

449
00:24:14,220 --> 00:24:15,180
Like, why do you have to worry?

450
00:24:15,260 --> 00:24:16,060
You already know this, right?

451
00:24:16,140 --> 00:24:18,780
It's like it's like affirmation that you're prepared almost.

452
00:24:19,180 --> 00:24:20,140
And I think you do get that.

453
00:24:20,300 --> 00:24:23,550
You get that with like people who've watched a lot of horror movies too, and you, you know,

454
00:24:23,630 --> 00:24:26,590
they kind of can guess what's going on, which horror movies are not, most of them are not

455
00:24:26,590 --> 00:24:30,430
known for being particularly complex about like what you should do and shouldn't do.

456
00:24:30,590 --> 00:24:33,310
Um, and it can get kind of relaxing to and almost comedic.

457
00:24:33,390 --> 00:24:38,830
You can kind of then lean into the comedic side of things without it feeling um too taboo,

458
00:24:38,910 --> 00:24:41,870
you know, because it's like, oh, well, of course that teenager died, they shouldn't have

459
00:24:41,870 --> 00:24:42,990
been doing that, right?

460
00:24:43,230 --> 00:24:48,270
Um, and you you get this kind of lax approach to to danger.

461
00:24:48,430 --> 00:24:53,230
And uh yeah, I think it can then become more of a thing you turn on before you go to bed.

462
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:59,640
So counterintuitively, it's that you I think we have this counter this kind of cartoonish

463
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:03,880
um view of things where, you know, bad stimuli equal fear.

464
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:04,200
Right.

465
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:09,320
But it sounds like what you're saying is that in fact, fear, and I think people have made

466
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:15,080
this argument before too, is that, or at least anecdotally, um, that fear is sort of a

467
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:16,920
system for capturing more information.

468
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:20,550
It's a symptom that you haven't done your homework, basically.

469
00:25:20,790 --> 00:25:26,310
And that, and I've heard this from people who do like rock climbing or really

470
00:25:26,550 --> 00:25:32,070
high stakes, life and death things, that if you actually practice and

471
00:25:32,070 --> 00:25:37,990
learn enough that there's still a notion of sort of

472
00:25:37,990 --> 00:25:41,110
how risky something is, but the fear sort of goes away.

473
00:25:41,270 --> 00:25:45,750
And it's so this idea is that counterintuitively, it sounds like what you're saying is by

474
00:25:45,750 --> 00:25:50,660
exposing yourself to these concerns, it might actually make the fear less.

475
00:25:51,060 --> 00:25:53,460
Or your confidence goes up and that counteracts it.

476
00:25:53,620 --> 00:25:53,940
Right.

477
00:25:54,180 --> 00:25:58,260
Um, and you know, we can talk about this now or later, but I've I've I've then taken that

478
00:25:58,260 --> 00:26:02,580
exact sort of premise and then expanded this into well, then can you use horror to help you

479
00:26:02,580 --> 00:26:05,860
not feel so anxious or to give you tools to overcome anxiety?

480
00:26:06,020 --> 00:26:06,340
Right.

481
00:26:06,740 --> 00:26:11,060
Um and not not horror, not that horror is necessarily uniquely suited to that, though I do

482
00:26:11,060 --> 00:26:15,410
think it does have some benefits, certainly, over other entertainment genres.

483
00:26:15,650 --> 00:26:20,210
Um, but yeah, I think that you can take that exact premise and then say, okay, well, then

484
00:26:20,210 --> 00:26:24,930
maybe we can sort of leverage scary stories to help us in some ways.

485
00:26:25,250 --> 00:26:25,890
Right.

486
00:26:26,930 --> 00:26:32,850
I mean, how what do you see the so we obviously know that, or we're the the hypothesis

487
00:26:32,850 --> 00:26:36,530
is that this it's helping us learn about dangerous things so that we could be better

488
00:26:36,530 --> 00:26:39,490
prepared for dealing with them, so that we could better avoid them.

489
00:26:39,620 --> 00:26:44,020
Um and it's not obvious in advance what types of information, what details are going to be

490
00:26:44,020 --> 00:26:45,540
important when it comes to a dangerous thing.

491
00:26:45,620 --> 00:26:50,180
So if you're if you if you see a lion uh versus a tiger, you know, knowing that tigers are

492
00:26:50,180 --> 00:26:55,700
stripes are striped and lions aren't, um, that information, it's a it might seem like an

493
00:26:55,700 --> 00:26:59,140
irrelevant detail, but it could save your life in some situations.

494
00:26:59,300 --> 00:27:03,490
Knowing that uh the different habits of of of the two different types of animals, where

495
00:27:03,490 --> 00:27:07,970
they like to congregate, whether they like to stalk their prey or whether they just kind of

496
00:27:08,050 --> 00:27:09,970
you know gallivant out in the open.

497
00:27:10,130 --> 00:27:14,610
These each each one of these these subtle details could be a detail that that means the

498
00:27:14,610 --> 00:27:15,730
difference between life or death.

499
00:27:15,970 --> 00:27:17,250
Yeah David, can I interject?

500
00:27:17,330 --> 00:27:21,810
So never swim away this is just a PSA, never like panic and swim away from a great white

501
00:27:21,810 --> 00:27:22,210
shark.

502
00:27:22,370 --> 00:27:25,720
We we haven't talked about the asymmetric or of attrition, but they're asymmetric or of

503
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,880
attrition creatures where if you don't act like prey, you just stand your ground, look at

504
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:31,480
them, and stay stay facing them.

505
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:35,480
If you ever see one in the water, you're more than likely going to be okay.

506
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:36,920
You're bigger than their prey.

507
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:40,040
So it's exactly like a bear or a mountain lion.

508
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:43,160
Never run away, never to do like never splash away.

509
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:44,280
Don't freak out.

510
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:50,210
That can be the difference between like activating this creature's like predation response

511
00:27:50,210 --> 00:27:54,850
versus it like, well, you're pretty big, you seem comfortable, I'm not gonna go after you.

512
00:27:55,010 --> 00:27:56,450
So exactly, yes.

513
00:27:56,530 --> 00:28:01,810
Like I'm not to just like to call back, like I'm not afraid of going in the water as much

514
00:28:01,810 --> 00:28:02,770
now, now that I know that.

515
00:28:02,850 --> 00:28:06,610
But that David, that's a perfect example of like I didn't know that before I moved to Santa

516
00:28:06,610 --> 00:28:08,370
Barbara and I did a deep dive into it.

517
00:28:08,530 --> 00:28:10,450
I'm not curious about great white sharks anymore.

518
00:28:10,530 --> 00:28:12,850
But that would be an example, David, of what you're talking about.

519
00:28:13,300 --> 00:28:16,740
Yeah, and there's there's a whole lot of directions I can go from that because that ties

520
00:28:16,740 --> 00:28:21,140
into like everything that I am working on now, and also that I've worked on in the past

521
00:28:21,220 --> 00:28:23,380
with like formidability assessments.

522
00:28:23,460 --> 00:28:28,020
And you know, I have this again, this project I've been working on with with Edgar, uh,

523
00:28:28,180 --> 00:28:32,260
trying to define the horror genre almost using an evolutionary perspective, and kind of

524
00:28:32,260 --> 00:28:36,660
what we landed on, and we tested this empirically in a in a lot of different ways, is that

525
00:28:36,910 --> 00:28:41,150
you know, fear in the case of these stories, and probably in the case of many things, has

526
00:28:41,150 --> 00:28:44,030
to do with relative formidability asymmetries.

527
00:28:44,190 --> 00:28:50,110
Um, so that just such that if you um either yourself or if you're

528
00:28:50,110 --> 00:28:55,870
empathizing with, for example, a protagonist who is more vulnerable, less formidable

529
00:28:56,030 --> 00:28:58,670
than the antagonist, it's gonna produce fear, right?

530
00:28:58,750 --> 00:29:02,590
Like that's the thing that should produce fear, especially if that antagonist is and and

531
00:29:02,750 --> 00:29:05,380
maybe only if an antagonist is malicious, right?

532
00:29:05,460 --> 00:29:08,580
And if they're around you, near you, pursuing you.

533
00:29:08,820 --> 00:29:14,660
Um, and we find that that the like that's kind of a unique narrative structure in

534
00:29:14,660 --> 00:29:20,660
horror um that reliably elicits everything from like higher

535
00:29:20,660 --> 00:29:25,700
chance of the word fear being included in the description to uh higher heart rates when

536
00:29:25,700 --> 00:29:26,900
you're watching the film.

537
00:29:27,150 --> 00:29:32,430
Um, so I think that's it's probably some of the input conditions, I guess, that like fear

538
00:29:32,590 --> 00:29:37,390
generally takes is how how vulnerable am I to this thing, right?

539
00:29:37,630 --> 00:29:38,510
Is it near me?

540
00:29:38,670 --> 00:29:39,390
Is it bigger than me?

541
00:29:39,470 --> 00:29:40,350
Is it stronger than me?

542
00:29:40,510 --> 00:29:42,030
Uh, does it have more resources than me?

543
00:29:42,190 --> 00:29:44,030
Can it outcompete me, essentially?

544
00:29:44,190 --> 00:29:49,950
So you can think of vulnerability kind of as a like a uh a fe a

545
00:29:49,950 --> 00:29:55,470
felt um appraisal of being less formidable in an asymmetric contest.

546
00:29:55,790 --> 00:29:56,350
Hmm.

547
00:29:56,780 --> 00:30:02,540
What what you're saying suggests that there could be a Darwinian advantage to

548
00:30:02,700 --> 00:30:04,380
mastering your fear.

549
00:30:04,620 --> 00:30:10,540
So if uh if predators, either uh actual predators or social predators, um use

550
00:30:10,540 --> 00:30:16,380
your fear as a cue uh of the the problem ability and yeah,

551
00:30:16,460 --> 00:30:17,260
and you'll defer.

552
00:30:17,580 --> 00:30:18,470
And you'll defer to me.

553
00:30:18,550 --> 00:30:20,070
You're lower, you're less formidable to me.

554
00:30:20,150 --> 00:30:22,550
If you're afraid of me, that's a good sign that I should attack you.

555
00:30:22,870 --> 00:30:23,110
Right.

556
00:30:23,270 --> 00:30:23,430
Yeah.

557
00:30:23,670 --> 00:30:27,670
Uh, but if you're not afraid, then that suggests to me that you know something I don't.

558
00:30:27,830 --> 00:30:32,230
You might be harder to attack than I than I think, and I might leave you alone.

559
00:30:32,470 --> 00:30:36,150
And so it could it could suggest that if you know if you have learned a lot about a

560
00:30:36,150 --> 00:30:41,670
dangerous stimulus uh and you are signaling that you're not afraid, then that could uh

561
00:30:41,670 --> 00:30:43,750
reduce your chances of actually being harmed.

562
00:30:43,910 --> 00:30:47,960
On the other hand, if you if you signal that you're very afraid, uh that could uh actually

563
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,160
increase the chances uh that the danger will will actually manifest.

564
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:53,160
Would you do you buy that logic?

565
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:59,000
I I think yeah absolutely I mean that's like I think a very uh coherent way of putting a

566
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:03,320
lot of the things that I've uh thought about in relation to this and like you know again I

567
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:09,080
think you identified probably something that uh like an insight that can be applied broadly

568
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:15,110
you know to everything from business negotiate negotiations to clinical anxiety, right?

569
00:31:15,430 --> 00:31:21,030
Um, this idea that uh and we talk about it all the time in in colloquial terms, right?

570
00:31:21,110 --> 00:31:22,310
It's just confidence, right?

571
00:31:22,390 --> 00:31:27,670
It's just your your confidence um and not mistaking confidence for competence uh on your

572
00:31:27,670 --> 00:31:28,070
own, right?

573
00:31:28,230 --> 00:31:32,390
Like understanding where your position is, but maybe putting forward a fit, your best foot

574
00:31:32,390 --> 00:31:35,190
forward, or you know, we have all kinds of sayings for these kinds of things.

575
00:31:35,270 --> 00:31:36,950
Uh, but I think that's exactly right.

576
00:31:37,110 --> 00:31:39,960
Um, if that's true, then those things should also be true.

577
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:44,280
And I don't have empirical evidence that those things are true, but uh I'm also not looked

578
00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:47,720
into the literature for things like again, negotiations probably is where that would be a

579
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:53,400
huge um or politics, even political negotiations, wartime negotiations, you know, probably

580
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:55,800
huge uh implications like that.

581
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:58,280
That insight had probably a huge implications for that kind of thing.

582
00:31:58,590 --> 00:31:58,830
Yeah.

583
00:31:58,910 --> 00:32:02,830
I mean, it would be fascinating to test that empirically, to just have, you know, the

584
00:32:02,830 --> 00:32:07,070
person you're negotiating with or you're playing a an economic game with have them look

585
00:32:07,070 --> 00:32:11,390
afraid, have a fear face versus have them not have a fear face and see how that changes

586
00:32:11,390 --> 00:32:14,990
people's behavior, have people rate their their physical formidability, their social

587
00:32:14,990 --> 00:32:15,790
formidability.

588
00:32:15,870 --> 00:32:20,110
You know, does the fear face uh change those inferences and those perceptions?

589
00:32:20,190 --> 00:32:21,710
It would be fascinating to look at.

590
00:32:21,870 --> 00:32:27,100
Uh just an one example of how richly predictive uh this this perspective is.

591
00:32:28,860 --> 00:32:29,260
Uh well.

592
00:32:30,140 --> 00:32:34,860
I did a study with uh with Dan Fessler a few years ago that was not originally it didn't

593
00:32:34,860 --> 00:32:35,580
originate from this work.

594
00:32:35,660 --> 00:32:36,780
I did a morbid curiosity.

595
00:32:36,860 --> 00:32:38,460
It was kind of a separate question in some ways.

596
00:32:38,540 --> 00:32:42,620
But now that I've started doing this, I see that you know, maybe subconsciously it was kind

597
00:32:42,620 --> 00:32:46,140
of related to these things, or maybe I've just tied it to it after the fact.

598
00:32:46,220 --> 00:32:49,910
But it was a study showing that I I had this question of like, why are humans sometimes

599
00:32:49,910 --> 00:32:51,110
gruesomely violent?

600
00:32:51,270 --> 00:32:55,350
You know, like there's no reason you got to pull someone's entrails out and uh display

601
00:32:55,350 --> 00:32:55,990
them, right?

602
00:32:56,310 --> 00:33:00,070
Um you've already killed someone, you've you've you've defeated the enemy, you've the the

603
00:33:00,070 --> 00:33:01,030
threat is eliminated.

604
00:33:01,110 --> 00:33:02,870
So why are we sometimes gruesomely violent?

605
00:33:03,030 --> 00:33:05,270
And the kind of simple answer to that is that we're signaling something.

606
00:33:05,350 --> 00:33:07,590
But the question then is like, well, what are we signaling?

607
00:33:07,750 --> 00:33:08,230
Right.

608
00:33:08,470 --> 00:33:12,780
Um, and it seems to be the case that we ran this on different vignettes that were like

609
00:33:12,780 --> 00:33:16,700
very, very precisely controlled and only had like minor tweaks to the wording, you know, to

610
00:33:16,700 --> 00:33:18,220
kind of change the conditions.

611
00:33:18,380 --> 00:33:23,260
Uh, it seems to be that you're signaling your formidability because uh people perceive

612
00:33:23,260 --> 00:33:25,740
gruesome actors to be larger, stronger.

613
00:33:25,820 --> 00:33:28,300
If you ask them to envision, like how big is this person?

614
00:33:28,540 --> 00:33:30,940
How strong is this person, how tall is this person, even?

615
00:33:31,020 --> 00:33:34,950
They imagine people who are gruesomely violent, who commit the same act of violence, but

616
00:33:34,950 --> 00:33:38,390
then just take it a little step further, you know, by doing something gross, basically.

617
00:33:38,470 --> 00:33:41,030
Uh, they imagine them to be bigger, stronger.

618
00:33:41,110 --> 00:33:43,590
And of course, that then impacts negotiations.

619
00:33:43,670 --> 00:33:47,670
And so that could give insight to like, why do certain terrorist groups behave in certain

620
00:33:47,670 --> 00:33:51,110
kinds of ways and send videos of these like horrible acts, right?

621
00:33:51,270 --> 00:33:56,310
Uh, why did the state for hundreds of years do public executions in front of everyone,

622
00:33:56,390 --> 00:33:56,630
right?

623
00:33:56,710 --> 00:34:00,470
These like gruesome executions that they could have done behind closed doors, but they did

624
00:34:00,470 --> 00:34:06,060
them in a way that uh everyone could see, and interestingly, that everyone wanted to see.

625
00:34:06,300 --> 00:34:11,980
Um so I think that yeah, there's um we we're trying I think you can uh

626
00:34:12,140 --> 00:34:14,700
again, it just extends to so many different ways.

627
00:34:14,780 --> 00:34:19,180
This this idea that fear is intrinsically tied to formidability.

628
00:34:20,140 --> 00:34:26,090
So that that's a good segue into the question of how would you define the horror genre?

629
00:34:26,250 --> 00:34:29,210
So a lot of people have thought about what horror is.

630
00:34:29,530 --> 00:34:35,050
Do you have a way of defining it that you think fits with your theoretical

631
00:34:35,050 --> 00:34:39,290
perspective that sheds light on how we can categorize something as a horror movie versus a

632
00:34:39,290 --> 00:34:42,410
thriller versus you know an action movie versus something else?

633
00:34:42,730 --> 00:34:43,210
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

634
00:34:43,370 --> 00:34:48,090
Actually, you know, working on this question helped me think about fear better because if

635
00:34:48,090 --> 00:34:52,780
you think about what a horror movie, I think everyone agrees, like, and even me to some

636
00:34:52,780 --> 00:34:57,420
extent agrees, like, okay, one definition of a horror film is a film that scares you.

637
00:34:57,660 --> 00:35:01,020
I don't think that's a great definition because it may not scare me, it might scare you,

638
00:35:01,260 --> 00:35:02,540
might not scare Dave.

639
00:35:02,780 --> 00:35:07,020
Um, a better definition might be it's a film that is intended to scare you.

640
00:35:07,180 --> 00:35:11,660
Like, okay, that's kind of hard to disprove, but that's that's a decent definition, right?

641
00:35:11,900 --> 00:35:13,850
But then the question is, well, why does it scare you?

642
00:35:13,930 --> 00:35:14,010
Right.

643
00:35:14,090 --> 00:35:16,570
That doesn't really tell me anything about the structure of the horror film.

644
00:35:16,650 --> 00:35:20,010
It just says that it's meant to scare you or that it does scare you.

645
00:35:20,250 --> 00:35:22,890
And so I wasn't very satisfied with that definition.

646
00:35:22,970 --> 00:35:26,810
And I thought, surely there must be something, you know, we we all seem to, you know, I

647
00:35:26,810 --> 00:35:32,650
would say with like 80%, just this is just an intuition, but like, you know, roughly 80%

648
00:35:32,890 --> 00:35:36,700
of people would probably agree that X movie is a horror movie or Y movie is a horror movie,

649
00:35:36,780 --> 00:35:36,940
right?

650
00:35:37,020 --> 00:35:39,820
There's like when we see a horror movie, we kind of know it, like, oh, that's kind of a

651
00:35:39,820 --> 00:35:40,780
horror movie, right?

652
00:35:41,020 --> 00:35:44,860
Um, so there must be something that we're we're latching onto that's not just fear, but

653
00:35:44,860 --> 00:35:48,540
some components that do produce fear in some people in certain circumstances.

654
00:35:48,700 --> 00:35:53,740
Um, so what I landed on is similar to what we just talked about, which is uh a horror movie

655
00:35:53,740 --> 00:35:59,590
or horror story, a horror narrative, is one in which you have a protagonist who is uh

656
00:35:59,830 --> 00:36:02,550
much less formidable than a malicious antagonist.

657
00:36:02,710 --> 00:36:04,310
And you don't see that in any other genre.

658
00:36:04,390 --> 00:36:05,590
You don't see it in action movies.

659
00:36:05,750 --> 00:36:10,550
And action and again, we have empirical evidence for this, uh, Edgar and I do that uh we

660
00:36:10,550 --> 00:36:14,950
use that huge Facebook data set that has like three and a half million people and uh has

661
00:36:14,950 --> 00:36:17,110
their personality traits, their big five and everything.

662
00:36:17,270 --> 00:36:22,950
And we looked at like 700 different movies and rated them on this like very precise formula

663
00:36:23,110 --> 00:36:27,200
for if they were, you know, how how formidable the antagonist was, how formidable the

664
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:28,400
protagonist was.

665
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:33,840
Um, and what you find is that in horror movies, you have high formidability antagonist, low

666
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:35,440
formidability protagonist.

667
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:41,120
In action movies and thrillers, you have both moderately sort of equally matched, uh,

668
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:44,960
moderately high formidability protagonists and antagonist, which makes sense.

669
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:48,080
Thrillers are kind of a cat and mouse game where you're chasing each other back and forth.

670
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:54,210
Action movies are more of a face to face um type of story where the hero and the villain

671
00:36:54,210 --> 00:36:55,410
are kind of equally matched, right?

672
00:36:55,490 --> 00:36:58,050
And that's what generates the action or the violence.

673
00:36:58,450 --> 00:37:01,170
And then of course you have sci-fi and fantasy.

674
00:37:01,250 --> 00:37:02,450
Those are a bit lower.

675
00:37:03,650 --> 00:37:08,450
The tricky part comes when you know you get what about sci-fi horror, like the movie Alien?

676
00:37:08,850 --> 00:37:14,770
Well, there's uh some evidence that uh when when horror when when films take on two genres

677
00:37:14,850 --> 00:37:19,440
and one of those is the horror genre, they tend to like lean into that aspect of it.

678
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:24,720
So if it's a horror sci-fi, it tends to be a horror movie with sci-fi elements or a horror

679
00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:26,640
movie with fantasy elements.

680
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:31,680
Um, and so again, I think the thing that they're probably leaning on is strong uh

681
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,640
antagonist, relatively weaker protagonist.

682
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:38,720
And what's interesting is that, and the reason that I started thinking about them this way

683
00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:42,560
is that pretty much maps onto a prey animal's experience in the wild.

684
00:37:42,770 --> 00:37:45,890
Predators are almost always, certainly mammalian predators.

685
00:37:46,050 --> 00:37:51,250
Less true in some cases if you use venom or other things, but um I think you could make an

686
00:37:51,250 --> 00:37:53,650
argument that venom increases your formidability.

687
00:37:53,810 --> 00:37:59,810
But uh it's certainly true that for most prey mammals, uh, their predator is larger,

688
00:37:59,970 --> 00:38:04,450
stronger, faster, more formidable generally, has better weaponry.

689
00:38:04,610 --> 00:38:10,280
Um, and of course, there's an arms race where the prey animal typically um, in like

690
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:14,040
95% of cases, gets faster or better at hiding.

691
00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:15,080
So it's better at escaping.

692
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:19,160
It never confronts, you don't see, you don't often see gazelles unless they're trapped, you

693
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:23,080
know, confront a cheetah or a zebra, confront a lion, unless they're truly trapped.

694
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,240
And that's exactly what you find in horror movies.

695
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:30,520
The protagonist always is fleeing until they get trapped, and then they usually get lucky,

696
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:34,920
or they maybe find some weakness that they didn't see before, sort of a David and Goliath

697
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:35,880
kind of thing.

698
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:40,010
Um but typically they're running away until they're trapped.

699
00:38:40,090 --> 00:38:44,410
And that that like to me, that just jumped out as like, well, that's just predator prey

700
00:38:44,410 --> 00:38:45,290
interactions.

701
00:38:45,930 --> 00:38:46,330
Yeah.

702
00:38:46,570 --> 00:38:51,930
My one my favorite movie uh that I've watched more times than any other movie is uh is the

703
00:38:51,930 --> 00:38:53,690
original Jurassic Park movie.

704
00:38:53,770 --> 00:38:55,290
It's just like a beautiful movie.

705
00:38:55,450 --> 00:38:59,290
And I love about that that I don't think of that as a canonical horror movie, but it really

706
00:38:59,290 --> 00:39:04,840
is in this sense of it's this thing of it's beautiful, it's uh you know, it's it's all the

707
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:08,680
kind of like, well, there's this incredible thing that like dinosaurs finally exist.

708
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:13,240
And I mean, for me, it was like I was a boy, I had never seen a real life dinosaur till I

709
00:39:13,240 --> 00:39:13,480
saw this.

710
00:39:13,720 --> 00:39:14,360
It was like perfect.

711
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:15,880
I was just like, mwah, like so.

712
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:17,320
It was just perfect timing for me.

713
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:22,120
But um, but yeah, no, this thing of like there's this thing, it seems better than you could

714
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:23,960
imagine, and it turns out to be a horror.

715
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:27,560
I just that's such a wonderful sort of uh uh arc.

716
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:31,990
I think it's like one of the most perfect movies, and it is it's among other genres a

717
00:39:31,990 --> 00:39:33,030
horror movie for sure.

718
00:39:33,190 --> 00:39:33,350
Yeah.

719
00:39:33,750 --> 00:39:33,910
Yeah.

720
00:39:33,990 --> 00:39:37,510
Well, and one of the, you know, for this formula we created to measure this thing, we

721
00:39:37,510 --> 00:39:39,830
called it the protagonist vulnerability index.

722
00:39:39,990 --> 00:39:41,990
So basically, how vulnerable is the protagonist?

723
00:39:42,150 --> 00:39:46,950
In the case of Jurassic Park, you have an incredibly vulnerable or an incredibly formidable

724
00:39:46,950 --> 00:39:48,870
antagonist in like, let's say, the T-Rex.

725
00:39:49,670 --> 00:39:53,990
But uh one of the variables in our formula is threat presence.

726
00:39:54,150 --> 00:39:59,680
So how for what percentage of the narrative is the antagonist uh actively chasing or a

727
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:00,480
danger to the protagonist?

728
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:03,200
Well, in Jurassic Park, they're behind a fence for a long time.

729
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:04,240
So it doesn't matter.

730
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:10,000
It's not just high formidability that triggers fear, it's an asymmetry and formidability,

731
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:10,160
right?

732
00:40:10,240 --> 00:40:16,160
And part of that calculation is is that highly formidable antagonist pursuing

733
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:16,320
you?

734
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:20,480
Or are they in a place where they can pursue you?

735
00:40:20,630 --> 00:40:23,030
And for the first part of Jurassic Park, they're not, right?

736
00:40:23,110 --> 00:40:23,910
They're things we can look at.

737
00:40:23,990 --> 00:40:26,630
It's the same reason we go to a zoo and we'll look at a lion.

738
00:40:26,710 --> 00:40:30,870
But if I ask you if you want to get in the lion pit, most people should say no, right?

739
00:40:31,110 --> 00:40:36,870
Um, so I think yeah, there's this contextual difference of like uh a dangerous thing is

740
00:40:36,870 --> 00:40:40,550
only dangerous if it can get you, you know, which is kind of an obvious statement, but it's

741
00:40:40,550 --> 00:40:44,630
really important when it comes to these like definitions of these kinds of things, I guess.

742
00:40:44,790 --> 00:40:45,350
Yeah.

743
00:40:45,670 --> 00:40:50,620
I will say that um when I when I was reading about your way of defining horror, um it

744
00:40:50,620 --> 00:40:55,180
helped me reconceptualize uh one of my favorite movies, which is uh Terminator two Judgment

745
00:40:55,260 --> 00:40:55,420
Day.

746
00:40:55,580 --> 00:40:58,540
Yeah, clear uh and uh so one wonderful movie.

747
00:40:58,620 --> 00:41:03,180
Uh and uh I had always thought of it as an action movie and as like the greatest action

748
00:41:03,180 --> 00:41:04,060
movie of all time.

749
00:41:04,220 --> 00:41:04,540
Right.

750
00:41:04,620 --> 00:41:09,670
But a r after reading your your thing about uh horror, it made me realize that actually

751
00:41:09,670 --> 00:41:12,710
Terminator 2 is better conceptualized as a horror movie.

752
00:41:12,870 --> 00:41:17,910
Because if you think about it, the antagonist is a more advanced uh Terminator model.

753
00:41:18,550 --> 00:41:24,390
And uh and he's chasing a a less advanced Terminator model who is way, you know, way

754
00:41:24,390 --> 00:41:25,430
less formidable.

755
00:41:25,670 --> 00:41:31,110
Um and and most of the movie is just involves this like incredibly sophisticated, like m

756
00:41:31,190 --> 00:41:35,840
liquid metal, shape-shifting antagonist that's way more formidable than Arnold

757
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,560
Schwarzenegger and is just chasing them for most of the movie.

758
00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:41,840
And so really, when you when you think about it in those terms, uh it's better

759
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:43,440
conceptualized as a horror movie.

760
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:48,160
And like the antagonist is really scary to have this metallic shapeshifter who can take the

761
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,040
form of anyone, like that's that's a really powerful ability.

762
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:54,960
And like ev like there's so many moments of the movie where you think he's dead and he just

763
00:41:55,170 --> 00:41:56,050
he just gets up again.

764
00:41:56,130 --> 00:41:57,170
He's just like invincible.

765
00:41:57,490 --> 00:42:01,490
You can shoot him and it just goes right through him and he just like melds back into

766
00:42:01,490 --> 00:42:01,810
shape.

767
00:42:01,970 --> 00:42:05,890
You know, he blows up and he survives like it's it's it really is a horror movie.

768
00:42:06,050 --> 00:42:09,890
Um and so that was a pretty cool realization to me.

769
00:42:10,370 --> 00:42:13,090
Yeah and it shows up you know it shows up in our data set like that.

770
00:42:13,250 --> 00:42:15,570
It shows up as it's like right at the cusp.

771
00:42:15,650 --> 00:42:18,370
It's like it's like a at the low end of the horror movies.

772
00:42:18,450 --> 00:42:22,050
And we didn't have you know any reason to have a specific cutoff because it gives you a

773
00:42:22,050 --> 00:42:25,560
number right this formula gives you like any not formula, gives you a number at the end,

774
00:42:25,720 --> 00:42:25,960
right?

775
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:27,800
Um, and there's kind of a gradient.

776
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:33,800
And if you, you know, have a big Excel sheet and you've got like uh IMDB rated genres on

777
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,960
this column and PDI or protagonist vulnerability addicts on this column, you'll see that

778
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,120
the first like hundred are just horror, horror, horror, horror.

779
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:44,200
And then you get the like horror sci-fi mixes, horror fantasy mixes, and then you get into

780
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:46,360
like horror action and horror thriller.

781
00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:51,390
And uh Predator was like ranked right with like the bottom part of the horror movies, which

782
00:42:51,470 --> 00:42:53,550
which intuitively again makes sense when you watch the movie.

783
00:42:53,630 --> 00:42:55,630
You're like, man, this is a little scary in some ways, right?

784
00:42:55,710 --> 00:42:58,190
Like it's kind of that's kind of a scary story.

785
00:42:58,430 --> 00:43:00,190
Um, there were a few others like that too.

786
00:43:00,350 --> 00:43:06,350
And uh like the movie Predator, which uh obviously, if you've seen it, is um about

787
00:43:06,350 --> 00:43:11,230
this alien creature that preys upon or hunts for sport humans, right?

788
00:43:11,390 --> 00:43:16,480
And the reason that's that it's not rated higher or the reason also that it doesn't feel as

789
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:21,680
scary, I think, as some other horror movies, despite that, is that it's a predator who's

790
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:26,160
trying to find the top prey, the best prey it can, the most formidable prey it can, which

791
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:31,760
is like typically these elite group of military uh a military troop that's like an elite

792
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:33,200
group, like the Green Berets or something.

793
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:35,040
It's a predator with principles, right?

794
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:36,960
It's a predator with principles.

795
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:40,430
It's a fair fighting yeah, it's a fair fighting predator.

796
00:43:40,510 --> 00:43:41,790
Um, but that's what it's looking for.

797
00:43:41,870 --> 00:43:45,710
It's like the what's that uh old uh it's the most dangerous game, like where you're

798
00:43:45,710 --> 00:43:45,870
hunting.

799
00:43:46,030 --> 00:43:50,670
Oh yeah, you know, it's similar to that where it's like you are, you know, the the

800
00:43:50,670 --> 00:43:54,910
antagonist is more powerful they are, they have better weaponry, they're faster, more

801
00:43:54,910 --> 00:43:57,470
elusive, but they're outnumbered.

802
00:43:57,630 --> 00:43:59,550
They're facing a group of things, right?

803
00:43:59,630 --> 00:44:04,270
And and there's good evidence that alliances increase not just obviously like how strong

804
00:44:04,270 --> 00:44:06,510
you are, but also how strong you're perceived to be.

805
00:44:06,750 --> 00:44:11,640
Um and they're like when it comes to humans, like kind of the top humans, like highly

806
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:15,080
trained humans with weapons, with things that increase their formidability.

807
00:44:15,240 --> 00:44:19,240
Um, and so that makes it feel kind of like an action movie too, similar with with

808
00:44:19,240 --> 00:44:20,920
Terminator, uh, to some extent.

809
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,400
But I would say Predators is an even better example of man, this feels like an action

810
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:29,400
movie, but it feels like it should be a horror movie because this is a really big, bad guy

811
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:31,400
who's literally he is a predator, right?

812
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:32,200
That's the name of the movie.

813
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:33,560
Why is this not a horror movie?

814
00:44:33,720 --> 00:44:38,950
Uh and the answer is: well, he's fighting people who are at least when they're grouped

815
00:44:38,950 --> 00:44:41,510
together, pretty formidable to him, right?

816
00:44:41,910 --> 00:44:45,590
If he was if he was uh if he was hunting a cheerleading squad, it would be um.

817
00:44:46,070 --> 00:44:47,110
If he was hunting the summer camp.

818
00:44:47,270 --> 00:44:51,190
If you if you put him if you put him at uh Camp Crystal Lake, put him at uh you know a teen

819
00:44:51,190 --> 00:44:52,470
summer camp, it becomes a horror movie.

820
00:44:53,190 --> 00:44:53,350
Yeah.

821
00:44:53,670 --> 00:44:53,830
Yeah.

822
00:44:54,230 --> 00:45:00,160
David's like, I'm gonna what's the term for uh writing the screenplay and uh green what

823
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,160
what's the LA lingo for that?

824
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:04,800
Oh I'm gonna I'm gonna write it on I'm gonna write it on

825
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,120
but it's that's a good way to play with those ideas and think about them.

826
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:15,520
Okay, like well if uh Leatherface and Texas Chainsaw Massacre was four feet tall would that

827
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:16,160
be a horror movie?

828
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:18,160
Well maybe not, right?

829
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:22,720
Uh or if Jason, if you put him against a bunch of from Friday the thirteenth, if you put

830
00:45:22,720 --> 00:45:25,040
him against a bunch of Green Berets, is that a horror movie?

831
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:26,880
No, it's maybe more of an action movie.

832
00:45:27,450 --> 00:45:27,610
Yeah.

833
00:45:28,170 --> 00:45:31,530
And if you see that in some of those sequels, you see like where they get in these new

834
00:45:31,530 --> 00:45:34,250
contexts where it does shift to more of an action film.

835
00:45:34,410 --> 00:45:34,650
Right.

836
00:45:34,890 --> 00:45:39,850
I mean, z zombie movies are a good example of like playing with this border between action

837
00:45:39,850 --> 00:45:40,490
and horror.

838
00:45:40,650 --> 00:45:45,530
Because sometimes like the protagonists have like shotguns and weapons, and they're just

839
00:45:45,530 --> 00:45:48,650
blowing up the zombies, and then it feels like more of an action movie because they're more

840
00:45:48,650 --> 00:45:49,370
equally matched.

841
00:45:49,610 --> 00:45:49,770
Right.

842
00:45:50,010 --> 00:45:53,450
But you know, if if again, if it's the cheerleading squad that's being hunted by zombies,

843
00:45:53,530 --> 00:45:56,410
it becomes more of a straightforward horror movie.

844
00:45:56,620 --> 00:46:00,380
Um so what do you think is going on with with zombie movies.

845
00:46:00,700 --> 00:46:02,060
Yeah, what is going on with zombies?

846
00:46:02,140 --> 00:46:02,380
Yeah, yeah.

847
00:46:02,460 --> 00:46:03,660
What's that architect?

848
00:46:03,820 --> 00:46:04,700
Yeah, what is a zombie?

849
00:46:05,020 --> 00:46:05,260
Yeah.

850
00:46:05,420 --> 00:46:10,940
That's a great I think I just watched 28 years later, like this past week, which great

851
00:46:10,940 --> 00:46:11,100
movie.

852
00:46:11,260 --> 00:46:13,900
Definitely leans more action than than horror in some ways.

853
00:46:13,980 --> 00:46:17,100
There's like some distinct horror elements and then some action elements.

854
00:46:17,420 --> 00:46:21,010
Like very distinct, like, oh my god, this is definitely a horror movie, and then some like

855
00:46:21,090 --> 00:46:22,290
a lot of action elements.

856
00:46:22,450 --> 00:46:26,530
Um, I think zombie movies are crowd pleasers.

857
00:46:26,610 --> 00:46:30,770
So, like some of the biggest uh horror film hits are zombie movies.

858
00:46:30,850 --> 00:46:34,530
World War Z is a great example, one of the highest grossing movies of all time, certainly

859
00:46:34,530 --> 00:46:36,770
one of the highest grossing horror movies of all time.

860
00:46:37,250 --> 00:46:42,610
Um, The Walking Dead, you know, probably one of the most watched TV shows of all time.

861
00:46:42,930 --> 00:46:45,060
Uh and yeah, the question is why?

862
00:46:45,140 --> 00:46:47,380
Because you would think they would actually be more aversive because they're gross.

863
00:46:47,460 --> 00:46:51,060
Like zombies, zombie movies are some of the grossest horror movies.

864
00:46:51,220 --> 00:46:54,580
They love doing like up close shots of you know their arms falling off or biting their

865
00:46:54,580 --> 00:46:56,420
necks and ripping their flesh out, right?

866
00:46:56,900 --> 00:47:00,820
Um I think there's two reasons that zombie movies are so popular.

867
00:47:01,060 --> 00:47:03,300
I think one is the thing that David just said.

868
00:47:03,540 --> 00:47:05,780
Most of them start out kind of scary.

869
00:47:05,860 --> 00:47:09,860
It's like nobody knows what's going on and they're incredibly underprepared, and the the

870
00:47:09,860 --> 00:47:12,470
zombies are overwhelming them.

871
00:47:12,550 --> 00:47:15,990
Oh, like more a more formidable group than the human group.

872
00:47:16,230 --> 00:47:19,510
Over time, the human group gets weapons, gets better defenses.

873
00:47:19,670 --> 00:47:20,870
They do what humans do, right?

874
00:47:20,950 --> 00:47:22,550
They kind of learn and adapt.

875
00:47:22,870 --> 00:47:27,670
And it becomes more of a almost like an action drama or something, or a thriller, more of a

876
00:47:27,670 --> 00:47:29,990
thriller, kind of like a group-based thriller.

877
00:47:32,230 --> 00:47:32,950
I think that's one reason.

878
00:47:33,110 --> 00:47:38,900
I think the other reason is that zombies actually tap into uh

879
00:47:39,060 --> 00:47:43,540
we haven't really talked about the morbid curiosity scale much yet, but I created this

880
00:47:43,540 --> 00:47:45,380
scale to measure trait morbid curiosity.

881
00:47:45,460 --> 00:47:47,300
And there are four domains to it, right?

882
00:47:47,460 --> 00:47:49,540
So there's uh a domain about violence.

883
00:47:49,620 --> 00:47:54,580
So kind of your interest in, let's say, like MMA would be a good example of a high violence

884
00:47:54,580 --> 00:47:56,500
score on the morbid curiosity scale.

885
00:47:56,660 --> 00:47:58,260
There's one about body violations.

886
00:47:58,340 --> 00:48:03,490
Um, that would be an interest in like medical oddities or surgeries or uh injuries or

887
00:48:03,490 --> 00:48:04,450
things like that.

888
00:48:04,690 --> 00:48:06,930
There's one about uh the minds of dangerous people.

889
00:48:07,010 --> 00:48:11,650
So sort of understanding uh and predicting people who act like predators, people who have

890
00:48:11,730 --> 00:48:17,250
who hide their intentions, who are um uh trying to harm you without letting you know it.

891
00:48:17,490 --> 00:48:23,240
Um, and then there is supernatural, which is kind of this uh it's it's got a lot of layers

892
00:48:23,240 --> 00:48:23,400
to it.

893
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:27,720
But the simple way to say it is that uh dangers that aren't incredibly clear to us yet, or

894
00:48:27,720 --> 00:48:32,040
we don't have good access to understand how dangerous they are aliens, ghosts, demons,

895
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:32,520
whatever.

896
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:36,120
Like we get a sense they're dangerous because they're hiding from us and they have these

897
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:39,320
incredible technologies or abilities to slip into other worlds.

898
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:43,480
Um, but because they're not right in front of us, we can't study them well, we can't

899
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:44,280
understand them well.

900
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:48,280
So you have those four categories, and they tend to correlate pretty highly, but there are

901
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:49,640
some distinctions between them.

902
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:53,230
Uh, And they do load onto this kind of single factor of morbid curiosity.

903
00:48:53,390 --> 00:48:58,350
Now, if you look at zombie movies, zombies are human-like, seem to have intentions.

904
00:48:58,510 --> 00:48:59,790
Certainly they're hungry.

905
00:49:00,270 --> 00:49:02,750
So they kind of tap into that minds of dangerous people thing.

906
00:49:02,830 --> 00:49:05,790
Like, is this person like, do they have intentions or not?

907
00:49:06,030 --> 00:49:10,750
They tap into the violence part because, of course, when a zombie catches you, it enacts

908
00:49:10,750 --> 00:49:12,190
incredible violence upon you.

909
00:49:12,460 --> 00:49:17,180
The outcome of that violence is body violation because they're kind of rotting, their flesh

910
00:49:17,180 --> 00:49:17,740
is falling off.

911
00:49:17,820 --> 00:49:20,140
And then if they catch you, your flesh is falling off.

912
00:49:20,380 --> 00:49:23,980
Uh, and they tap into the supernatural a little bit because it's not clear why they're

913
00:49:23,980 --> 00:49:26,060
doing what they're doing, why they're zombies, are they humans?

914
00:49:26,140 --> 00:49:26,700
Are they something else?

915
00:49:26,860 --> 00:49:27,420
Will they change?

916
00:49:27,500 --> 00:49:28,780
We don't know enough about them.

917
00:49:29,020 --> 00:49:32,700
And so they sort of uh there's something for everyone.

918
00:49:32,780 --> 00:49:37,660
Like, no matter where your morbid curiosity kind of falls, zombie movies have something for

919
00:49:37,660 --> 00:49:37,900
you.

920
00:49:38,060 --> 00:49:43,710
Um, so I think that combined with the sort of transition they take from early

921
00:49:43,710 --> 00:49:49,310
horror, which captures your attention, to more of an action thriller, which maybe sustains

922
00:49:49,310 --> 00:49:50,590
your attention a little better.

923
00:49:50,750 --> 00:49:53,230
Um, makes them really good for things like TV shows.

924
00:49:53,310 --> 00:49:57,870
That's why The Walking Dead had like 11 seasons and five spinoffs or whatever.

925
00:49:58,030 --> 00:50:01,630
You know, uh, there's an infinite number of stories you can tell about that and you can

926
00:50:01,630 --> 00:50:03,390
kind of just keep iterating on that.

927
00:50:03,780 --> 00:50:04,340
Yeah, totally.

928
00:50:04,500 --> 00:50:08,740
And there's also the contagion element, which also gives gives rise to all sorts of

929
00:50:08,980 --> 00:50:12,100
subplots and conflicts, you know, where if someone is infected, they're going to turn into

930
00:50:12,100 --> 00:50:16,740
a zombie, you know, all that yeah, all that stuff, um which might tap into our disgust.

931
00:50:16,820 --> 00:50:16,980
Yeah.

932
00:50:17,540 --> 00:50:17,940
Exactly.

933
00:50:18,100 --> 00:50:23,860
And I think infection too, certainly historically, like pre-germ theory of disease,

934
00:50:24,180 --> 00:50:29,090
um most diseases, infections were given a supernatural explanation, right?

935
00:50:29,170 --> 00:50:30,370
It's something that we couldn't explain.

936
00:50:30,450 --> 00:50:31,810
Like, why is this person getting sick?

937
00:50:31,970 --> 00:50:35,570
Why are they getting uh you know open source all over their body?

938
00:50:35,650 --> 00:50:37,330
Why are they acting insane?

939
00:50:37,570 --> 00:50:43,490
All of these things that we now attribute to diseases or uh of various kinds, infectious or

940
00:50:43,490 --> 00:50:47,170
otherwise, um, we used to attribute to supernatural causes.

941
00:50:47,330 --> 00:50:53,250
I have a quote in my book uh about an anthropologist who goes to this tribe that has a

942
00:50:53,250 --> 00:50:55,200
really bad guinea word problem.

943
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:59,840
And so she encourages them to like boil their water so that they can kill the worms.

944
00:50:59,920 --> 00:51:03,600
And they kind of laugh at her and they're like, Well, that doesn't stop the witches who are

945
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:04,400
putting the worms there.

946
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:07,440
That doesn't stop the witches from from causing these problems.

947
00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:13,440
Um, so I think that infection, even when we understand scientifically what it is, like, oh,

948
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:17,520
I'm sick, I have whatever a virus or a bacterial infection.

949
00:51:17,770 --> 00:51:21,530
uh, it probably taps into something about like an unknown danger.

950
00:51:21,610 --> 00:51:25,130
And that's kind of a taps into that supernatural element as well.

951
00:51:25,450 --> 00:51:31,050
Yeah, I think that supernatural category is uh, I mean, I don't know if the best way to

952
00:51:31,050 --> 00:51:35,210
characterize it is supernatural or scientific, and and like I'm I'm I know you're not

953
00:51:35,210 --> 00:51:39,050
saying that, but even like for for the listeners, in the sense of, you know, from the

954
00:51:39,050 --> 00:51:43,290
evolved psychology perspective, and I think Rob Boyd used to say this all the time: is like

955
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:45,920
all of life is like very causally opaque.

956
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:47,520
This is also a John Tube point.

957
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:52,720
And so to the extent that there are sort of like known co-relationships, like you don't

958
00:51:52,720 --> 00:51:57,520
know why we put this in the food and this is what we do, but we just do it, you know?

959
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:02,320
And so there's sort of you can imagine there's selection for this placeholder of like very

960
00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:05,850
opaque causality, and we can kind of laugh at people.

961
00:52:05,930 --> 00:52:09,850
I like we had this episode with Brenda Bowser uh where somebody was killed.

962
00:52:10,010 --> 00:52:13,450
It was like a for real like murder where there was like blood on the walls.

963
00:52:13,690 --> 00:52:17,610
And David, do you remember what the um what was the attribution?

964
00:52:17,930 --> 00:52:19,130
Oh how how could I forget?

965
00:52:19,210 --> 00:52:19,370
Yeah.

966
00:52:19,530 --> 00:52:19,690
Yeah.

967
00:52:19,850 --> 00:52:23,130
So they they attributed the murder to to a phantasm.

968
00:52:23,530 --> 00:52:24,090
Phantasm.

969
00:52:24,570 --> 00:52:24,730
Yeah.

970
00:52:24,970 --> 00:52:25,850
Yeah, exactly.

971
00:52:26,010 --> 00:52:31,450
And so like this idea, and I mean Brenda's idea was sort of that was what they attributed

972
00:52:31,450 --> 00:52:37,140
to, to sort of uh and maybe self-consciously or not, but it doesn't really matter,

973
00:52:37,300 --> 00:52:41,940
to sort of quell the repercussions, the social repercussions of who did it.

974
00:52:42,020 --> 00:52:47,460
It was a way to sort of, you know, stick this, this, to end the end the conflict there.

975
00:52:47,700 --> 00:52:53,220
But I think for everything of like, you know, why is there disease or anything, um, yeah,

976
00:52:53,300 --> 00:52:57,710
this idea of sort sort of spirituality, like this placeholder, whatever you want to call

977
00:52:57,710 --> 00:52:57,870
that.

978
00:52:58,030 --> 00:53:00,670
I assume that's also what we all are doing with science, too.

979
00:53:00,750 --> 00:53:05,790
Like whatever we think, you know, whatever forces are, like these occult forces that Newton

980
00:53:05,790 --> 00:53:06,590
discovered, right?

981
00:53:06,750 --> 00:53:12,350
Like this just this just slots into that evolves entry of like the world is causally

982
00:53:12,350 --> 00:53:16,990
opaque, and I'm just gonna like, okay, tentative thing, and I'm just gonna stick some story

983
00:53:16,990 --> 00:53:17,470
onto it.

984
00:53:17,550 --> 00:53:19,230
That's sort of it's the ontology.

985
00:53:19,310 --> 00:53:22,510
Uh well, and uh Aaron, I think it's Aaron Leitner and N.

986
00:53:22,590 --> 00:53:27,780
Hagen, they uh published a paper a year or two ago that I think is probably the best uh

987
00:53:27,860 --> 00:53:32,580
sort of EV psych approach to why do we believe in the supernatural that I've seen in their

988
00:53:32,580 --> 00:53:36,660
explanation is that it gives us a starting point to kind of ratchet from and then produce

989
00:53:36,660 --> 00:53:41,060
decisions from to explore identity, to explore space, you know, uh from.

990
00:53:41,300 --> 00:53:44,180
Because otherwise, you know, if I ask, well, why did this happen?

991
00:53:44,340 --> 00:53:45,540
I have an infinite number of answers.

992
00:53:45,620 --> 00:53:47,860
There's an infinite number of places I can start.

993
00:53:48,100 --> 00:53:53,430
Uh but if but if I just have a few assumptions, you know, that an agent caused it,

994
00:53:53,990 --> 00:53:58,550
that radically constrains the number of possibilities of what happened and how do I deal

995
00:53:58,550 --> 00:54:00,790
with it, how do I avoid it, how do I whatever?

996
00:54:01,430 --> 00:54:03,270
How do I do anything about it?

997
00:54:03,750 --> 00:54:08,790
Um and so even though that's wrong a lot, it's right enough and it's better than not having

998
00:54:08,790 --> 00:54:09,670
any starting point.

999
00:54:09,830 --> 00:54:10,070
Yeah.

1000
00:54:10,390 --> 00:54:14,920
Um I think the starting point we have is, you know, well, maybe someone did it.

1001
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:18,440
Well, if someone did it and they weren't here, they must have powers of some kind.

1002
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:20,600
If they have those kind of powers, they must be pretty strong.

1003
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:24,040
I should probably be afraid of them or try to, you know, get away from them or deal with

1004
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:26,840
them or collect allies to deal with them.

1005
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:27,400
Yeah.

1006
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:32,040
To not go too far afield of zombies, and then we can go on to something else.

1007
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:36,200
But uh, I was also wondering if, because when David was asking that, I had the same

1008
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:41,490
question about what's up with zombies and this idea of contagion, where in addition to sort

1009
00:54:41,490 --> 00:54:45,810
of the deep structure grammar of there's these things about body violations and about, you

1010
00:54:45,810 --> 00:54:50,690
know, formidability, I wonder what you think about sort of these like archetype things

1011
00:54:50,850 --> 00:54:55,890
where, you know, clearly like people, you know, and Ed Hagen, you know, again to Ed Hagen,

1012
00:54:55,970 --> 00:55:00,980
you know, there's this long history of sort of zoonotic uh infection in people.

1013
00:55:01,300 --> 00:55:07,060
Um, and a reliably occurring thing is like just differences in people's sort

1014
00:55:07,060 --> 00:55:09,620
of state, you know, like am I been poisoned?

1015
00:55:09,780 --> 00:55:10,740
Am I sick?

1016
00:55:11,060 --> 00:55:17,060
Um, the the sort of like these sort of archetypes, like I think it's an easy thing to

1017
00:55:17,060 --> 00:55:17,220
think.

1018
00:55:17,300 --> 00:55:21,140
And I imagine many evolutionary psychologists when watching a zombie movie have thought,

1019
00:55:21,300 --> 00:55:27,230
gee, I wonder if that's because a reliable part of our history has been like people acting

1020
00:55:27,230 --> 00:55:28,590
weirdly when they're infected.

1021
00:55:28,910 --> 00:55:30,510
Do you buy that or is that too facile?

1022
00:55:30,670 --> 00:55:31,150
Or what do you think?

1023
00:55:31,310 --> 00:55:31,950
No, no, no, no.

1024
00:55:32,030 --> 00:55:35,790
I think that's um I would be surprised if that does not contribute to it, right?

1025
00:55:35,870 --> 00:55:39,870
I think that plays into that again, kind of the the minds of dangerous people aspect of

1026
00:55:39,870 --> 00:55:41,470
like, well, what's going on with these people?

1027
00:55:41,630 --> 00:55:42,430
Are they sick?

1028
00:55:42,590 --> 00:55:45,310
Are they like just violent and and awful?

1029
00:55:45,470 --> 00:55:50,190
Like what's and I think you see that explicitly made in a lot of zombie movies and TV shows

1030
00:55:50,270 --> 00:55:54,320
where it's like, um, well, I think we can find a cure and bring them back, right?

1031
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:56,400
I think that they're still human underneath.

1032
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:01,040
I think that um maybe if we just do X, Y, or Z, we can get them back.

1033
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:04,080
And I think that plays into that intuition that you just mentioned.

1034
00:56:04,240 --> 00:56:09,360
Um, that, you know, we've had to deal with people who kind of looked and maybe acted like

1035
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:15,280
zombies uh because they were uh sick and drinking lead polluted water and uh all kinds of

1036
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:16,880
other nasty things that made them crazy.

1037
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:17,280
Right.

1038
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:21,120
Uh that was probably not an unusual thing for most of human history.

1039
00:56:21,410 --> 00:56:26,450
Or we ran into other uh species of hominids that didn't speak our language and were acted

1040
00:56:26,450 --> 00:56:32,370
differently from us and um maybe looked like monsters of certain kinds, like Bigfoot or

1041
00:56:32,370 --> 00:56:34,210
Yetis or other kinds of things like that.

1042
00:56:34,450 --> 00:56:39,170
One of my favorite um things that I've seen, which I don't know if I believe it or not, but

1043
00:56:39,170 --> 00:56:42,960
it certainly makes for a good story, is that uh, you know, the existence of the uncanny the

1044
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:43,520
uncanny valley.

1045
00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:49,040
So this idea that as things become more human looking, um, we like them until they get

1046
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,640
about 70 or 80% human looking, and it takes a huge dip and we don't like them at all.

1047
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:56,480
And then when they get like 95% human looking, we start to like them again.

1048
00:56:56,720 --> 00:57:01,120
Um, one of my favorite things I've seen is that, well, that uh the reason that we find that

1049
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:05,090
creepier, the fact that we find that creepier, a bit scary, suggests that we had something

1050
00:57:05,090 --> 00:57:08,690
to be scared of in the past for things that looked kind of human but weren't.

1051
00:57:08,930 --> 00:57:11,490
Um so other other hominid species, right?

1052
00:57:11,570 --> 00:57:15,810
Was I think what they were hinting at, like Neanderthals that were violent or dangerous

1053
00:57:15,810 --> 00:57:20,450
towards us, or uh Denizovens, or any other number of, you know, now they've discovered like

1054
00:57:20,450 --> 00:57:23,890
four or five different hominid species that existed alongside Homo sapiens.

1055
00:57:24,610 --> 00:57:28,840
Um and, you know, while I don't think there's any evidence for that claim, it certainly

1056
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:32,600
like seems plausible to me that that's one reason why we might have this like strange

1057
00:57:32,680 --> 00:57:38,680
uncanny valley uh response to things that look and act pretty human, but

1058
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:40,760
there's just like something off about them.

1059
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:41,480
Yeah.

1060
00:57:41,800 --> 00:57:43,000
Similar with zombies, right?

1061
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:47,160
I think a a big explanation that, you know, before I started doing work that I'm doing now

1062
00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:51,080
that I ran into for why we like zombies or why we find them scary, rather, is that well,

1063
00:57:51,160 --> 00:57:53,000
they trigger our uncanny valley response.

1064
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:57,190
But then, you know, you just the question to ask is, well, what does that even mean?

1065
00:57:57,350 --> 00:57:57,910
What why?

1066
00:57:58,070 --> 00:57:58,470
You know?

1067
00:57:58,790 --> 00:57:59,030
Yeah.

1068
00:57:59,190 --> 00:57:59,590
Yeah.

1069
00:57:59,830 --> 00:58:05,830
Um, this definition of horror too, it strikes me as, you know, there's a population of

1070
00:58:05,830 --> 00:58:09,350
people for whom almost everything is horror than, and that is children.

1071
00:58:09,430 --> 00:58:10,630
Uh uh, right.

1072
00:58:10,790 --> 00:58:13,910
Because I mean, the world is much more formidable than you.

1073
00:58:14,150 --> 00:58:15,430
Everyone is more formidable.

1074
00:58:15,670 --> 00:58:20,470
And I was also thinking about, you know, like a lot of Disney stories are horror, right?

1075
00:58:20,550 --> 00:58:22,310
If you kind of take this definition.

1076
00:58:22,700 --> 00:58:28,380
Um and so I has that been part of the and I you know there's a lot to ask about

1077
00:58:28,380 --> 00:58:32,940
kids and development of this, but has that been part of the research on like or is that

1078
00:58:32,940 --> 00:58:34,620
sort of a a blind spot so far?

1079
00:58:34,780 --> 00:58:36,940
Not in yours, I'm saying, but just sort of generally, yeah.

1080
00:58:37,260 --> 00:58:37,820
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1081
00:58:37,900 --> 00:58:43,900
It's definitely not a part of my research because uh it's much more, you know, it takes

1082
00:58:43,990 --> 00:58:47,910
special training to work with kids and thinking a certain kind of way and designing

1083
00:58:47,910 --> 00:58:48,950
experiments in a certain kind of way.

1084
00:58:49,030 --> 00:58:52,310
And it's something that I'm not an expert at when it comes to those kinds of things.

1085
00:58:52,630 --> 00:58:54,870
But that it's more difficult IRB-wise.

1086
00:58:54,950 --> 00:58:58,630
There's just a lot of reasons of why working with kids is uh is difficult.

1087
00:58:58,950 --> 00:59:04,870
Um but that being said, uh some of my colleagues at the recreational fear lag are

1088
00:59:04,870 --> 00:59:09,180
uh developmental psychologists and they have done these kinds of studies with kids,

1089
00:59:09,340 --> 00:59:15,180
specifically looking at things like um what kinds of stories do

1090
00:59:15,340 --> 00:59:21,020
daycares or or kindergartens um teachers tell the students, right?

1091
00:59:21,260 --> 00:59:24,620
A lot of times they're scary stories, and a lot of times they're scary stories because

1092
00:59:24,620 --> 00:59:26,300
that's what the kids request.

1093
00:59:26,700 --> 00:59:31,340
Uh there was this paper that just came out by them that I haven't actually read yet, but it

1094
00:59:31,340 --> 00:59:37,010
looked at different types of fear, uh fearful, playful activities that kids um

1095
00:59:37,090 --> 00:59:37,650
engage in.

1096
00:59:37,730 --> 00:59:40,530
And it turns out they engage, I mean I kind of skimmed it, they engage in a lot of

1097
00:59:40,530 --> 00:59:42,290
different scary activities.

1098
00:59:42,450 --> 00:59:44,370
And they don't look scary to us because we're adults.

1099
00:59:44,530 --> 00:59:48,690
Like you just said, the world is uh much, much more of a horror story to kids because

1100
00:59:48,690 --> 00:59:50,370
everything is more formidable to them.

1101
00:59:50,690 --> 00:59:55,330
So when we watch kids, you know, play even pretend games like tag or hide and seek or

1102
00:59:55,330 --> 00:59:59,140
whatever, that doesn't look scary to us, but to a kid, hide and seek it, hide and seek and

1103
00:59:59,140 --> 01:00:00,740
tag are just predator prey games, right?

1104
01:00:00,820 --> 01:00:03,940
It's like somebody is it and they're trying to get you and they're either chasing you or

1105
01:00:03,940 --> 01:00:05,460
they're looking for you and you're hiding.

1106
01:00:05,620 --> 01:00:06,020
Yeah.

1107
01:00:06,260 --> 01:00:12,260
Um and I think that kids, you know, I I give a story in my book of a time when I I

1108
01:00:12,260 --> 01:00:16,020
had this job as a mad scientist where I would do like summer camps, like science summer

1109
01:00:16,020 --> 01:00:16,260
camps.

1110
01:00:16,610 --> 01:00:17,330
I was like a knockoff.

1111
01:00:17,410 --> 01:00:18,610
I was like a knockoff Bill and I.

1112
01:00:18,770 --> 01:00:19,810
Like you can't afford Bill and I.

1113
01:00:19,970 --> 01:00:20,690
So you get this company.

1114
01:00:21,170 --> 01:00:23,730
I'm imagining like blood, blood-splattered lab coat.

1115
01:00:24,850 --> 01:00:25,330
I wish.

1116
01:00:25,410 --> 01:00:25,810
I wish.

1117
01:00:25,970 --> 01:00:26,930
It was more tame than that.

1118
01:00:27,010 --> 01:00:30,210
It was just like you, you know, you teach the kids a wide variety of topics.

1119
01:00:30,290 --> 01:00:34,530
Um, you know, everything from forensics and entomology to chemistry and you know, biology,

1120
01:00:34,690 --> 01:00:38,610
everything you could do that was interesting enough to keep kids' attention from ages like

1121
01:00:38,800 --> 01:00:40,000
four to 10.

1122
01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:40,480
Yeah.

1123
01:00:40,880 --> 01:00:45,200
And one of the things I found being I was at the time I was, you know, in my 20s, didn't

1124
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:47,280
have kids, I never taught kids.

1125
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:49,440
It's a different skill set, like I mentioned.

1126
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:52,880
One of the things I quickly learned is that you have to take a lot of breaks.

1127
01:00:53,040 --> 01:00:56,400
Like you gotta give them time to run around and and and be kids.

1128
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:59,600
And they want to play games and they want to do things that are interactive.

1129
01:00:59,850 --> 01:01:04,810
And um, I started playing the game Mafia with them, uh, which is like the game werewolf.

1130
01:01:04,890 --> 01:01:07,930
If you've if you're familiar with that, I'm sure David, you certainly are.

1131
01:01:08,170 --> 01:01:13,850
Um and so the idea is that you know, there's this town, and there are these two, usually

1132
01:01:13,930 --> 01:01:16,970
two killers, and like a sheriff and a doctor, and the rest of the people are just

1133
01:01:16,970 --> 01:01:17,770
townspeople.

1134
01:01:17,930 --> 01:01:21,210
And the kids kind of put their heads down and they go to sleep at night, and I play the

1135
01:01:21,210 --> 01:01:23,450
part of the narrator and I narrate the story of what happens.

1136
01:01:23,530 --> 01:01:27,940
Like, oh, the in this case, the mafia members come out and they killed a member of the

1137
01:01:27,940 --> 01:01:29,300
community last night.

1138
01:01:29,460 --> 01:01:33,380
You know, you have to find out who they are and uh and get justice and you hang them.

1139
01:01:33,540 --> 01:01:37,940
It's like kind of a violent game, but I I I kept it very tame because I had like again five

1140
01:01:37,940 --> 01:01:38,500
to ten year olds.

1141
01:01:38,660 --> 01:01:41,540
I didn't want them going home to their parents and saying, Oh, I killed my best friend at

1142
01:01:41,620 --> 01:01:42,980
set mad science camp today.

1143
01:01:43,060 --> 01:01:46,100
You know, if they were German kids, they would have been perfectly fine.

1144
01:01:46,180 --> 01:01:47,300
This is a very cultural specific.

1145
01:01:47,700 --> 01:01:49,700
It turns out like yeah.

1146
01:01:50,020 --> 01:01:54,990
Yeah, it well, so what I found was that in one of those papers I mentioned, Uh, that's one

1147
01:01:54,990 --> 01:01:59,390
of the games that uh kids in Denmark love to play, like little kids love to play that game.

1148
01:01:59,470 --> 01:01:59,630
Yeah.

1149
01:01:59,790 --> 01:02:03,470
And I quickly discovered that American kids also love that game when you give them the

1150
01:02:03,470 --> 01:02:03,790
opportunity.

1151
01:02:03,950 --> 01:02:07,550
And what was even better is that, you know, when they got good at it and they started

1152
01:02:07,550 --> 01:02:10,910
understanding the rules, I would let one of them be the narrator so that I didn't have to

1153
01:02:10,910 --> 01:02:11,070
do it.

1154
01:02:11,150 --> 01:02:13,310
And because they wanted to play the part of Storyteller.

1155
01:02:14,110 --> 01:02:18,670
But when they were the storyteller, it was like the worst gruesome horror story of all

1156
01:02:18,670 --> 01:02:18,910
time.

1157
01:02:19,070 --> 01:02:20,270
Mine, mine was super tame.

1158
01:02:20,350 --> 01:02:25,140
It would just be, you know, the mafia came to town and they they killed a person.

1159
01:02:25,300 --> 01:02:26,580
You need to figure out who did it, right?

1160
01:02:26,820 --> 01:02:30,740
Try to keep it like as vanilla as possible because they were like young kids and not my

1161
01:02:30,740 --> 01:02:31,140
kids.

1162
01:02:31,380 --> 01:02:35,460
And then when they became the narrators, it was just like, oh, they they had a knife and

1163
01:02:35,460 --> 01:02:39,060
they shoved it in his stomach and they pulled it all the way up to his head and then they

1164
01:02:39,060 --> 01:02:42,100
pulled his heart, you know, just like these gruesome, awful things.

1165
01:02:42,500 --> 01:02:48,190
Um, so they love, I think kids love exploring those kind of topics in a safe way, right?

1166
01:02:48,270 --> 01:02:53,310
That's one way for them to kind of play with those ideas and play with like imagine those

1167
01:02:53,310 --> 01:02:58,110
scenarios and what that would be like and then learn how to kind of navigate like a horror

1168
01:02:58,110 --> 01:03:00,990
story, but in a but in a in a way that's not in their face.

1169
01:03:01,070 --> 01:03:01,950
It's not a film, right?

1170
01:03:02,030 --> 01:03:04,430
Like film is very real, looks very real.

1171
01:03:04,590 --> 01:03:04,670
Right.

1172
01:03:04,830 --> 01:03:08,910
And if you're doing play pretend with your friends and like you're telling the story and

1173
01:03:08,910 --> 01:03:12,910
there's no visuals, it's much easier to take a step back and kind of navigate that.

1174
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:13,360
Right.

1175
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:17,440
It's it's sort of sort of a callback to this point we made earlier, which is sort of by

1176
01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:20,800
it's the people who feel better after they listen to true crime.

1177
01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:26,720
It's that maybe this cartoonish view of like we're protecting kids by keeping all these

1178
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:28,000
things away from them.

1179
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:32,000
By inhibiting that natural curiosity, it might actually backfire.

1180
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:38,050
And that uh letting kids actually sort of in a in a in their own sort of titration

1181
01:03:38,130 --> 01:03:41,330
uh of this stuff sort of d interact with this stuff.

1182
01:03:41,490 --> 01:03:45,570
And it's funny too because, you know, like Germany sort of famously is sort of like I

1183
01:03:45,570 --> 01:03:51,250
bought a um when I was living in Germany I bought a brother's grim uh German language like,

1184
01:03:51,330 --> 01:03:52,610
you know, kids book.

1185
01:03:52,770 --> 01:03:56,930
And, you know, even if you read these German fairy tales and Germans will say this all the

1186
01:03:56,930 --> 01:04:02,210
time, the English translations of them are still quite bad, but they're often already

1187
01:04:02,340 --> 01:04:08,260
filtered toned down toned down way toned down i mean it's incredible um you know like

1188
01:04:08,340 --> 01:04:13,540
just sort of like you know like cannibalism and like death and like all of these like

1189
01:04:13,620 --> 01:04:17,540
really and i and i it's kind of a funny thing and everybody laughs about it germans laugh

1190
01:04:17,540 --> 01:04:21,700
about it americans laugh about it but i do wonder if you know there's there's all this data

1191
01:04:21,700 --> 01:04:26,810
that like especially american kids are super anxious super scared.

1192
01:04:26,970 --> 01:04:30,490
And there's also concomitant with that is like just this quote unquote helicopter

1193
01:04:30,490 --> 01:04:33,050
parenting, or just like really trying to, you know.

1194
01:04:33,210 --> 01:04:38,650
And I wonder if to some degree, you know, it's kind of like this uh where it's almost like

1195
01:04:38,650 --> 01:04:42,810
we have this like hygiene of like we're just trying to keep super clean and it sort of

1196
01:04:42,810 --> 01:04:43,370
backfires.

1197
01:04:43,450 --> 01:04:47,530
I wonder if the same thing with sort of like bad things or like scary things.

1198
01:04:47,610 --> 01:04:49,610
I wonder if a similar thing happens.

1199
01:04:50,010 --> 01:04:54,570
Yeah, I mean, I would uh I feel pretty confident in saying that it's it's not good

1200
01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:59,160
to prevent kids from experiencing fear in a safe way.

1201
01:04:59,320 --> 01:05:01,960
Because then how are they ever going to learn how to deal with that emotion when they're

1202
01:05:01,960 --> 01:05:03,000
teenagers or adults?

1203
01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:03,320
Right.

1204
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:03,880
Right.

1205
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:07,320
Uh in fact, they're going to think that they should avoid it and they're going to become

1206
01:05:07,400 --> 01:05:10,040
avoidant, which is not a great coping style.

1207
01:05:10,360 --> 01:05:15,240
Um and I when I was so I was in Germany, last time I was in Germany, it was like a year ago

1208
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:15,880
or two years ago.

1209
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:19,400
And I went to the Black Forest where all the Grimm's fairy tales are supposedly take place,

1210
01:05:19,480 --> 01:05:19,640
right?

1211
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:22,040
It's like, man, I can, I can understand why they take place here.

1212
01:05:22,120 --> 01:05:24,630
It's a frightening, like, it's a very cool place to be.

1213
01:05:24,870 --> 01:05:25,990
Man, it's like very scary.

1214
01:05:26,070 --> 01:05:27,750
I can imagine, you know, being there after dark.

1215
01:05:27,830 --> 01:05:32,230
It just would be all sorts of horrible things I can imagine coming out of like the bowels

1216
01:05:32,230 --> 01:05:33,110
of that forest.

1217
01:05:33,430 --> 01:05:33,750
Yeah.

1218
01:05:33,910 --> 01:05:39,830
Um, but yeah, I think I think it's uh I I have talked about this um more in my book,

1219
01:05:39,910 --> 01:05:43,110
but less so in my research, because again, I don't really study kids myself, but other

1220
01:05:43,110 --> 01:05:44,470
people do with respect to this.

1221
01:05:44,550 --> 01:05:48,710
And uh I think there's good evidence that you know, preventing kids from engaging in

1222
01:05:48,710 --> 01:05:54,400
thrilling play um seems to correlate with higher

1223
01:05:54,400 --> 01:05:59,920
uh anxiety problems in uh when they're teenagers and adults, like higher incidence of of

1224
01:05:59,920 --> 01:06:01,280
anxiety disorders.

1225
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:02,800
Uh and it makes sense, right?

1226
01:06:02,880 --> 01:06:06,400
Like if you don't learn how to deal with an emotion, you're not gonna get good at dealing

1227
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:07,680
with that emotion, right?

1228
01:06:07,920 --> 01:06:11,680
Um, and I think that's one thing that horror fans do well, right?

1229
01:06:11,760 --> 01:06:16,250
They uh they consistently confront feeling afraid and feeling anxious.

1230
01:06:16,410 --> 01:06:20,490
And uh I think there's some evidence that it actually helps them deal with anxiety.

1231
01:06:20,650 --> 01:06:23,770
There was a study that I believe it's a preprint right now, but it's with true crime.

1232
01:06:23,930 --> 01:06:29,690
And it was a diary study um looking at people who were true crime fans and like

1233
01:06:29,770 --> 01:06:32,410
when did they watch their last true crime show?

1234
01:06:32,650 --> 01:06:36,010
How were they feeling that day when they watched it, and the and the day after?

1235
01:06:36,170 --> 01:06:41,520
And there was pretty good evidence that having watched a true crime show on day X would uh

1236
01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:45,280
was correlated with lower anxiety on day X plus one.

1237
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:51,440
And that feeling anxious was correlated with watching true crime on day X, uh, which

1238
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:52,720
is stuff that I've hinted at before.

1239
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:56,800
I have a big theoretical paper kind of laying out some of the reasons why this might be

1240
01:06:56,880 --> 01:07:02,400
with scary narratives generally, like why one, why anxious people seem to be drawn to them

1241
01:07:02,400 --> 01:07:05,200
sometimes, because that seems like the last thing they should be drawn to.

1242
01:07:05,390 --> 01:07:10,030
And two, can it actually be useful or can we leverage it to be useful for some people?

1243
01:07:10,190 --> 01:07:14,910
Um, and the simple answer is that like, well, they seem to be drawn to it because anxiety

1244
01:07:14,910 --> 01:07:15,790
ups your vigilance.

1245
01:07:15,950 --> 01:07:19,150
And if you're upping your vigilance, that's gonna up your vigilance for scary stories too.

1246
01:07:19,230 --> 01:07:21,390
So you're gonna be kind of interested and drawn to that.

1247
01:07:21,550 --> 01:07:26,990
Um, and then the answer for why it might be helpful in the moment is that if you're

1248
01:07:26,990 --> 01:07:31,080
feeling particularly with generalized anxiety, you don't have a source of your anxiety,

1249
01:07:31,160 --> 01:07:32,280
you're just feeling anxious, right?

1250
01:07:32,360 --> 01:07:35,560
It's like really destructive form of anxiety because there's not a lot you can do about it.

1251
01:07:35,640 --> 01:07:38,840
You can't like change the thing that's making you feel anxious because you don't know what

1252
01:07:38,840 --> 01:07:39,240
it is.

1253
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:41,800
So you get in these big rumination cycles.

1254
01:07:42,040 --> 01:07:45,960
And then, you know, common advice like, oh, try relaxing.

1255
01:07:46,200 --> 01:07:50,280
Doesn't really work for those people because threat tends to have a premium on your

1256
01:07:50,280 --> 01:07:52,360
attention and on your cognitive resources.

1257
01:07:52,520 --> 01:07:56,010
And so when you try to relax, it's just like pretty futile, right?

1258
01:07:56,170 --> 01:07:59,450
Um, but what you can do is maybe fight fire with fire a little bit.

1259
01:07:59,610 --> 01:08:03,770
Go turn on a scary story that will capture your attention or at least compete with your

1260
01:08:03,770 --> 01:08:07,370
attention, compete with ruminating anxious thoughts for your attention.

1261
01:08:07,610 --> 01:08:10,570
And then it draws you in if it's a compelling story, if it's a well-written story,

1262
01:08:10,730 --> 01:08:12,890
well-told story, it'll draw you in.

1263
01:08:12,970 --> 01:08:16,490
And it'll kind of you can't really like worry about you can't actively worry about two

1264
01:08:16,490 --> 01:08:16,970
things at once.

1265
01:08:17,050 --> 01:08:17,930
Like you can try this, right?

1266
01:08:18,010 --> 01:08:19,850
Like try like worrying about two different things.

1267
01:08:19,930 --> 01:08:23,380
You can shift between them, but you can't like hold two of them in your mind at the same

1268
01:08:23,380 --> 01:08:24,420
time and worry about them.

1269
01:08:24,580 --> 01:08:28,820
So if you get sucked into this story, you know, you have 90 minutes of like a

1270
01:08:28,820 --> 01:08:31,860
semi-controlled anxiety, semi-controlled fear.

1271
01:08:31,940 --> 01:08:34,180
You can pause it, you can watch it with lights on, watch it with a friend.

1272
01:08:34,260 --> 01:08:37,300
There's a lot of things you can do to kind of tone down and control the source of the

1273
01:08:37,300 --> 01:08:38,020
anxiety.

1274
01:08:38,180 --> 01:08:42,340
And then after 90 minutes, the thing that was causing your anxiety now is gone, right?

1275
01:08:42,420 --> 01:08:42,820
It goes away.

1276
01:08:42,900 --> 01:08:43,700
The film ends.

1277
01:08:43,780 --> 01:08:48,390
And it kind of uh gives you an off-ramp for those rumination cycles and allows your

1278
01:08:48,390 --> 01:08:52,310
parasympathetic nervous system to activate like it should when a threat goes away, which

1279
01:08:52,310 --> 01:08:55,190
then physiologically calms you down, right?

1280
01:08:55,510 --> 01:08:57,510
Um, that's all in the short term.

1281
01:08:57,670 --> 01:08:59,670
In the long term, we've kind of talked about this.

1282
01:08:59,750 --> 01:09:03,350
Uh, it can give you tools for learning how to deal with anxiety because when you're

1283
01:09:03,350 --> 01:09:08,840
watching a scary movie um or going to a haunted house or playing a scary game, most people

1284
01:09:08,840 --> 01:09:12,280
are actually not trying to make it as scary as possible.

1285
01:09:12,520 --> 01:09:15,640
Like we found this in haunted even in haunted house studies that I've done where we go to a

1286
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:17,320
haunted attraction in Halloween.

1287
01:09:17,560 --> 01:09:21,720
Um, most people are trying to hit like a sweet spot where like it's is really scary, but

1288
01:09:21,720 --> 01:09:23,160
it's not too much for them to handle.

1289
01:09:23,480 --> 01:09:27,080
Well, by definition, to do that, you have to regulate how afraid you are, right?

1290
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:30,760
You have to regulate how anxious you're feeling in order to hit that sweet spot.

1291
01:09:31,000 --> 01:09:36,850
Um, and by doing that, you are inherently like just practicing or implicitly practicing

1292
01:09:37,490 --> 01:09:42,850
cognitive uh reappraisal skills, emotion regulation skills, things that you can apply when

1293
01:09:42,850 --> 01:09:46,770
you're feeling afraid or anxious because of something else that's happening in the world.

1294
01:09:47,010 --> 01:09:49,730
And so if you can, if you can train yourself to think about those things and what you're

1295
01:09:49,730 --> 01:09:53,730
doing to calm yourself down, what you're doing to achieve that sweet spot, uh, you might be

1296
01:09:53,730 --> 01:09:58,540
able to recognize some of these tools and then apply them in your life outside of horror

1297
01:09:58,540 --> 01:09:58,940
movies.

1298
01:09:59,180 --> 01:09:59,340
Yeah.

1299
01:09:59,500 --> 01:09:59,980
I like that.

1300
01:10:00,060 --> 01:10:05,420
So Pascal Boyer and Leonard who passed away, Michael Monkruff's advisor, um, they had this

1301
01:10:05,420 --> 01:10:07,580
great paper about sort of anxiety and OCD.

1302
01:10:07,660 --> 01:10:11,420
And we won't go into all those details we should have Pascal on, but this thing about like

1303
01:10:11,420 --> 01:10:15,500
fear, uh the emotional fear is sort of like, you know, there's a situation that needs to be

1304
01:10:15,500 --> 01:10:16,060
reacted to.

1305
01:10:16,220 --> 01:10:18,530
What anxiety is, is harder.

1306
01:10:18,610 --> 01:10:21,490
And their argument is this is one of the reasons why there's more anxiety disorders than

1307
01:10:21,490 --> 01:10:22,050
fear disorders.

1308
01:10:22,130 --> 01:10:25,090
There is, there are obviously phobias, but but there's more anxiety disorders.

1309
01:10:25,170 --> 01:10:31,090
And the idea is that it's sort of the design underlying anxiety is there might be

1310
01:10:31,090 --> 01:10:33,810
something, and there might be something you can do about it.

1311
01:10:33,890 --> 01:10:36,210
But it's just more opaque and more indirect.

1312
01:10:36,290 --> 01:10:40,690
And so it's really interesting how, yeah, if there is this anxiety disorder or you're

1313
01:10:40,690 --> 01:10:45,300
feeling anxiety, it's basically your evolved system telling you there's things to worry

1314
01:10:45,300 --> 01:10:49,140
about and there might be things I need to do and I don't know what to do or I don't know

1315
01:10:49,140 --> 01:10:51,060
what's cause what might be the danger.

1316
01:10:51,220 --> 01:10:56,820
And so if you give people fear um or or this sort of like as you put it this very

1317
01:10:56,820 --> 01:11:02,340
titrated controlled thing it engages this precautionary system

1318
01:11:02,740 --> 01:11:08,710
that sort of is getting the cues that it's doing something right to against the

1319
01:11:08,710 --> 01:11:10,390
dangers and the fears.

1320
01:11:10,630 --> 01:11:11,670
So that's really interesting.

1321
01:11:11,750 --> 01:11:16,630
It really suggests that, you know, we don't always talk about implications on this podcast.

1322
01:11:16,710 --> 01:11:20,550
And we've had gotten reviews of people wanting implications, but this really suggests that

1323
01:11:21,510 --> 01:11:27,190
with anxiety, with fear, um, with people sort of feeling uh um

1324
01:11:27,350 --> 01:11:29,190
like underpowered, right?

1325
01:11:29,350 --> 01:11:34,720
Or just sort of like possibly victims, we we often have this idea that like to protect them

1326
01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:38,800
as parents or as society, we want to which is a good impulse to have.

1327
01:11:38,960 --> 01:11:40,560
It's a noble impulse to have.

1328
01:11:40,720 --> 01:11:41,120
Yeah, they're right.

1329
01:11:41,360 --> 01:11:41,840
Yeah, exactly.

1330
01:11:41,920 --> 01:11:46,160
Like you can see the intentions are well, but it might be that exactly harming them by

1331
01:11:46,160 --> 01:11:51,680
keeping them away from their own interest in things that might seem scary or

1332
01:11:51,680 --> 01:11:53,280
morbid or or whatever.

1333
01:11:53,440 --> 01:11:54,000
Yeah.

1334
01:11:54,410 --> 01:11:54,650
Yeah.

1335
01:11:54,730 --> 01:11:58,250
And I didn't, you know, I didn't go into this trying to, I'm not a clinical psychologist.

1336
01:11:58,410 --> 01:12:03,770
I didn't go into this like trying to find a practical implication of very much an

1337
01:12:03,770 --> 01:12:08,170
impractical theoretical like love just to play with ideas person.

1338
01:12:08,570 --> 01:12:11,530
Um but it but it it just came about as I started studying this.

1339
01:12:11,690 --> 01:12:15,770
I was like, man, this could I well to be honest, like how part of the reason it came about

1340
01:12:15,770 --> 01:12:17,920
is because I would interview horror fans.

1341
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:21,120
I would read through, you know, threads where they had written about like why they like

1342
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:22,400
horror and what it does for them.

1343
01:12:22,560 --> 01:12:26,480
And this kept coming up over and over and over again that, like, well, when I'm anxious, I

1344
01:12:26,480 --> 01:12:28,080
seek out horror movies and it helps me.

1345
01:12:28,480 --> 01:12:31,600
And you read that once or twice, and you're like, okay, you know, there's natural variation

1346
01:12:31,600 --> 01:12:34,800
in people that's bound to happen in someone, probably.

1347
01:12:34,960 --> 01:12:36,960
Um, but you see it like a lot.

1348
01:12:37,190 --> 01:12:37,350
No.

1349
01:12:37,590 --> 01:12:41,510
So it's almost like self-medication, like in the same way if you go to an AA meeting,

1350
01:12:41,670 --> 01:12:44,870
there's a lot of people with anxiety disorders that are undiagnosed, and maybe the same

1351
01:12:44,870 --> 01:12:48,070
thing for horror movies, although they're doing much better than ethanol soaked people

1352
01:12:48,150 --> 01:12:49,350
because they're just, you know, watching fiction.

1353
01:12:49,590 --> 01:12:49,670
Yeah.

1354
01:12:49,910 --> 01:12:49,990
Yeah.

1355
01:12:50,070 --> 01:12:52,230
It's like popping an advil when you get a headache, you know?

1356
01:12:52,310 --> 01:12:56,550
It's um and so I thought, okay, well, like this is there's like way too many people saying

1357
01:12:56,550 --> 01:13:01,430
this for this to be just natural variation in whatever trait, right?

1358
01:13:01,590 --> 01:13:03,270
Like this seems like there's something going on here.

1359
01:13:03,350 --> 01:13:06,420
And and most people didn't consciously understand that.

1360
01:13:06,500 --> 01:13:09,140
Some some did, but most people didn't consciously understand that.

1361
01:13:09,300 --> 01:13:11,380
And then I came across this paper.

1362
01:13:11,540 --> 01:13:15,220
Um, it's really one of the only ones I've seen that was like this, but it was a paper

1363
01:13:15,220 --> 01:13:18,340
published in I want to say like 2006 or seven.

1364
01:13:18,500 --> 01:13:22,340
And these researchers, they were media psychology researchers, and they set up a booth

1365
01:13:22,340 --> 01:13:25,700
outside of a blockbuster uh for those young people who are in the world.

1366
01:13:25,860 --> 01:13:29,300
For those who know, yeah, that was back in the day when you put cassette tapes in.

1367
01:13:29,540 --> 01:13:32,870
This is uh and you had to go to a store to get movies.

1368
01:13:32,950 --> 01:13:36,310
So yeah, this is a uh brick and mortar Netflix store.

1369
01:13:36,390 --> 01:13:36,630
Yeah.

1370
01:13:36,790 --> 01:13:39,830
Um yeah, they set up a booth outside of a blockbuster.

1371
01:13:39,910 --> 01:13:43,430
And when people came into the store, they would ask them how they're feeling.

1372
01:13:43,510 --> 01:13:46,710
You know, they want to know basically they wanted to know how does your current mood impact

1373
01:13:46,710 --> 01:13:48,870
the kind of movie you're gonna rent, right?

1374
01:13:49,110 --> 01:13:50,790
And so they would give them these mood questionnaires.

1375
01:13:50,950 --> 01:13:52,070
They would go in, they would rent the movie.

1376
01:13:52,230 --> 01:13:54,630
When they came out, they would say, hey, can you show us what movie you rented?

1377
01:13:54,790 --> 01:14:00,560
And they went in expecting that people would try to, if they were feeling like sad, they

1378
01:14:00,560 --> 01:14:02,560
would try to find a happy movie to regulate their mood.

1379
01:14:02,720 --> 01:14:05,600
They're feeling anxious, they would again try to find kind of a happy movie.

1380
01:14:05,840 --> 01:14:11,440
If they were feeling um, I think what was it was like if they were feeling uh

1381
01:14:11,680 --> 01:14:14,160
joyous, they would try to find like find a comedy movie.

1382
01:14:14,240 --> 01:14:17,120
I didn't really follow their hypotheses very well because it's not the framework that I

1383
01:14:17,120 --> 01:14:17,680
used.

1384
01:14:18,080 --> 01:14:22,270
Um, but the important point here is that they they predicted that people who were feeling

1385
01:14:22,270 --> 01:14:27,790
anxious when they went in uh would seek out something like a happy movie or a comedy to try

1386
01:14:27,790 --> 01:14:30,750
to relieve that anxiety, which is advice that you give to people when they're anxious,

1387
01:14:30,830 --> 01:14:34,670
like, oh, go escape into a film, like go watch a happy movie, go watch a comedy.

1388
01:14:34,910 --> 01:14:36,910
Um, and what they found was the exact opposite.

1389
01:14:37,070 --> 01:14:41,150
People who were anxious going in were the only people who are more likely to rent horror

1390
01:14:41,150 --> 01:14:41,790
movies.

1391
01:14:42,030 --> 01:14:47,460
Um, and at first I was like, well, maybe you know they were anxious because they knew they

1392
01:14:47,460 --> 01:14:48,500
were gonna rent a horror movie.

1393
01:14:48,660 --> 01:14:51,620
Like maybe that's I was trying to like, you know, steel man out a little bit.

1394
01:14:51,700 --> 01:14:55,860
I was like, well, maybe they were anxious because they uh knew they were gonna rent a

1395
01:14:55,860 --> 01:14:58,100
horror movie, and that made them feel anxious about how scared they were gonna be.

1396
01:14:58,180 --> 01:15:02,340
But then I thought, well, that would make that person a very clinically anxious person if

1397
01:15:02,340 --> 01:15:05,860
they were already anxious before they even rented the movie, like they must have very high

1398
01:15:05,860 --> 01:15:07,550
trait anxiety, right?

1399
01:15:07,630 --> 01:15:10,590
Like if you're already feeling anxious before you rent it.

1400
01:15:10,750 --> 01:15:16,750
Um, so in either case, it seems that feeling anxious or a tendency for anxiety does tend to

1401
01:15:16,750 --> 01:15:20,750
correlate with an interest in watching something that makes you feel anxious.

1402
01:15:20,910 --> 01:15:24,030
Um, so that kind of led me down this path of like, okay, well, maybe there's something

1403
01:15:24,030 --> 01:15:24,510
going on here.

1404
01:15:24,590 --> 01:15:29,710
Maybe there's some kind of mechanism that's being triggered in anxious people that makes

1405
01:15:29,710 --> 01:15:35,420
them one seek out things that are scary or safe, scary or scary play, and two

1406
01:15:35,580 --> 01:15:37,420
can actually help them calm down.

1407
01:15:38,860 --> 01:15:44,380
Yeah, it's such a a beautiful example of how taking an evolutionary functional

1408
01:15:44,380 --> 01:15:49,580
perspective uh can bring new insights and practical insights as well.

1409
01:15:49,660 --> 01:15:54,070
Because if you're just thinking about anxiety as just this mental substance of badness and

1410
01:15:54,070 --> 01:15:58,150
we just have to get rid of the badness, well then you're gonna fail to understand what

1411
01:15:58,150 --> 01:16:00,310
anxiety is and how to treat it clinically.

1412
01:16:00,470 --> 01:16:04,230
But if you understand that anxiety exists for a reason, it has a Darwinian function, uh

1413
01:16:04,390 --> 01:16:08,470
it's a mechanism uh that that is there because it helped our ancestors survive and

1414
01:16:08,470 --> 01:16:13,280
reproduce in some way, well then you you you start to think about what why is it there?

1415
01:16:13,440 --> 01:16:14,240
What is it doing?

1416
01:16:14,480 --> 01:16:19,760
Uh and and the answer is well it's it's there to help uh help us think about and learn

1417
01:16:19,760 --> 01:16:23,920
about and manage and navigate dangerous threatening things.

1418
01:16:24,240 --> 01:16:29,600
And the way to give the anxiety what it wants is to give us uh you know

1419
01:16:29,760 --> 01:16:32,240
lessons and knowledge about dangerous things.

1420
01:16:32,400 --> 01:16:34,400
Like that's ultimately what it's motivating us to do.

1421
01:16:34,480 --> 01:16:37,920
It's motivating us to figure out what's dangerous, what's threatening, learn about it,

1422
01:16:38,000 --> 01:16:40,050
master it, navigate it, and deal with it.

1423
01:16:40,210 --> 01:16:43,570
And if you're preventing the anxiety from doing that, well the anxiety is never going to go

1424
01:16:43,570 --> 01:16:43,810
away.

1425
01:16:43,970 --> 01:16:46,290
The way to feed it is to actually it's going to grow.

1426
01:16:46,450 --> 01:16:46,690
Exactly.

1427
01:16:46,930 --> 01:16:47,490
Until you start.

1428
01:16:47,810 --> 01:16:47,970
Yeah.

1429
01:16:48,050 --> 01:16:48,130
Yeah.

1430
01:16:48,450 --> 01:16:50,930
Rosemary's Baby is one of the super scary movies.

1431
01:16:51,010 --> 01:16:53,730
And one of the things that makes it so scary is when she's saying like there's this

1432
01:16:53,730 --> 01:16:54,450
horrible thing happening.

1433
01:16:54,610 --> 01:16:55,730
Everyone's like, no, no, no.

1434
01:16:55,890 --> 01:16:56,690
It's all fine.

1435
01:16:56,850 --> 01:16:57,650
Don't worry about it.

1436
01:16:57,810 --> 01:17:01,060
And it's like, you know, like if you know there's a threat and somebody is telling you,

1437
01:17:01,140 --> 01:17:04,580
like, and everyone around you is like, let's let's just like relax.

1438
01:17:04,900 --> 01:17:06,340
That's a horror movie, right?

1439
01:17:06,500 --> 01:17:07,140
Like, exactly.

1440
01:17:07,300 --> 01:17:12,980
So, no, I love that idea that like the autonomy of um power over things that

1441
01:17:12,980 --> 01:17:17,060
scare you is is the way around anxiety is a great point, David.

1442
01:17:17,380 --> 01:17:20,340
Yeah, and I think that goes back to when we were talking about like what makes a horror

1443
01:17:20,340 --> 01:17:20,500
movie.

1444
01:17:20,580 --> 01:17:22,900
Well, in Rosemary's baby, there's no big scary antagonist.

1445
01:17:23,060 --> 01:17:24,340
So, how could it be a horror?

1446
01:17:24,500 --> 01:17:29,430
Well, like she's very vulnerable because she's obviously experiencing an entirely different

1447
01:17:29,430 --> 01:17:30,230
reality, right?

1448
01:17:30,310 --> 01:17:36,070
So again, I think our mind's intuition is to say something supernatural, something we

1449
01:17:36,070 --> 01:17:40,630
can't access is causing this disturbance, like in our world and in my reality.

1450
01:17:40,790 --> 01:17:45,270
And I think that again maps onto things like diseases that cause us to not think clearly,

1451
01:17:45,350 --> 01:17:51,120
or to score schizophrenia, or things like where our perception of the world is just

1452
01:17:51,120 --> 01:17:53,920
completely shifted and doesn't match what everyone is telling us.

1453
01:17:54,160 --> 01:17:54,480
Yeah.

1454
01:17:54,640 --> 01:17:56,400
And it's sort of a mature view of the world.

1455
01:17:56,560 --> 01:18:00,400
Like even, I mean, Francis Steen, uh, who I'm not sure what we have to look up, where

1456
01:18:00,640 --> 01:18:02,320
Francis Steen is, but he had this thing.

1457
01:18:02,400 --> 01:18:06,240
I remember he would talk, he gave a talk when I was a grad student at UCSB, where he talked

1458
01:18:06,240 --> 01:18:10,480
about how if you think about what you do when you play with your kid, most of it is

1459
01:18:10,480 --> 01:18:11,120
predation.

1460
01:18:11,430 --> 01:18:14,950
So like if you tickle your child, I even I'm so acutely aware of this.

1461
01:18:15,030 --> 01:18:18,470
And this is like this is like real-time prediction of like what would be the most

1462
01:18:18,470 --> 01:18:22,710
vulnerable parts of my child, and like you know, it's like belly and like like and that is

1463
01:18:22,710 --> 01:18:24,790
like my son laughs hysterically, right?

1464
01:18:24,950 --> 01:18:29,590
And it's like it's play around like sort of like preventing predation or like you know,

1465
01:18:29,670 --> 01:18:30,950
like chasing after a kid.

1466
01:18:31,030 --> 01:18:36,320
Like what what adults naturally do is pretend it's ratcheted down

1467
01:18:36,320 --> 01:18:37,200
predation.

1468
01:18:37,520 --> 01:18:43,120
And that's like what what like a human universal of sort of like adult child play that

1469
01:18:43,120 --> 01:18:44,800
involves like huge laughter.

1470
01:18:44,960 --> 01:18:50,400
So I think it's a very mature view of the world to sort of be like danger and

1471
01:18:50,560 --> 01:18:56,080
hazards and like really the the the morbid part of life is really also part of like the

1472
01:18:56,080 --> 01:18:57,760
hilarity and joy of life too.

1473
01:18:58,320 --> 01:19:00,400
It's like you don't have to choose between them.

1474
01:19:00,480 --> 01:19:06,050
And it's okay to give people who are anxious or scared or feel underpowered like

1475
01:19:06,290 --> 01:19:10,850
fiction or like or give them like stories that might feel unsafe.

1476
01:19:11,010 --> 01:19:15,490
Like I think this this notion that we need to keep people safe from the bad things in life,

1477
01:19:15,730 --> 01:19:19,250
it really sounds like what you're saying is that that's super counterproductive or maybe

1478
01:19:19,250 --> 01:19:20,130
counterproductive.

1479
01:19:20,450 --> 01:19:22,530
Yeah, there's a good uh Neil Gaiman quote.

1480
01:19:22,610 --> 01:19:25,940
And I don't know if he and I'll probably butcher it a little bit because I don't have it in

1481
01:19:25,940 --> 01:19:28,260
front of me, but I I think he pulled it from somewhere else too.

1482
01:19:28,420 --> 01:19:32,740
Anyway, the idea it was something along the lines of um, you know, stories aren't great

1483
01:19:32,740 --> 01:19:36,340
because they tell kids dragons exist, they're great because they tell them how to slay the

1484
01:19:36,340 --> 01:19:37,300
dragon, right?

1485
01:19:37,540 --> 01:19:41,220
Right like horror stories aren't great because they tell you they it's not aren't great

1486
01:19:41,220 --> 01:19:43,620
because they tell you how awful things they can can be.

1487
01:19:43,780 --> 01:19:46,660
They're you know good because they tell you how to overcome those awful things.

1488
01:19:48,350 --> 01:19:53,790
Or in the case of many horror stories, what to avoid to uh what to not do to avoid

1489
01:19:53,790 --> 01:19:55,150
succumbing to those awful things.

1490
01:19:55,310 --> 01:19:55,790
Yeah.

1491
01:19:56,430 --> 01:20:00,830
So you you have some really interesting empirical evidence for for this hypothesis that

1492
01:20:00,910 --> 01:20:03,630
that horror helps us deal with awful things.

1493
01:20:03,790 --> 01:20:07,070
So um I'm thinking of your paper about um pandemics.

1494
01:20:07,310 --> 01:20:12,830
And so this was uh uh during the COVID pandemic, um you looked at whether people had

1495
01:20:12,830 --> 01:20:18,620
watched horror movies about pandemics and you looked to see whether whether people who had

1496
01:20:18,620 --> 01:20:23,500
watched those horror movies about pandemics how they uh fared during the pandemic compared

1497
01:20:23,500 --> 01:20:26,140
to people who had not consumed those those movies.

1498
01:20:26,220 --> 01:20:27,660
So what what did you find there?

1499
01:20:28,060 --> 01:20:33,980
Yeah I mean uh that came in part I was bummed because when the pandemic hit like

1500
01:20:33,980 --> 01:20:37,740
everyone else all my in person stuff had to stop and I had this really great study with

1501
01:20:37,740 --> 01:20:41,500
like a cabinet of morbid curiosities I devised and it was an eye tracking study.

1502
01:20:41,580 --> 01:20:44,190
It was like the study I was most excited about in my PhD.

1503
01:20:44,270 --> 01:20:47,310
And I got, you know, essentially canceled because of that.

1504
01:20:47,470 --> 01:20:52,590
Um, but it ended up being uh, you know, good a good thing in some ways because I got this

1505
01:20:52,590 --> 01:20:55,550
idea about, well, if I'm in a pandemic, it's kind of a scary thing.

1506
01:20:55,710 --> 01:20:56,590
Everybody's experiencing it.

1507
01:20:56,830 --> 01:21:01,630
I wonder if that's related to morbid curiosity and uh and coping and sort of scary play.

1508
01:21:01,790 --> 01:21:03,760
And so I ran this like very simple study.

1509
01:21:03,840 --> 01:21:08,000
It was not, you know, the study that I was doing was like comp it was like methodologically

1510
01:21:08,000 --> 01:21:08,480
complex.

1511
01:21:08,560 --> 01:21:09,840
It had a lot of moving parts.

1512
01:21:09,920 --> 01:21:11,040
It was interesting.

1513
01:21:11,280 --> 01:21:15,440
This was just like an online study with people who are experiencing a thing in the world

1514
01:21:15,440 --> 01:21:18,320
and measuring their psychological resilience and some of their traits.

1515
01:21:18,640 --> 01:21:20,320
It was like a very straightforward study.

1516
01:21:20,640 --> 01:21:24,240
But it's what I could do during the pandemic, especially in those early months of like

1517
01:21:24,240 --> 01:21:26,720
April and May of 2020.

1518
01:21:26,880 --> 01:21:32,850
And um yeah, I found that people who were horror fans, even after controlling four big five

1519
01:21:32,850 --> 01:21:38,610
personality traits, income, gender, age, uh, they were more likely to be um

1520
01:21:39,250 --> 01:21:44,690
have to to report higher psychological resilience to uh the early months of the pandemic

1521
01:21:44,770 --> 01:21:47,890
when when things were very unknown and the world actually was like pretty scary.

1522
01:21:48,050 --> 01:21:52,210
Like in in April, when they were like, hey, we have a global pandemic for the first time in

1523
01:21:52,240 --> 01:21:55,760
a long time, probably in anyone's lifetime that's living.

1524
01:21:56,000 --> 01:21:59,360
Um, horror fans were doing a little better than other people.

1525
01:21:59,520 --> 01:22:03,680
Uh, we also found that people who had seen just one pandemic movie didn't have to have

1526
01:22:03,680 --> 01:22:06,080
watched a hundred or five of them or whatever.

1527
01:22:06,240 --> 01:22:10,640
If you had just seen one pandemic movie, you were more likely to be more resilient, uh,

1528
01:22:10,800 --> 01:22:14,990
psychologically resilient, sort of exhibit signs of psychological resilience to the to the

1529
01:22:14,990 --> 01:22:15,550
pandemic.

1530
01:22:15,630 --> 01:22:20,110
Um and then of course people who scored high and treat warm curiosity, again, controlling

1531
01:22:20,350 --> 01:22:26,270
for things like extroversion, conscientiousness, even neuroticism, um, income, age, gender,

1532
01:22:26,350 --> 01:22:30,350
uh, they were more likely to be to experience positive resilience in the face of the

1533
01:22:30,350 --> 01:22:31,230
pandemic.

1534
01:22:31,790 --> 01:22:32,270
That's awesome.

1535
01:22:32,430 --> 01:22:36,350
So what so let's I I want to unpack what what you mean by psychological resilience.

1536
01:22:36,430 --> 01:22:37,550
So what what what is that?

1537
01:22:37,710 --> 01:22:38,670
How did you measure it?

1538
01:22:38,990 --> 01:22:40,670
Yeah, there's there's a lot of ways to measure that.

1539
01:22:40,750 --> 01:22:46,220
And I, you know, um it's hard to do with a short questionnaire, regardless of how you do

1540
01:22:46,220 --> 01:22:46,780
it, right?

1541
01:22:46,940 --> 01:22:51,820
Um, but there were a ton of uh resilience scales, even even to like uh disasters.

1542
01:22:51,900 --> 01:22:54,860
There were like disaster resilience scales that were out there.

1543
01:22:55,100 --> 01:22:59,500
The problem is a lot of those are a lot of disasters are one time events, a tornado, a

1544
01:22:59,500 --> 01:23:03,900
hurricane, a fire, an earthquake, um, you know, a mass shooting, whatever it might be.

1545
01:23:03,980 --> 01:23:05,260
They're like these one time events.

1546
01:23:05,340 --> 01:23:09,180
And it's like, how are you coping with this a week later, a month later, a year later?

1547
01:23:09,340 --> 01:23:13,570
With the pandemic, it was like this ongoing thing that, you know, we were getting new

1548
01:23:13,570 --> 01:23:16,530
information every day, but it was becoming more confusing by the day.

1549
01:23:16,690 --> 01:23:19,250
Um, so there wasn't a good scale that captured that.

1550
01:23:19,330 --> 01:23:23,010
And so we took, we took kind of the good items, the items that worked from these validated

1551
01:23:23,010 --> 01:23:27,330
resilience scales of, you know, are you losing sleep uh more than usual?

1552
01:23:27,490 --> 01:23:29,090
Are you feeling more anxious than usual?

1553
01:23:29,170 --> 01:23:31,170
Are you feeling more depressed than usual?

1554
01:23:31,330 --> 01:23:33,410
Um, how how are you feeling about the future?

1555
01:23:33,490 --> 01:23:37,720
Are you feeling positive about your, you capabilities of uh succeeding in the future?

1556
01:23:37,880 --> 01:23:41,640
Uh, we took some of those items that were good and we added a few more or changed the

1557
01:23:41,640 --> 01:23:46,600
wording a little bit if it was if it seemed like it was uh too pinpointed to a one-time

1558
01:23:46,600 --> 01:23:49,720
event to make it like in the past week, how have you felt right?

1559
01:23:49,880 --> 01:23:53,960
And then we ran a study in April and we ran one again a month later with the same

1560
01:23:53,960 --> 01:23:59,800
participants in uh in May, and um found that again, people who were horror

1561
01:23:59,800 --> 01:24:04,490
fans or more really curious were not losing as much sleep, not feeling as anxious, not

1562
01:24:04,490 --> 01:24:07,770
feeling as depressed, feeling optimistic about the future.

1563
01:24:08,010 --> 01:24:12,330
Um, just generally having, I guess, like, I don't want to say a positive attitude about it,

1564
01:24:12,410 --> 01:24:17,690
but they were just like less um affected by things that everyone was being affected by with

1565
01:24:17,690 --> 01:24:21,770
the pandemic that made their life miserable, like being being locked in your apartment or

1566
01:24:21,770 --> 01:24:25,610
your house for weeks at a time and not know what's not knowing what's going on in general,

1567
01:24:25,690 --> 01:24:28,170
uh, the kind of anxiety that that induces.

1568
01:24:29,180 --> 01:24:29,500
Hmm.

1569
01:24:29,660 --> 01:24:30,220
Interesting.

1570
01:24:30,380 --> 01:24:35,900
I mean, do you think what's going on there is that um people who have thought about or or

1571
01:24:35,900 --> 01:24:41,740
consumed fiction about pandemics, they have a greater sense of like number one, what it is,

1572
01:24:41,900 --> 01:24:45,420
how bad is it, how to deal with it, what they should be doing.

1573
01:24:45,580 --> 01:24:51,570
And that knowledge um makes them feel better about it, that they can better navigate

1574
01:24:51,570 --> 01:24:51,730
it.

1575
01:24:51,810 --> 01:24:54,050
If if things got worse, they would know what to do.

1576
01:24:54,290 --> 01:24:59,890
Whereas if you if you know nothing about what's going on, um you just kind of

1577
01:24:59,890 --> 01:25:05,650
default to panic and you're just trying to and and you you get into this generalized

1578
01:25:05,650 --> 01:25:09,090
anxiety state where something bad is happening and you don't understand it and you don't

1579
01:25:09,090 --> 01:25:09,970
know what to do about it.

1580
01:25:10,050 --> 01:25:13,090
And you're just trying to grope at something, anything you could learn or something,

1581
01:25:13,170 --> 01:25:14,050
anything you could do.

1582
01:25:14,210 --> 01:25:18,360
But but presumably the people who have practiced uh thinking about these things in a safe

1583
01:25:18,360 --> 01:25:22,840
context, they will will have already learned things and already know something about what

1584
01:25:22,840 --> 01:25:23,720
they could be doing.

1585
01:25:23,800 --> 01:25:26,600
Uh and that and that makes them manage the situation better.

1586
01:25:26,920 --> 01:25:27,800
I think that's exactly right.

1587
01:25:27,880 --> 01:25:29,400
I think there I think there are two things going on.

1588
01:25:29,480 --> 01:25:30,760
I think that's one of the main ones, right?

1589
01:25:30,840 --> 01:25:34,280
And that's such a simple thing that you could come up with without doing a study.

1590
01:25:34,520 --> 01:25:38,230
So like intuition, you could say, like, oh yeah, well, knowing what a pandemic is like

1591
01:25:38,230 --> 01:25:39,190
helps you deal with the pandemic.

1592
01:25:39,270 --> 01:25:42,230
But it's like, that's actually a really important insight if it's like, well, they watched

1593
01:25:42,230 --> 01:25:44,790
the movie Contagion and now they feel better about a real thing that's happening.

1594
01:25:44,870 --> 01:25:50,390
Like that's an important insight for uh this idea that that scary stories can actually help

1595
01:25:50,390 --> 01:25:52,390
us deal with things in the real world, right?

1596
01:25:52,630 --> 01:25:56,550
Um, and one that hadn't been shown in any kind of way that I could find.

1597
01:25:56,710 --> 01:26:00,070
I think the other thing that was going on is what we talked about a moment ago of uh

1598
01:26:00,230 --> 01:26:05,510
particularly with with horror fans, um, they or morbidly curious people, they uh

1599
01:26:06,620 --> 01:26:11,260
have practiced, implicitly practiced feeling anxious and feeling afraid in a lot of

1600
01:26:11,260 --> 01:26:12,140
different scenarios.

1601
01:26:12,380 --> 01:26:16,060
And so they might be a little bit better at just regulating, they might be feeling those

1602
01:26:16,060 --> 01:26:19,020
feelings of anxiety, but they might be a little better at regulating them than the average

1603
01:26:19,020 --> 01:26:22,220
person or than someone who's not morbidly curious at all or does never watches horror

1604
01:26:22,220 --> 01:26:22,620
movies.

1605
01:26:23,260 --> 01:26:27,580
Yeah, can we translate for one of the things and we do, because we're evolutionary

1606
01:26:27,580 --> 01:26:31,580
psychologists, is sort of translating these intuitive constructs into sort of software

1607
01:26:31,660 --> 01:26:32,380
level descriptions.

1608
01:26:32,460 --> 01:26:36,930
This is this is a hard ass, but like when when we're talking about emotion regulation or of

1609
01:26:36,930 --> 01:26:40,690
able to regulate, um, do you have a thought or either of you?

1610
01:26:40,850 --> 01:26:45,170
I mean, I I have thoughts too, but like can we think about sort of what what that what does

1611
01:26:45,170 --> 01:26:48,370
that mean, sort of in terms of like the underlying software?

1612
01:26:48,690 --> 01:26:54,530
I think um off the cuff, I would say like let's just look at

1613
01:26:54,530 --> 01:26:57,170
anxiety, because that's normally what we're talking about with these kinds of things.

1614
01:26:57,330 --> 01:26:59,250
Though there's a lot of different emotions you could regulate.

1615
01:26:59,330 --> 01:27:02,930
That's typically the one that if you go to therapy, you're trying to regulate.

1616
01:27:03,090 --> 01:27:08,320
Um a lot of what that is, is uh like mechanistically, there's um

1617
01:27:09,200 --> 01:27:12,800
thinking about uh re reappraising the situation, right?

1618
01:27:12,960 --> 01:27:17,760
So I guess at a software level, like taking a second pass using a different algorithm and

1619
01:27:17,760 --> 01:27:22,160
seeing if uh if what you're really experiencing is really what as bad as you think it is.

1620
01:27:22,480 --> 01:27:27,360
There's um sort of mistaking facts for feelings is something that a lot of anxious people

1621
01:27:27,360 --> 01:27:31,390
do where they say, like, if it feels this bad, it must be that bad.

1622
01:27:31,870 --> 01:27:36,110
And so reevaluating that and saying, like, well, just because it feels this bad, like I'm

1623
01:27:36,110 --> 01:27:40,030
watching a scary movie and I'm feeling really terrified, but nothing bad is happening.

1624
01:27:40,270 --> 01:27:43,710
So again, kind of a reevaluation of of what's going on.

1625
01:27:43,870 --> 01:27:47,870
Um, and then there's kind of just a dampening of feelings of anxiety.

1626
01:27:47,950 --> 01:27:52,350
And I don't know what that would look like from uh like a software analogy, but kind of uh

1627
01:27:52,430 --> 01:27:55,310
I guess requiring a larger input, maybe.

1628
01:27:55,550 --> 01:28:01,140
Um, though I think that's that's it's not quite right, but something like that, where it's

1629
01:28:01,140 --> 01:28:04,420
like, you know, you're essentially you're receiving the input, um, but there's kind of a

1630
01:28:04,420 --> 01:28:08,740
filter you're passing it through saying, like, you know, for every two bits I get, only

1631
01:28:08,740 --> 01:28:13,780
give me one bit of information or something, um, where you're dampening that signal because

1632
01:28:13,780 --> 01:28:15,940
you know consciously that it's not as bad.

1633
01:28:16,020 --> 01:28:19,060
You're mistaking your facts for feelings or feelings for facts.

1634
01:28:19,220 --> 01:28:21,270
Um, but I'd I'd be curious to hear what you think.

1635
01:28:21,350 --> 01:28:25,350
Because I I hadn't thought about that about emotion regulation from that sort of software

1636
01:28:25,350 --> 01:28:25,750
perspective.

1637
01:28:26,150 --> 01:28:26,310
Yeah.

1638
01:28:26,550 --> 01:28:27,430
What do you think, David?

1639
01:28:29,510 --> 01:28:30,950
So that's interesting.

1640
01:28:31,110 --> 01:28:36,630
So the way I'm starting to think of it now, just in this moment talking to you,

1641
01:28:36,950 --> 01:28:42,870
is that um there when you're stressed or anxious, um, your your body starts producing

1642
01:28:42,870 --> 01:28:45,900
cortisol, which you know fills you with energy, you know.

1643
01:28:45,980 --> 01:28:50,300
Uh um so it it's uh it's it's preparing you to deal with with with with whatever

1644
01:28:50,300 --> 01:28:52,700
physiologically demanding threat is in front of you.

1645
01:28:52,860 --> 01:28:56,380
But there is a kind of computational problem where there where where you have to figure

1646
01:28:56,380 --> 01:28:58,780
out, well, how much energy do I need?

1647
01:28:58,940 --> 01:29:00,140
How bad is this threat?

1648
01:29:00,300 --> 01:29:02,460
How much cortisol should I release?

1649
01:29:02,620 --> 01:29:05,020
Uh and there's a lot that's an inherently computational problem.

1650
01:29:05,180 --> 01:29:09,670
You have to learn things uh uh about your environment, you have to process all all the

1651
01:29:09,670 --> 01:29:13,110
different cues, you have to reason about uh the the different cues.

1652
01:29:13,350 --> 01:29:16,870
Uh and and so there are many ways that you could get that problem wrong.

1653
01:29:17,110 --> 01:29:21,350
You could produce too much cortisol and and mobilize too much energy, which is wasting a

1654
01:29:21,350 --> 01:29:25,990
really metabolically critical resource, or you could not burn enough energy uh when when

1655
01:29:25,990 --> 01:29:28,150
you really need it to deal with this situation.

1656
01:29:28,230 --> 01:29:33,680
And so you could think of emotion regulas regulation as just trying to get the balance

1657
01:29:33,680 --> 01:29:33,920
right.

1658
01:29:34,000 --> 01:29:38,560
So you're learning about what the threat is, how bad it, how bad it is, how much energy you

1659
01:29:38,560 --> 01:29:43,120
need to deal with it, you know, what are the the types of things you need to uh what what

1660
01:29:43,120 --> 01:29:49,040
are the cognitive uh uh um processes that need to be activated to deal with

1661
01:29:49,040 --> 01:29:50,000
this threat.

1662
01:29:50,160 --> 01:29:53,010
Um and and that's sort of what I think of.

1663
01:29:53,170 --> 01:29:56,290
So the the more frequently you deal with the threat, the more you learn about it, the more

1664
01:29:56,290 --> 01:29:58,930
you de the more you understand like, you know, how bad is it?

1665
01:29:59,010 --> 01:30:00,290
How much energy do I need to burn?

1666
01:30:00,450 --> 01:30:01,490
What do I need to be thinking about?

1667
01:30:01,570 --> 01:30:03,170
What are the steps I need to be taking?

1668
01:30:03,410 --> 01:30:06,770
Um that that's sort of how I'm starting to think of it right now.

1669
01:30:06,850 --> 01:30:08,130
Do you do you buy that?

1670
01:30:09,090 --> 01:30:09,570
Uh yeah.

1671
01:30:09,650 --> 01:30:11,250
I mean, I think that's essentially right, right?

1672
01:30:11,330 --> 01:30:15,560
It's kind of this again, I think there's the you know, you can receive as input, uh,

1673
01:30:15,640 --> 01:30:19,480
physiological signals and and and perceptions of things.

1674
01:30:19,560 --> 01:30:23,560
Uh, but there's also this like you, you know, humans are really good at receiving as input

1675
01:30:23,640 --> 01:30:27,080
their own imaginations and imagining, like, well, wait a minute, what about this?

1676
01:30:27,160 --> 01:30:31,400
Like like counterexamples, then that can serve as its own input into these to to put the

1677
01:30:31,400 --> 01:30:34,600
brakes on these kind of things, put the brakes on the cortisol production, on your

1678
01:30:34,600 --> 01:30:38,200
adrenaline production, on your general sympathetic arousal.

1679
01:30:38,360 --> 01:30:43,750
Um so probably what it is is this kind of top down, like second, second screening or second

1680
01:30:43,750 --> 01:30:47,110
viewing of what's going on, and then receiving input from that, almost like running two

1681
01:30:47,110 --> 01:30:51,510
experiments, like the experiment of how I'm feeling, like, well, I'm feeling this way.

1682
01:30:51,590 --> 01:30:53,590
So that's some input that something is wrong.

1683
01:30:53,830 --> 01:30:58,470
But then you can kind of run this other imaginary experiment of like, well, I'm also

1684
01:30:58,470 --> 01:31:02,710
sitting on my couch and that thing's on a TV, and that's getting its own input into those

1685
01:31:02,710 --> 01:31:08,040
same mechanisms, that the same threat management mechanisms that's probably dampening some

1686
01:31:08,040 --> 01:31:08,280
of that.

1687
01:31:08,360 --> 01:31:13,720
And I think you can learn to exercise a little bit of, I guess, control uh over flipping

1688
01:31:13,720 --> 01:31:16,120
that a second screening on or off.

1689
01:31:16,360 --> 01:31:16,520
Yeah.

1690
01:31:17,000 --> 01:31:18,360
Here's here's another hypothesis.

1691
01:31:18,440 --> 01:31:19,800
I'm curious what you think about this.

1692
01:31:19,960 --> 01:31:25,880
Um, could it be that uh with with anxiety um and fear that

1693
01:31:25,880 --> 01:31:31,630
there is a vulnerability for positive feedback loops to to start happening.

1694
01:31:31,790 --> 01:31:36,030
So, like when you put a microphone in front of a speaker, you get that shrill, piercing

1695
01:31:36,030 --> 01:31:39,310
sound because the sound comes out of the speaker and goes into the microphone, which gets

1696
01:31:39,310 --> 01:31:43,070
amplified, which goes back into the microphone, which gets amplified again until the sound

1697
01:31:43,070 --> 01:31:45,870
grows to this horrible shrieking sound.

1698
01:31:46,510 --> 01:31:52,110
But uh it could be that there are similar kinds of feedback processes to the inputs and

1699
01:31:52,110 --> 01:31:53,310
outputs of an emotion.

1700
01:31:53,390 --> 01:31:58,750
So the outputs of an emotion could be in some circumstances perceived as an input to that

1701
01:31:58,750 --> 01:31:59,800
same emotion.

1702
01:31:59,960 --> 01:32:04,440
So one of the outputs of fear is physiological arousal, but physiological arousal could

1703
01:32:04,440 --> 01:32:05,720
also be an input to fear.

1704
01:32:05,800 --> 01:32:11,240
It could be a cue that, you know, um uh something wrong is happening with your body.

1705
01:32:11,400 --> 01:32:15,320
You know, a lot of symptoms of you know pathogens or illness or poisoning can cause

1706
01:32:15,320 --> 01:32:16,920
physiological arousals.

1707
01:32:17,080 --> 01:32:22,840
You know, feeling feverish, you know, the uh is is, you know, one example of how uh you uh

1708
01:32:22,920 --> 01:32:26,710
physiological arousal could be um uh a cue of danger itself.

1709
01:32:26,870 --> 01:32:31,990
You mentioned how people mistake facts for feelings where they use their physiological

1710
01:32:31,990 --> 01:32:35,750
arousal as a cue that something is really dangerous in the environment, which could then

1711
01:32:35,750 --> 01:32:39,750
increase the physiological arousal, which could increase the cue that something dangerous

1712
01:32:39,750 --> 01:32:42,310
is happening and you could get into a kind of feedback loop there.

1713
01:32:42,470 --> 01:32:47,350
And so it could be that because the inputs to our emotions are so complex and

1714
01:32:47,350 --> 01:32:52,630
contextualized, that the input can often become the output, which becomes the input, which

1715
01:32:52,630 --> 01:32:53,590
becomes the output.

1716
01:32:53,830 --> 01:32:59,080
And what it means to regulate an emotion is to figure out when you're getting into those

1717
01:32:59,080 --> 01:33:04,040
kinds of feedback loops uh and and avoid getting into them so that you can uh uh harness

1718
01:33:04,200 --> 01:33:06,440
the emotion more effectively and and practically.

1719
01:33:06,600 --> 01:33:07,960
Does that do you buy that?

1720
01:33:08,680 --> 01:33:09,400
Yeah, I think so.

1721
01:33:09,560 --> 01:33:12,280
I mean, I think that uh that seems essentially correct.

1722
01:33:12,440 --> 01:33:17,480
I think there are a lot of reasons why, like you said, input uh outputs of something like

1723
01:33:17,480 --> 01:33:23,070
fear, the common outputs of it, the physiological outputs, um, the c even the cognitive

1724
01:33:23,070 --> 01:33:26,670
outputs, uh, should serve as inputs for fear, right?

1725
01:33:26,830 --> 01:33:32,110
Because our bodies are quicker to detect uh our bodies and minds are are quickly detect

1726
01:33:32,110 --> 01:33:34,990
things sometimes before our conscious awareness grabs onto them.

1727
01:33:35,150 --> 01:33:41,070
You know, you think about uh just like those studies with like millisecond reactions to

1728
01:33:41,070 --> 01:33:44,190
whatever angry faces or snakes or all kinds of other things.

1729
01:33:44,270 --> 01:33:48,300
Um we react very quickly and and subconsciously to threats.

1730
01:33:48,380 --> 01:33:53,740
And then if that gets ratcheted, if that turns on the threat management, the vigilance, um,

1731
01:33:54,220 --> 01:33:58,220
before we can really catch it, then that serves as its own input like, hey, something is

1732
01:33:58,220 --> 01:33:59,740
wrong, but I don't see what it is yet.

1733
01:33:59,900 --> 01:34:03,500
Let me turn up my vigilance more, let me turn up my uh my fear more.

1734
01:34:03,580 --> 01:34:08,460
And you just get in this like cycle, like you said, of uh, well, if if I'm being activated

1735
01:34:08,460 --> 01:34:10,300
this much, something must be wrong.

1736
01:34:10,540 --> 01:34:14,860
And it's really hard to kind of push the brakes on that or provide a secondary input that

1737
01:34:14,860 --> 01:34:16,540
would downregulate that.

1738
01:34:16,930 --> 01:34:17,250
Yeah.

1739
01:34:17,650 --> 01:34:21,170
Just to sort of resummarize, I think what what we're all saying, or what you guys are

1740
01:34:21,170 --> 01:34:24,610
saying, is that, and this is sort of the way I think about it, is you know, because we're

1741
01:34:24,610 --> 01:34:29,970
so we have such a complicated cognitive architecture, one of the problems is this sort of

1742
01:34:29,970 --> 01:34:35,650
problem of like relevance of sort of like of all the machinery, which machinery should be

1743
01:34:35,650 --> 01:34:37,810
used for any particular task or event.

1744
01:34:38,040 --> 01:34:41,400
And one of the problems is not often too little, but too many systems.

1745
01:34:41,560 --> 01:34:44,360
So, for example, I'm sure both of you have had this experience of like if you're

1746
01:34:44,360 --> 01:34:48,520
performing, you get really nervous and scared and you do worse, right?

1747
01:34:48,680 --> 01:34:52,200
Because I'm not just thinking about catching the ball or like singing the song.

1748
01:34:52,440 --> 01:34:56,200
I'm worried about what people are going to think about me.

1749
01:34:56,280 --> 01:34:57,960
I'm noticing the people's reaction.

1750
01:34:58,040 --> 01:35:00,360
If I'm teaching it, I'm noticing the students' reaction.

1751
01:35:00,520 --> 01:35:06,290
And so a lot of sort of like getting better at things is sort of running through

1752
01:35:06,290 --> 01:35:11,730
this system of there's a system that's sort of like corraling different cognitive

1753
01:35:11,730 --> 01:35:13,490
systems for this task.

1754
01:35:13,650 --> 01:35:19,170
And then it's sort of this sampling of like, if we, if we were, if we take the system out,

1755
01:35:19,410 --> 01:35:20,850
do we do better or worse?

1756
01:35:21,090 --> 01:35:27,090
You know, and I think some of fear and some of what we're talking about is um

1757
01:35:27,700 --> 01:35:33,060
what a emotional regulation is is that process right where it's sort of like you in this

1758
01:35:33,140 --> 01:35:39,140
also people talk about this in in real context of if you automate things so you

1759
01:35:39,140 --> 01:35:43,540
know people who respond to really life or death situations like a lifeguard or police

1760
01:35:43,540 --> 01:35:48,740
officer or the military or like um or even like you know I used to wrestle you know like

1761
01:35:48,820 --> 01:35:54,610
you would just do these things where a lot of times if somebody is like in a situation

1762
01:35:54,610 --> 01:35:59,410
where there's a natural disaster or somebody shooting at you, people don't respond well.

1763
01:35:59,570 --> 01:36:03,250
And the reason why is because it's quote unquote taking them a long time to process what's

1764
01:36:03,250 --> 01:36:04,930
happening and what to do about it.

1765
01:36:05,170 --> 01:36:11,170
And so what you want to do is practice or train ahead of time to automate these are the

1766
01:36:11,170 --> 01:36:16,320
systems, this is the set of algorithms to turn on in this situation.

1767
01:36:16,560 --> 01:36:22,560
And what anxiety is, or what emotional regulation is, is that system or that procedure for

1768
01:36:22,560 --> 01:36:28,160
sort of figuring out which cocktail or which combination of systems

1769
01:36:28,480 --> 01:36:31,760
are the sweet spot for this kind of situation.

1770
01:36:32,080 --> 01:36:37,840
And the thing about worrying about the crowd when you're singing or trying to catch the

1771
01:36:37,840 --> 01:36:41,050
ball is you're too nervous, right?

1772
01:36:41,130 --> 01:36:47,050
And that's like, and then so like what that regulation system is doing is snipping out uh

1773
01:36:47,210 --> 01:36:48,010
worrying about that.

1774
01:36:48,090 --> 01:36:49,450
And then it becomes automated.

1775
01:36:49,530 --> 01:36:53,690
That uh that extra like corraling system sort of turns off or gets good at it.

1776
01:36:53,770 --> 01:36:55,450
And then it's like we're good enough at this.

1777
01:36:55,530 --> 01:36:58,810
That's that I think that's maybe a way of summarizing what we're talking about in software

1778
01:36:58,890 --> 01:36:59,530
level terms.

1779
01:36:59,850 --> 01:37:00,010
Yeah.

1780
01:37:00,090 --> 01:37:04,000
And I think that goes back to what I'd mentioned earlier about it's really hard to actively

1781
01:37:04,160 --> 01:37:05,840
worry about two things at once.

1782
01:37:06,080 --> 01:37:06,480
Right.

1783
01:37:06,720 --> 01:37:10,000
And so you're either worrying about what people are thinking about you when you're

1784
01:37:10,000 --> 01:37:13,440
performing, or you're worrying about like what you need to be doing to perform well.

1785
01:37:13,520 --> 01:37:13,760
Right.

1786
01:37:13,920 --> 01:37:14,160
Right.

1787
01:37:14,320 --> 01:37:17,360
And if you're if you're doing the former, you're probably going to mess up.

1788
01:37:17,440 --> 01:37:20,720
You're not going to perform as well as you as you should be doing because you can't focus

1789
01:37:20,720 --> 01:37:24,480
on that because you're too consumed by the worry of what people are going to think, or what

1790
01:37:24,480 --> 01:37:26,720
happens if you fail, or what happens if you forget to do something.

1791
01:37:27,050 --> 01:37:27,290
That's right.

1792
01:37:27,370 --> 01:37:27,530
Yeah.

1793
01:37:27,690 --> 01:37:31,770
No, I think that description of sort of like I'm distracted or I'm worried about something

1794
01:37:31,770 --> 01:37:37,210
else is the experience of that software system not being calibrated right yet.

1795
01:37:37,290 --> 01:37:37,530
Yeah.

1796
01:37:38,090 --> 01:37:38,330
Yeah.

1797
01:37:38,410 --> 01:37:43,370
You're learning what to worry about and how worried you should be about it.

1798
01:37:43,610 --> 01:37:45,130
I think is one way to do that.

1799
01:37:45,370 --> 01:37:50,960
And I think playing with fearful things and putting yourself in in situations where you're

1800
01:37:51,120 --> 01:37:55,440
you're getting inputs that you're worried, whether that's like spinning around in circles

1801
01:37:55,440 --> 01:37:59,120
quickly or climbing a tree as a kid or playing tag or being chased by someone or watching a

1802
01:37:59,120 --> 01:38:02,480
scary movie or going through a haunted house, there are a lot of different ways to get that

1803
01:38:02,480 --> 01:38:02,960
feeling.

1804
01:38:03,120 --> 01:38:06,480
I think that they work particularly well when they're embedded in a story because we tend

1805
01:38:06,480 --> 01:38:07,920
to be kind of narrative creatures first.

1806
01:38:08,320 --> 01:38:11,680
Like every other creature on earth experiences things first person.

1807
01:38:11,760 --> 01:38:15,200
And so our minds, I think, are, and I think Steen might have actually been the person who

1808
01:38:15,200 --> 01:38:15,440
said this.

1809
01:38:15,600 --> 01:38:20,630
I think it was a Steen and Owens paper that our minds are are just phylogenetically, I

1810
01:38:20,630 --> 01:38:25,270
mean, we are really good at um figuring things out when they're in a first person

1811
01:38:25,350 --> 01:38:28,950
narrative, which is probably why stories are compelling and why we can learn really well

1812
01:38:28,950 --> 01:38:31,430
from stories and don't learn very well from facts.

1813
01:38:32,070 --> 01:38:37,270
Because every other piece of machinery in the human brain for millions of years is adapted

1814
01:38:37,270 --> 01:38:38,950
to learning things first person.

1815
01:38:39,110 --> 01:38:39,270
Right.

1816
01:38:39,430 --> 01:38:44,280
And so when you tell a really good first person story and you embed lessons in it, we learn

1817
01:38:44,280 --> 01:38:45,560
it really easily and really quickly.

1818
01:38:45,640 --> 01:38:46,920
And we don't even feel like we're learning.

1819
01:38:47,000 --> 01:38:48,200
It just is enjoyable.

1820
01:38:48,360 --> 01:38:48,520
Right.

1821
01:38:48,760 --> 01:38:54,680
I think that's why uh horror is somewhat uniquely suited for teaching us

1822
01:38:54,680 --> 01:38:58,120
how to feel afraid and feel anxious and overcome those feelings.

1823
01:38:59,480 --> 01:38:59,800
Yeah.

1824
01:38:59,880 --> 01:39:04,410
It's almost like, you know, we we tend to think of learning as as solely about learning a

1825
01:39:04,410 --> 01:39:08,650
list of facts, but there's another, perhaps even more important kind of learning, which is

1826
01:39:08,650 --> 01:39:13,450
how to uh regulate and organize and arrange your emotions, right?

1827
01:39:13,530 --> 01:39:18,250
Because that's because there's no way that natural c selection can know in advance like the

1828
01:39:18,250 --> 01:39:22,730
exact right configuration of all of your cognitive and physiological and motivational

1829
01:39:22,730 --> 01:39:25,770
states, uh, you know, that is that is correct for the situation you're in.

1830
01:39:25,850 --> 01:39:26,410
You have to learn.

1831
01:39:26,570 --> 01:39:30,330
You have to learn about the situation and and and and sort of take stuff out, sample

1832
01:39:30,330 --> 01:39:31,850
different parts of it, as Dave said.

1833
01:39:32,020 --> 01:39:35,780
Uh, and so emotions themselves, we like to think of it as sort of the opposite of reason

1834
01:39:35,780 --> 01:39:36,340
and learning.

1835
01:39:36,500 --> 01:39:39,860
But I think emotions also need to need practical experience.

1836
01:39:39,940 --> 01:39:44,260
You need to learn how to deal with them and how to organize them uh in response to uh

1837
01:39:44,260 --> 01:39:49,140
particular context, uh, which I think is is a really important lesson from your work.

1838
01:39:49,540 --> 01:39:52,740
Yeah, well, and and I think that's a general lesson, probably, from evolutionary

1839
01:39:52,740 --> 01:39:58,350
psychology, just that uh emotions are many times ecologically rational.

1840
01:39:58,510 --> 01:40:01,950
And if you can understand that ecological ecological rationality, you understand when it

1841
01:40:01,950 --> 01:40:05,550
goes wrong or when it misfires, when it shouldn't, especially, you know, we're living, it's

1842
01:40:05,550 --> 01:40:09,790
not that's not a not not my idea, obviously, but we're living in a very different world

1843
01:40:09,790 --> 01:40:13,950
than what our ancestors lived in for most of their history, right?

1844
01:40:14,030 --> 01:40:18,750
And so um there are going to be some mismatches when it comes to, in particular, uh, you

1845
01:40:18,750 --> 01:40:24,600
know, these uh emotion systems that evolved under um fairly similar

1846
01:40:24,600 --> 01:40:28,280
circumstances for you know tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of

1847
01:40:28,280 --> 01:40:28,840
years.

1848
01:40:29,160 --> 01:40:29,400
Yeah.

1849
01:40:29,560 --> 01:40:32,680
And people often talk about it's scary to confront your emotions.

1850
01:40:32,760 --> 01:40:35,000
And I wonder if it's the same underlying logic, right?

1851
01:40:35,080 --> 01:40:39,720
Where it's it's a similar thing where it's sort of like um in in the same way, maybe we

1852
01:40:39,720 --> 01:40:44,280
shouldn't let kids avoid all risk or scary things.

1853
01:40:44,440 --> 01:40:50,360
You know, maybe one point is that um, you know, uh be let let like feel

1854
01:40:50,360 --> 01:40:55,970
emotions and sort of uh don't run away from that that feeling, right?

1855
01:40:59,010 --> 01:40:59,250
Yeah.

1856
01:40:59,410 --> 01:41:05,170
And I think um there's this common, I don't know if it's like actually what therapists tell

1857
01:41:05,170 --> 01:41:08,610
people or if it's what you know people on social media say therapists say.

1858
01:41:08,770 --> 01:41:13,250
Um but you know, you should you should feel your feelings and you should um but but there's

1859
01:41:13,330 --> 01:41:18,460
there's a pretty big leap from you should feel your feelings and understand what they are

1860
01:41:18,620 --> 01:41:21,180
from that to that means they are okay, right?

1861
01:41:21,340 --> 01:41:23,660
Because then you fall into that trap of mistaking feelings for facts.

1862
01:41:23,740 --> 01:41:28,380
And it's like, because I felt this, I am justified in behaving this way or feeling this way

1863
01:41:28,460 --> 01:41:29,580
or reacting in this way.

1864
01:41:29,660 --> 01:41:31,820
And it's like, that's not quite what that should mean.

1865
01:41:31,900 --> 01:41:35,660
What it should mean is that you should feel the feeling, understand what it is, try to

1866
01:41:35,660 --> 01:41:40,300
understand why it happened and like, and then the next and crucial step is kind of what we

1867
01:41:40,300 --> 01:41:42,460
talked about here with their emotion regulation.

1868
01:41:42,970 --> 01:41:44,250
is that how I should be feeling?

1869
01:41:44,330 --> 01:41:45,610
Is that the best response I could have?

1870
01:41:45,690 --> 01:41:46,890
And if not, how can I change that?

1871
01:41:47,050 --> 01:41:50,330
How what parts can I take in and out or turn on and off to kind of adjust that?

1872
01:41:50,570 --> 01:41:50,730
Yeah.

1873
01:41:50,810 --> 01:41:54,810
Are there people, do you know, are there people sort of in evolutionary psychiatry?

1874
01:41:55,290 --> 01:42:01,290
Um, uh, where so I mean, I think knowing about what the function of emotions are is a

1875
01:42:01,290 --> 01:42:04,650
way to sort of distance the emotion from your own experience.

1876
01:42:04,730 --> 01:42:07,850
And then it, or at least it gives you something of like, so for example, we talked about

1877
01:42:07,850 --> 01:42:12,580
what anxiety, what the function of anxiety is, and maybe even knowing that information the

1878
01:42:12,580 --> 01:42:17,220
next time, like, you know, or like when I feel anxiety, like knowing that I know that, it

1879
01:42:17,220 --> 01:42:18,340
gives me something to think about.

1880
01:42:18,420 --> 01:42:22,580
It's like, what is that thing out in the world that my brain is sort of latching onto?

1881
01:42:22,740 --> 01:42:28,340
It's a way to sort of like step back from just experiencing the emotion to sort of, you

1882
01:42:28,340 --> 01:42:31,860
know, it's sort of, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, but thinking about like what

1883
01:42:31,940 --> 01:42:36,580
what it, you know, but it but it's a way to sort of armchair cognitive behavioral therapy

1884
01:42:36,580 --> 01:42:39,380
yourself is to just have some functional theory of an emotion.

1885
01:42:39,540 --> 01:42:41,460
I wonder, have people looked at that?

1886
01:42:42,050 --> 01:42:44,210
I mean, maybe I I'm not too sure.

1887
01:42:44,370 --> 01:42:46,770
I think um, you know, one that would work really well.

1888
01:42:46,850 --> 01:42:52,690
Like Aaron Sell has done an excellent job of like decomposing anger and we talked about it

1889
01:42:52,690 --> 01:42:52,930
in Uber.

1890
01:42:53,170 --> 01:42:53,650
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1891
01:42:53,890 --> 01:42:54,050
Yeah.

1892
01:42:54,130 --> 01:42:57,730
And I think that would be a great first place to start with that because I think, you know,

1893
01:42:57,890 --> 01:43:01,570
because of him, like yeah, that's helped me like think about anger in an entirely different

1894
01:43:01,570 --> 01:43:01,730
way.

1895
01:43:01,810 --> 01:43:05,650
And I I think probably it would I could imagine that being useful in a therapeutic context,

1896
01:43:05,730 --> 01:43:05,970
you know?

1897
01:43:06,130 --> 01:43:06,450
Yeah.

1898
01:43:06,700 --> 01:43:10,060
Um, just again understanding that and then being able to kind of think about because then

1899
01:43:10,060 --> 01:43:12,140
you can think about, you can take that second perspective.

1900
01:43:12,300 --> 01:43:16,540
You can provide the new inputs and say, well, I'm feeling this way probably because X, Y,

1901
01:43:16,700 --> 01:43:19,180
Z, but really their behaviors were ABC.

1902
01:43:19,260 --> 01:43:20,700
And so I shouldn't be feeling this way.

1903
01:43:20,780 --> 01:43:20,940
Yeah.

1904
01:43:21,100 --> 01:43:25,500
Um, and you can kind of begin to, I think, regulate those kinds of emotions.

1905
01:43:25,660 --> 01:43:26,140
Yeah.

1906
01:43:26,460 --> 01:43:31,260
One one easy question that probably a lot of you get asked a lot is like, how does somebody

1907
01:43:31,260 --> 01:43:33,420
start studying morbid curiosity?

1908
01:43:33,670 --> 01:43:35,990
Were you attacked by a clown as a child?

1909
01:43:36,070 --> 01:43:37,990
Or or is No, no.

1910
01:43:38,070 --> 01:43:41,590
I mean, I I've always kind of liked scary things, but I it's not like I went to school and

1911
01:43:41,590 --> 01:43:46,710
I thought, okay, I'm gonna study, you know, why I'm interested in this and why why we love

1912
01:43:46,710 --> 01:43:47,350
horror movies.

1913
01:43:47,510 --> 01:43:52,630
When I when I was in grad school, I like most young fresh grad students, I was just

1914
01:43:52,630 --> 01:43:53,590
interested in like everything.

1915
01:43:53,750 --> 01:43:57,350
And and I still kind of am to some extent, but you know, you kind of have to pick a thing

1916
01:43:57,420 --> 01:43:59,660
and uh and study it a little more deeply.

1917
01:43:59,820 --> 01:44:02,940
And so I at first I got interested in why people were interested in violence.

1918
01:44:03,100 --> 01:44:08,460
So why why do we have like in almost every society across the world throughout time,

1919
01:44:08,940 --> 01:44:14,700
violence is mostly punished and abhorred, but there are certain cases where it's

1920
01:44:14,940 --> 01:44:16,860
where it's okay and where it's celebrated.

1921
01:44:17,100 --> 01:44:19,980
And so that was really interesting to me, like how we make this distinction between

1922
01:44:19,980 --> 01:44:23,740
violence that's okay and violence that's not okay, because it seems like such a a thing

1923
01:44:23,740 --> 01:44:26,750
that like should be so black and white, you know.

1924
01:44:26,910 --> 01:44:30,830
Um, like if anything is black and white, like incredible violence or murdering someone,

1925
01:44:30,910 --> 01:44:31,950
that that that should be it, right?

1926
01:44:32,030 --> 01:44:32,990
But it's like, well, it depends.

1927
01:44:33,070 --> 01:44:37,070
If it's in a Coliseum in front of 80,000 cheering Romans, maybe it's okay.

1928
01:44:37,310 --> 01:44:40,030
So I was interested in why how we made those distinctions.

1929
01:44:40,110 --> 01:44:44,350
And I did this eye tracking study to kind of see do people like look at the scenes

1930
01:44:44,350 --> 01:44:44,670
differently?

1931
01:44:44,750 --> 01:44:48,910
Do they describe them differently if it's violent or not violent or they're not sure?

1932
01:44:49,150 --> 01:44:54,740
Um and then I started thinking, well, you know, it's kind of weird that we sometimes enjoy

1933
01:44:54,740 --> 01:44:55,060
violence.

1934
01:44:55,140 --> 01:44:57,220
It's we kind of scare our and violence can be scary.

1935
01:44:57,300 --> 01:45:00,020
And like, well, we also kind of scare ourselves sometimes for fun.

1936
01:45:00,100 --> 01:45:01,780
And then I was like, well, I do that too, right?

1937
01:45:01,860 --> 01:45:03,860
Like, I also like scary things.

1938
01:45:04,100 --> 01:45:08,420
Um, and so I started looking through the literature and I didn't really find any

1939
01:45:09,700 --> 01:45:11,380
explanations for why we do that.

1940
01:45:11,540 --> 01:45:14,340
Uh Matthias Clayson was the only one who'd really done any work on this.

1941
01:45:14,500 --> 01:45:19,310
This was in like 2016 or so, 2017 maybe.

1942
01:45:19,470 --> 01:45:23,710
Um yeah, I think Paul Bloom had some sort of like ideas, but I don't think he did much of

1943
01:45:23,710 --> 01:45:23,950
the work.

1944
01:45:24,030 --> 01:45:27,550
Yeah, I don't think there was no and there really wasn't much written about it even.

1945
01:45:27,630 --> 01:45:31,390
I mean, you know, Pinker had like a line or two in his book on it or something, you know,

1946
01:45:31,550 --> 01:45:37,460
on the blank slate, I think, or maybe the blank slate or maybe one of his other one of his

1947
01:45:37,460 --> 01:45:39,060
other how the mind works or something.

1948
01:45:39,460 --> 01:45:40,500
It may have been how the mind works.

1949
01:45:40,580 --> 01:45:40,660
Yeah.

1950
01:45:40,900 --> 01:45:45,060
And Paul Duman has some stuff like on his his psych book, which I use for my intro psych

1951
01:45:45,140 --> 01:45:46,260
class, which is a great book, psych.

1952
01:45:46,580 --> 01:45:47,460
It's like but uh but yeah.

1953
01:45:47,860 --> 01:45:49,140
But that came out that came out much later.

1954
01:45:49,380 --> 01:45:49,940
Very recently, yeah.

1955
01:45:50,260 --> 01:45:50,660
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1956
01:45:50,900 --> 01:45:52,740
That came out like in the last two years, I think.

1957
01:45:52,900 --> 01:45:54,900
This would have been like, you know, almost ten years ago now.

1958
01:45:55,140 --> 01:45:55,540
No, for sure.

1959
01:45:55,620 --> 01:45:55,860
Yeah, yeah.

1960
01:45:56,100 --> 01:46:00,490
Um and there's nobody was doing it except this Danish literature scholar.

1961
01:46:00,650 --> 01:46:04,970
And so I reached out to him and I because he was interested in like horror literature and

1962
01:46:04,970 --> 01:46:07,530
like what makes horror literature horror literature.

1963
01:46:07,770 --> 01:46:09,050
And um I reached out to him.

1964
01:46:09,130 --> 01:46:12,570
I said, Hey, you're the only person I can find that is doing anything like this.

1965
01:46:13,130 --> 01:46:14,650
Do you want to chat sometime?

1966
01:46:14,890 --> 01:46:18,170
And so he's like, Yeah, well, in fact, I'm doing a haunted house study here in Denmark.

1967
01:46:18,250 --> 01:46:21,100
Why don't you come over and and do it with me this fall.

1968
01:46:21,180 --> 01:46:22,540
And I was like, okay.

1969
01:46:22,780 --> 01:46:25,580
So I went to Denmark and I stayed there for about a month.

1970
01:46:25,820 --> 01:46:30,140
And uh it was the start of a very long and fruitful collaboration with him.

1971
01:46:30,300 --> 01:46:34,540
And this is before he'd even started the recreational fear lab, sort of properly.

1972
01:46:34,780 --> 01:46:36,940
And um, yeah, so that's kind of how I got into it.

1973
01:46:37,020 --> 01:46:39,260
And then, you know, I was talking to my advisor one day.

1974
01:46:39,420 --> 01:46:43,740
I think I was probably a second year or something, and I was getting ready to sit down and

1975
01:46:43,740 --> 01:46:46,630
sort of think about what I was going to do for my dissertation proposal.

1976
01:46:46,710 --> 01:46:49,910
And I said, well, you know, Dario, I've got this project on violence.

1977
01:46:49,990 --> 01:46:53,430
And I've got this project with the haunted house and fear and like why people are

1978
01:46:53,430 --> 01:46:54,950
interested in scary things and violence.

1979
01:46:55,030 --> 01:46:57,990
And he was like, well, it sounds kind of like morbid curiosity.

1980
01:46:58,150 --> 01:46:59,670
And I was like, well, yeah, I guess that's right.

1981
01:46:59,830 --> 01:47:02,790
And then I started looking up morbid curiosity and I was like, well, nobody's really done

1982
01:47:02,790 --> 01:47:03,350
anything with this.

1983
01:47:03,430 --> 01:47:05,910
Like there's no, there are no pay psychological papers on this.

1984
01:47:05,990 --> 01:47:09,830
There was like one paper from the 80s that took a very narrow conception of what it might

1985
01:47:09,830 --> 01:47:10,070
be.

1986
01:47:10,230 --> 01:47:13,030
And then nobody ever validated the scale and it was barely cited.

1987
01:47:13,110 --> 01:47:15,200
So I was like, nobody has really tackled this.

1988
01:47:15,280 --> 01:47:18,000
And it's related to a lot of different things that I was doing.

1989
01:47:18,240 --> 01:47:21,200
Um, I had that paper I mentioned earlier with Anne Fessler about gruesomeness.

1990
01:47:21,360 --> 01:47:24,320
We had just kind of started that, like, why are people sometimes gruesomely violent?

1991
01:47:24,480 --> 01:47:30,400
And so I just had all these topics that eventually became fitted to that broader

1992
01:47:30,400 --> 01:47:31,280
concept.

1993
01:47:31,680 --> 01:47:35,440
And it just ended up being then, you know, okay, well, I'll try to figure out what this if

1994
01:47:35,440 --> 01:47:37,040
these are related in some kind of way.

1995
01:47:37,670 --> 01:47:38,070
That's awesome.

1996
01:47:38,630 --> 01:47:44,070
It's a great example of how an evolutionary perspective uh allows you to ask good

1997
01:47:44,070 --> 01:47:49,030
questions uh and and discover low-hanging fruit that no one else has plucked.

1998
01:47:49,190 --> 01:47:50,310
Like it's kind of crazy to me.

1999
01:47:50,630 --> 01:47:55,030
You know, that you know, psychology has been around for what, more than a century now?

2000
01:47:55,190 --> 01:48:01,140
Uh and uh and nobody uh has really looked at this huge aspect of the human experience,

2001
01:48:01,220 --> 01:48:05,220
which is our fascination with the macabra and with darkness and violence.

2002
01:48:05,380 --> 01:48:06,580
Like, that's crazy to me.

2003
01:48:06,660 --> 01:48:07,700
Like it was crazy to me.

2004
01:48:07,780 --> 01:48:08,340
I thought I was wrong.

2005
01:48:08,420 --> 01:48:11,620
I thought I was like, Am I missing an entire portion of the literature that I'm just not,

2006
01:48:11,700 --> 01:48:12,820
you know, seeing somewhere?

2007
01:48:12,980 --> 01:48:16,500
But it was just that it was one of those things people just took for granted, I guess, or

2008
01:48:16,660 --> 01:48:19,700
like, I don't know, one of those things it's like it's so obvious, let's not look into it,

2009
01:48:19,860 --> 01:48:23,780
which tend to be the most fruitful areas for especially evolutionary psychology.

2010
01:48:23,940 --> 01:48:29,710
Um, and and I get now, I mean, emails all the time from from like undergrads and

2011
01:48:29,710 --> 01:48:32,990
now graduate students who are like, Well, I think I'm gonna do my thesis on this.

2012
01:48:33,070 --> 01:48:33,790
I'm like, please do.

2013
01:48:33,870 --> 01:48:35,470
There's like so much low-hanging fruit.

2014
01:48:35,550 --> 01:48:38,030
Like, I can't I can't do it all myself at all.

2015
01:48:38,190 --> 01:48:42,110
Like, there's so much just like simple questions, simple studies you could do that would be

2016
01:48:42,110 --> 01:48:44,110
really impactful and really interesting.

2017
01:48:44,350 --> 01:48:49,020
Um even with true crime, it was like I was blown away that like there was only like one

2018
01:48:49,020 --> 01:48:51,900
empirical side paper on true crime when I started studying this.

2019
01:48:51,980 --> 01:48:52,060
Right.

2020
01:48:52,220 --> 01:48:53,180
It was like from 2013.

2021
01:48:53,260 --> 01:48:53,660
It was one.

2022
01:48:53,740 --> 01:48:55,100
It was really good, but there was only one.

2023
01:48:55,260 --> 01:48:56,780
And it's like that is such a phenomenal.

2024
01:48:56,860 --> 01:48:59,180
Like hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on this.

2025
01:48:59,340 --> 01:49:01,420
And and hundreds of millions of people consume it.

2026
01:49:01,500 --> 01:49:02,700
And like we don't understand why.

2027
01:49:02,860 --> 01:49:03,180
You know.

2028
01:49:03,420 --> 01:49:06,620
And I think it's just because people have these intuitions, like, oh, they do it because

2029
01:49:07,020 --> 01:49:10,940
they glorify because they like to glorify violence or what the things that just are like a

2030
01:49:10,940 --> 01:49:14,380
made-up, like made-up explanations that nobody has ever tested.

2031
01:49:14,540 --> 01:49:18,150
Um, and it turns out when you start thinking about it a little more clearly and testing

2032
01:49:18,150 --> 01:49:22,150
some of these ideas, you can come up with some really fascinating explanations that then

2033
01:49:22,150 --> 01:49:24,710
can lead to, you know, uh a bunch of other insights.

2034
01:49:25,030 --> 01:49:25,190
Right.

2035
01:49:25,510 --> 01:49:26,630
Respect the phenomenon.

2036
01:49:26,710 --> 01:49:26,870
Yeah.

2037
01:49:27,270 --> 01:49:27,510
Totally.

2038
01:49:28,150 --> 01:49:32,950
I mean, it's it's a it's you know, uh it it's a you know, it echoes what I said in uh an

2039
01:49:32,950 --> 01:49:36,150
earlier episode we did on how to do good evolutionary psychology.

2040
01:49:36,230 --> 01:49:39,990
I think that might have been it, where um, you know, a common criticism you hear about

2041
01:49:39,990 --> 01:49:44,150
evolutionary psychology is that it tells just so stories and that they're untestable and

2042
01:49:44,150 --> 01:49:47,900
there's no way to, you know, uh make predictions with an evolutionary perspective.

2043
01:49:48,060 --> 01:49:52,540
And my experience actually being in the field and doing evolutionary psychology research is

2044
01:49:52,540 --> 01:49:56,540
that I have the exact opposite problem, is that it makes too many predictions.

2045
01:49:56,620 --> 01:49:58,540
And there are too many ways to test this.

2046
01:49:58,620 --> 01:50:00,940
And I just there aren't enough hours in the day.

2047
01:50:01,100 --> 01:50:05,900
I wish I had a whole army of researchers to go out and test these predictions, just so

2048
01:50:05,900 --> 01:50:07,180
fruitful and so rich.

2049
01:50:07,450 --> 01:50:11,610
And uh that that to me is more of the problem is that we just don't have enough resources

2050
01:50:11,610 --> 01:50:13,690
to go out and test all these ideas.

2051
01:50:13,850 --> 01:50:16,170
Um do you have you had a similar experience, Colton?

2052
01:50:17,370 --> 01:50:18,010
Having it right now.

2053
01:50:18,090 --> 01:50:21,770
I mean it's just like anyone uh anyone listening to this that wants to throw funding my

2054
01:50:21,770 --> 01:50:27,290
way, I will uh do t I will I will multiply by five the number of experiments I'm currently

2055
01:50:27,290 --> 01:50:27,610
running.

2056
01:50:27,770 --> 01:50:30,330
Um yeah it's it's really just a time and money thing.

2057
01:50:30,410 --> 01:50:35,540
It's not even I mean there's just so much interesting stuff or like you know finding people

2058
01:50:35,700 --> 01:50:39,380
it's more fun to to do studies with in my opinion with other people it's like finding

2059
01:50:39,380 --> 01:50:44,340
people who are also interested in this and um yeah I I've just it's it's really more of at

2060
01:50:44,340 --> 01:50:50,180
least in in my narrow area that I work in uh at least that I primarily work in uh

2061
01:50:50,340 --> 01:50:54,500
it's mostly just a time and resources thing not a not a failure of predictions not a

2062
01:50:54,500 --> 01:50:59,650
failure of um not being able to come up with experiments to test it, you know.

2063
01:51:00,130 --> 01:51:01,090
Um yeah.

2064
01:51:01,250 --> 01:51:01,570
Yeah.

2065
01:51:01,730 --> 01:51:06,930
The so uh the behavioral or the what what is the recreational the what is the recreational

2066
01:51:07,090 --> 01:51:10,850
fear lab yeah the recreational fear okay you have to explain so that I'm can you explain

2067
01:51:10,850 --> 01:51:15,730
that and then that's a lead into if people are interested in like your work what sure where

2068
01:51:15,730 --> 01:51:20,450
can they come across this stuff and what what exists and are I know there's some uh things

2069
01:51:20,450 --> 01:51:24,740
or events that are maybe planned too so can you talk a little bit about this yeah Yeah.

2070
01:51:24,820 --> 01:51:30,820
So I mean, like I said, I I got hooked up with Matthias Clazen, who now is uh director of

2071
01:51:30,820 --> 01:51:32,020
the Recreational Fear Lab.

2072
01:51:32,260 --> 01:51:34,820
Um great name Recreational Fear Lab.

2073
01:51:35,060 --> 01:51:38,660
So how can you not be curious about a lab called a Recreational Fear Lab?

2074
01:51:39,620 --> 01:51:42,900
If you had just wear that as a t shirt, people will be like, What is that?

2075
01:51:42,980 --> 01:51:43,140
Yeah.

2076
01:51:43,380 --> 01:51:44,500
I think they do have T shirts.

2077
01:51:44,580 --> 01:51:48,500
You might uh I I know I know I certainly have a hoodie with it on there, so I'm pretty sure

2078
01:51:48,500 --> 01:51:49,380
they have t shirts.

2079
01:51:50,090 --> 01:51:55,930
Um, yeah, so it's a it's a lab that Matias started to study in in Aarhus, Denmark, to uh

2080
01:51:55,930 --> 01:51:59,370
study why and how we engage with scary play.

2081
01:51:59,610 --> 01:52:03,610
And um, I've collaborated with them a lot over the years, more so in my PhD.

2082
01:52:03,690 --> 01:52:07,210
I used to, I would go there, you know, for several weeks at a time, usually in October and

2083
01:52:07,210 --> 01:52:08,650
do haunt studies in haunted houses.

2084
01:52:08,730 --> 01:52:12,650
They were kind of these like ways for us to do field experiments on fear that in ways that

2085
01:52:12,650 --> 01:52:16,330
you can't induce in the lab, ethically or even like practically.

2086
01:52:16,490 --> 01:52:22,460
Um, and for us to get like really cool uh data, everything from physiology to eye tracking

2087
01:52:22,460 --> 01:52:24,380
to hormones to whatever.

2088
01:52:24,620 --> 01:52:27,100
Um so I worked with them for a long time.

2089
01:52:27,260 --> 01:52:33,260
Um you know still am close with them but I'm not like officially uh affiliated with their

2090
01:52:33,260 --> 01:52:33,580
lab.

2091
01:52:33,980 --> 01:52:36,540
Um but yeah what were what were the other questions?

2092
01:52:36,620 --> 01:52:38,940
I'm sorry I forgot oh just so where can they find my work?

2093
01:52:39,100 --> 01:52:44,300
Yeah yeah yeah yeah um I mean my so my website if you just type in www.colton

2094
01:52:44,460 --> 01:52:47,570
scrivener.com I've got all of my publications.

2095
01:52:47,730 --> 01:52:50,690
As soon as they are available, I put them up as a PDF there.

2096
01:52:50,930 --> 01:52:54,130
Um, there's a link to my Substack, so morbidly curious thoughts.

2097
01:52:54,290 --> 01:52:58,930
This is kind of where I usually so I actually, this paper I mentioned earlier with Edgar

2098
01:52:58,930 --> 01:53:04,050
about formidability and horror, the horror genre started as a Substack post that I posted a

2099
01:53:04,050 --> 01:53:05,010
while back.

2100
01:53:05,330 --> 01:53:06,210
And Edgar read it.

2101
01:53:06,370 --> 01:53:07,650
He's like, hey, we should do a study on this.

2102
01:53:07,730 --> 01:53:09,490
And I was like, I would love to, you know.

2103
01:53:09,650 --> 01:53:14,060
Uh and it ended up being like one of my favorite papers that I've ever worked on because it

2104
01:53:14,060 --> 01:53:17,020
just came from this this idea that I had that I got to write about.

2105
01:53:17,180 --> 01:53:21,580
So on my sub stack, I write about things like that that like, oh, this is like kind of an

2106
01:53:21,580 --> 01:53:24,940
interesting, cool idea or something I've been thinking about, but it's not something

2107
01:53:24,940 --> 01:53:26,220
usually that I've published about.

2108
01:53:26,460 --> 01:53:30,060
Or if I have, I take the thing I published about and I kind of expand it and and think

2109
01:53:30,060 --> 01:53:33,340
about it a little more freely than you can in in an academic paper.

2110
01:53:33,580 --> 01:53:39,420
Um, and then of course I have a book out on October 7th today, um, called

2111
01:53:39,450 --> 01:53:42,490
Morbidly Curious, Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away.

2112
01:53:42,970 --> 01:53:48,810
And it is uh a very it's it's an interesting book because it's it's very much a popular

2113
01:53:48,810 --> 01:53:49,370
science book.

2114
01:53:49,450 --> 01:53:53,290
You can read it without having any kind of special degree or anything like that.

2115
01:53:53,610 --> 01:53:59,450
Um, but there's a lot of stuff in it that even people who study topics very

2116
01:53:59,450 --> 01:54:03,930
similar to mine will have not seen before because I I was able to treat it as kind of an

2117
01:54:03,930 --> 01:54:07,690
exploration, almost like my sub stack, like an exploration of lots of ideas that I've been

2118
01:54:07,690 --> 01:54:13,460
thinking about and tying all those ideas, many of them that are not in academic papers yet,

2119
01:54:13,780 --> 01:54:19,700
um, tying them together to this sort of more general core theory of of why we're intrigued

2120
01:54:19,700 --> 01:54:20,740
by the macabre.

2121
01:54:21,060 --> 01:54:25,540
Um so there's a lot of like new stuff in there if you're a scientist, but also uh very

2122
01:54:25,780 --> 01:54:29,220
should be very easily accessible to to anyone.

2123
01:54:29,460 --> 01:54:31,230
Um but yeah, cool.

2124
01:54:31,470 --> 01:54:32,910
It's uh it's a it's a wonderful book.

2125
01:54:32,990 --> 01:54:36,750
I was fortunate enough to um read an advanced copy of it.

2126
01:54:36,910 --> 01:54:41,470
Um it's really readable, enjoyable, lots of fun examples from pop culture and also lots of

2127
01:54:41,470 --> 01:54:42,910
really good science as well.

2128
01:54:43,070 --> 01:54:46,350
So I I recommend everyone who's listening to to pick up a copy.

2129
01:54:46,670 --> 01:54:46,990
Thank you.

2130
01:54:47,150 --> 01:54:47,710
That means a lot.

2131
01:54:47,790 --> 01:54:51,870
It was uh first it was it was it was weird getting I never thought, not that I never

2132
01:54:51,870 --> 01:54:55,150
thought I'd write a book, but I certainly didn't think I'd write one this soon, you know.

2133
01:54:55,390 --> 01:54:59,560
Um and I was kind of scared at first to do it because it was like again, a lot of these

2134
01:54:59,560 --> 01:55:00,760
ideas I had not published on yet.

2135
01:55:00,840 --> 01:55:04,280
And you're kind of taught in science, like if you if there's not, you know, published

2136
01:55:04,280 --> 01:55:06,280
papers for this, you can't talk about it.

2137
01:55:06,520 --> 01:55:11,800
Um, it was cool to kind of like mix like here's like what I have empirical evidence for,

2138
01:55:11,880 --> 01:55:15,080
and then here's all these fun ideas that I'm I'm pretty sure about, but I haven't done the

2139
01:55:15,080 --> 01:55:15,560
studies yet.

2140
01:55:15,720 --> 01:55:20,850
Again, because not because of a lack of uh ability to come up with experiments or or have

2141
01:55:20,850 --> 01:55:23,890
testable predictions, but just time and resources.

2142
01:55:23,970 --> 01:55:28,210
And uh yeah, if you do read it and there's fun ideas in there, please do those studies.

2143
01:55:28,370 --> 01:55:28,450
Yeah.

2144
01:55:29,010 --> 01:55:30,050
Please feel free.

2145
01:55:30,450 --> 01:55:34,690
We we've talked to a lot of uh evolutionary behavioral scientists, and I think almost every

2146
01:55:34,690 --> 01:55:40,610
single one, um, with there are exceptions, but almost every single one sort of found it by

2147
01:55:40,610 --> 01:55:41,490
reading a book.

2148
01:55:41,860 --> 01:55:44,500
Like it wasn't by reading, like almost always like a book.

2149
01:55:44,660 --> 01:55:48,500
Like there's something about books that I think, you know, it really like it changes

2150
01:55:48,500 --> 01:55:49,140
people's lives.

2151
01:55:49,220 --> 01:55:52,980
So, you know, like there's just something about like the whole package of ideas that really

2152
01:55:52,980 --> 01:55:53,620
gets people.

2153
01:55:53,700 --> 01:55:57,940
And I've heard that um, you know, many people talk about it was a book that really changed

2154
01:55:57,940 --> 01:55:58,740
the course of my life.

2155
01:55:58,820 --> 01:55:59,220
So yeah.

2156
01:55:59,460 --> 01:55:59,620
Yeah.

2157
01:55:59,700 --> 01:55:59,860
Yeah.

2158
01:55:59,940 --> 01:56:04,510
I mean, uh I, you know, I I read when I was uh an undergraduate why zebras don't get

2159
01:56:04,590 --> 01:56:04,910
ulcers.

2160
01:56:04,990 --> 01:56:08,350
And that was like my book where it just opened my eyes by Rob Robert Sapolski.

2161
01:56:08,510 --> 01:56:08,590
Yeah.

2162
01:56:08,750 --> 01:56:14,510
Just opened my eyes to this like new way to think about human

2163
01:56:14,670 --> 01:56:16,030
existence just generally.

2164
01:56:16,190 --> 01:56:16,350
Right.

2165
01:56:16,830 --> 01:56:18,750
Um, and so that was like super influential.

2166
01:56:18,830 --> 01:56:22,510
And I came from again, like you said, a book where he, you know, talked about he's he

2167
01:56:22,510 --> 01:56:23,470
certainly cites the sources.

2168
01:56:23,550 --> 01:56:27,150
He has a lot of sources he cites, but he, you know, takes some some creative liberty to

2169
01:56:27,150 --> 01:56:28,510
think about new ideas in it.

2170
01:56:28,670 --> 01:56:32,780
And I think those are some of the more enriching, interesting places because you really

2171
01:56:32,780 --> 01:56:37,820
have freedom as a as an author to I guess think out loud in some ways.

2172
01:56:37,980 --> 01:56:38,140
Yeah.

2173
01:56:38,300 --> 01:56:41,260
Or think think along with your audio, with your audience, with your readers.

2174
01:56:41,340 --> 01:56:41,500
Yeah.

2175
01:56:41,740 --> 01:56:45,580
That you just don't get to do in in academic papers, or it's or it's relegated to like one

2176
01:56:45,580 --> 01:56:47,020
sentence in the discussion.

2177
01:56:47,420 --> 01:56:47,740
Right.

2178
01:56:47,900 --> 01:56:49,100
Thanks to reviewer two.

2179
01:56:49,340 --> 01:56:51,500
I can speculate about this at a footnote.

2180
01:56:52,140 --> 01:56:53,100
Yeah, it's at a footnote.

2181
01:56:53,180 --> 01:56:53,660
That's more likely.

2182
01:56:53,900 --> 01:56:54,140
Exactly.

2183
01:56:54,220 --> 01:56:54,620
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2184
01:56:54,940 --> 01:56:57,340
Um, is there anything we should have asked you?

2185
01:56:59,890 --> 01:57:01,810
Um should have asked me.

2186
01:57:01,890 --> 01:57:02,210
I don't know.

2187
01:57:02,370 --> 01:57:06,850
I mean, uh, I think you asked me this is one of the more uh fun conversations that I've

2188
01:57:06,850 --> 01:57:11,810
had, I think, because both of you are evolutionary psychologists and I don't often uh do I

2189
01:57:11,810 --> 01:57:15,810
do I do lots of podcasts, but I don't often do podcasts with evolutionary psychologists uh

2190
01:57:15,810 --> 01:57:16,530
in discussion.

2191
01:57:16,690 --> 01:57:21,330
And so um it was really fun to like break some of these ideas down in ways that you know I

2192
01:57:21,330 --> 01:57:25,540
just haven't been able to do with with other other Yeah, I appreciate that.

2193
01:57:25,620 --> 01:57:26,820
I mean, that's one of the reasons why we're doing it.

2194
01:57:26,980 --> 01:57:30,580
Just, you know, it's just it's that's kind of what we're doing, you know, it's just get

2195
01:57:30,740 --> 01:57:34,100
people a a a sense of what it's like if we were just all chatting together about what we

2196
01:57:34,100 --> 01:57:34,580
do, you know.

2197
01:57:34,660 --> 01:57:35,540
Like that's yeah.

2198
01:57:35,700 --> 01:57:38,980
And I think I think evolutionary psychology is especially interesting in that way because

2199
01:57:38,980 --> 01:57:42,500
it's like sitting around with an engineer and having them think about like exactly how do

2200
01:57:42,500 --> 01:57:44,740
we take this apart and like how do you know this works this way?

2201
01:57:44,900 --> 01:57:44,980
Yeah.

2202
01:57:45,140 --> 01:57:46,740
And we do the same thing but with the mind, right?

2203
01:57:46,820 --> 01:57:49,710
And so it's like a very different way to sit around and just chat.

2204
01:57:50,030 --> 01:57:54,190
It's very conducive to interesting discussions, I think, and generative, as David mentioned

2205
01:57:54,190 --> 01:57:54,510
earlier.

2206
01:57:54,670 --> 01:57:59,310
Like super can be super generative if you do it correctly and carefully and thoughtfully.

2207
01:57:59,630 --> 01:57:59,870
Yeah.

2208
01:57:59,950 --> 01:58:01,550
And it's just super cool.

2209
01:58:01,710 --> 01:58:03,790
Uh I love that you're doing.

2210
01:58:03,950 --> 01:58:06,750
I think like, you know, David's doing stuff about humor.

2211
01:58:06,830 --> 01:58:09,950
We we had recorded recently the his about humor.

2212
01:58:10,190 --> 01:58:11,150
I love that.

2213
01:58:11,390 --> 01:58:14,020
You know, I I I study groups in conflict.

2214
01:58:14,100 --> 01:58:14,980
You know, David does that too.

2215
01:58:15,060 --> 01:58:19,700
But like I think it's it's really important to stick to like foraging and mating and you

2216
01:58:19,700 --> 01:58:20,580
know, survival.

2217
01:58:20,660 --> 01:58:24,100
And even like I think there's still low-hanging fruit for even like stuff like parenting.

2218
01:58:24,340 --> 01:58:30,020
But I also really like that there's good quality work getting into these more sort of

2219
01:58:30,340 --> 01:58:33,940
more strange uh and less straightforward areas.

2220
01:58:34,180 --> 01:58:34,340
Yeah.

2221
01:58:34,580 --> 01:58:40,170
Um, and I'm really happy just as sort of like a watching the field

2222
01:58:40,170 --> 01:58:44,170
grow that these things like humor or horror.

2223
01:58:44,410 --> 01:58:49,130
Um, it's not just sort of like as we said, like bad or joking, like you know, ridiculous

2224
01:58:49,210 --> 01:58:53,690
bad, just so stories, but it's actually starting to get empirical teeth and like

2225
01:58:53,690 --> 01:58:56,890
sophisticated cognitive science basically of these things.

2226
01:58:56,970 --> 01:58:58,170
And I just love that.

2227
01:58:58,340 --> 01:59:03,460
Um, I'm always happy when somebody is like biting off like the serious cognitive science of

2228
01:59:03,460 --> 01:59:04,260
like a new area.

2229
01:59:04,340 --> 01:59:06,740
And it's it's so thank you for doing that with this.

2230
01:59:06,820 --> 01:59:07,060
Yeah.

2231
01:59:07,300 --> 01:59:11,620
No, I mean, just you know, honestly, just kind of following what interested me, um, which

2232
01:59:11,620 --> 01:59:15,140
is not always good advice, but I got lucky and it ended up being good advice for me.

2233
01:59:15,380 --> 01:59:21,130
And uh, I think I'm I'm pretty fortunate that I'm I study I study something that

2234
01:59:21,210 --> 01:59:25,370
um pretty much everyone has an opinion on and has experienced.

2235
01:59:25,530 --> 01:59:30,170
And like it's easy for me to talk to someone at a as easy for me to talk to you guys, like

2236
01:59:30,250 --> 01:59:35,210
you know, high-quality evolutionary psychologists in the field about this topic as it is

2237
01:59:35,210 --> 01:59:37,770
for me to talk about like some stranger at a bar about this topic.

2238
01:59:37,850 --> 01:59:42,380
And it's like everyone has experienced feeling morbidly curious at one time or another.

2239
01:59:42,460 --> 01:59:45,260
Everyone either usually loves or hates horror movies.

2240
01:59:45,340 --> 01:59:49,740
Um, and so they have a lot of thoughts about why that is and uh have experiences with it.

2241
01:59:49,820 --> 01:59:54,540
And so it's very easy to connect like this topic with just like grounded real things that

2242
01:59:54,540 --> 01:59:55,340
people experience.

2243
01:59:55,500 --> 01:59:59,820
And I think it's easy for like us to sit around and think about certain topics that are

2244
01:59:59,820 --> 02:00:04,780
super interesting, but maybe don't feel relevant on their face to the average person.

2245
02:00:04,940 --> 02:00:09,090
But I think I'm I'm lucky that I think my topic is not so much like that.

2246
02:00:09,250 --> 02:00:15,090
Um, so it's super fun to to study because people I think can can access it quickly and

2247
02:00:15,090 --> 02:00:19,810
have um, you know, uh in some in some cases, very generative thoughts about it.

2248
02:00:19,890 --> 02:00:25,410
Like I said, the uh the whole idea about horror maybe being beneficial came from just

2249
02:00:25,410 --> 02:00:29,680
regular people, like non-scientists, talking about how they engage with it and what it

2250
02:00:29,680 --> 02:00:29,840
does.

2251
02:00:29,920 --> 02:00:31,520
Like that's where that idea came from.

2252
02:00:31,760 --> 02:00:32,080
Yeah.

2253
02:00:32,160 --> 02:00:32,400
Yeah.

2254
02:00:32,480 --> 02:00:37,040
It's not, I mean, one of the themes of this podcast has been respecting people and not just

2255
02:00:37,040 --> 02:00:41,600
sort of patronizing toward it in something like consuming horror, people who are anxious.

2256
02:00:41,680 --> 02:00:44,720
It's really easy to just sort of or glorifying violence, right?

2257
02:00:44,800 --> 02:00:49,680
It's just really easy to just sort of judge that and sort of treat it as like not worth our

2258
02:00:49,680 --> 02:00:50,400
attention.

2259
02:00:50,560 --> 02:00:52,800
Um, and I think that's exactly right.

2260
02:00:52,960 --> 02:00:55,120
That that's exactly the wrong way to think about it.

2261
02:00:55,290 --> 02:00:55,530
Yeah.

2262
02:00:55,690 --> 02:00:55,930
Yeah.

2263
02:00:56,090 --> 02:00:56,250
Yeah.

2264
02:00:56,730 --> 02:01:02,010
I I I will say your your work has uh shaped my life uh personally in terms of my

2265
02:01:02,010 --> 02:01:05,610
relationship with my daughter, who as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode is very

2266
02:01:05,610 --> 02:01:07,450
morbidly curious.

2267
02:01:07,610 --> 02:01:13,130
Um I I had an experience um a few nights ago where I I wanted to uh I was gonna watch James

2268
02:01:13,130 --> 02:01:14,250
and the giant peach with her.

2269
02:01:14,330 --> 02:01:18,460
So I I went into you know the Apple TV and typed in J A.

2270
02:01:18,940 --> 02:01:24,460
And then the poster for Jaws came up with like the picture of of like the shark's mouth

2271
02:01:24,460 --> 02:01:24,700
open.

2272
02:01:24,780 --> 02:01:25,020
Yeah.

2273
02:01:25,180 --> 02:01:27,980
And as soon as my daughter saw that, she's oh, I want to watch the shark movie.

2274
02:01:28,060 --> 02:01:29,740
We watched the shark movie instead.

2275
02:01:29,980 --> 02:01:33,500
And I had this like inner so she my daughter's three, she's three years old.

2276
02:01:33,580 --> 02:01:36,220
And so I had this inner debate with myself, like, oh, is that shit?

2277
02:01:36,860 --> 02:01:37,900
Should I watch Jaws?

2278
02:01:38,220 --> 02:01:39,820
Like, is that gonna be too much for her?

2279
02:01:40,060 --> 02:01:43,810
And then I had my inner Colton Scrivener telling me, Hey, you know what?

2280
02:01:43,970 --> 02:01:48,290
This is actually a normal, healthy part of development that she's curious about this.

2281
02:01:48,450 --> 02:01:49,570
Um, let's give it a try.

2282
02:01:49,730 --> 02:01:51,170
If it's too much, we can always turn it off.

2283
02:01:51,890 --> 02:01:54,770
And I ended up and I ended up watching Jaws with her.

2284
02:01:54,930 --> 02:01:57,090
And she was she's so into it.

2285
02:01:57,170 --> 02:01:57,890
She loved it.

2286
02:01:57,970 --> 02:01:58,930
And I it was funny.

2287
02:01:59,090 --> 02:02:01,250
I was actually more scared than she was.

2288
02:02:01,970 --> 02:02:03,970
She was just more kind of like riveted and curious.

2289
02:02:04,130 --> 02:02:06,050
She was like asking all these questions about it.

2290
02:02:06,530 --> 02:02:10,500
Um, and uh it was just like a really cool bonding experience.

2291
02:02:10,660 --> 02:02:16,020
Um and I I appreciate you, you know, um allowing that to happen with me.

2292
02:02:16,100 --> 02:02:20,420
And I'm sure I'll continue to enjoy, you know, horror movies with her and morbid curiosity

2293
02:02:20,420 --> 02:02:21,700
with her as she grows up.

2294
02:02:21,780 --> 02:02:25,860
Um and it's that's just been a really cool and special way that your work has affected my

2295
02:02:25,860 --> 02:02:26,100
life.

2296
02:02:26,260 --> 02:02:27,940
So I appreciate that actually means a lot.

2297
02:02:28,020 --> 02:02:29,940
That's uh that's good to hear and that means a lot.

2298
02:02:30,020 --> 02:02:33,730
And I think like it would have been a different experience if she had come across it

2299
02:02:33,730 --> 02:02:38,050
herself and watched it and might have been afraid and not been able to like have you next.

2300
02:02:38,130 --> 02:02:40,370
Like having her father next to her is a very comfort.

2301
02:02:40,450 --> 02:02:42,210
That's a comforting thing for a primate, right?

2302
02:02:42,370 --> 02:02:42,610
Yeah.

2303
02:02:42,770 --> 02:02:48,690
Uh and so I think it it also allows them you to tackle things that are maybe would it would

2304
02:02:48,690 --> 02:02:51,650
have been a little more a little too scary for you initially, but now because you feel like

2305
02:02:51,650 --> 02:02:53,890
you're in a secure spot, you can actually engage with them.

2306
02:02:54,220 --> 02:02:54,460
Yeah.

2307
02:02:54,700 --> 02:02:59,100
And maybe things that would have scared her, she's more willing to go to you with them.

2308
02:02:59,180 --> 02:02:59,260
Yeah.

2309
02:02:59,420 --> 02:03:00,860
As opposed to yeah, exactly.

2310
02:03:01,260 --> 02:03:01,740
Exactly.

2311
02:03:01,900 --> 02:03:02,140
Yeah.

2312
02:03:02,460 --> 02:03:02,700
Cool.

2313
02:03:02,780 --> 02:03:03,660
I love that.

2314
02:03:03,820 --> 02:03:04,220
Yeah.

2315
02:03:04,460 --> 02:03:05,100
Awesome.

2316
02:03:05,260 --> 02:03:08,220
Well, uh well, Colton, thank you so much for being with us.

2317
02:03:08,380 --> 02:03:13,340
Uh really uh it's it's really just a fun, fun topic.

2318
02:03:13,500 --> 02:03:17,900
And um I hope everybody has a good Halloween season here in October.

2319
02:03:18,140 --> 02:03:18,460
Yeah.

2320
02:03:18,540 --> 02:03:19,340
Thanks for having me on.

2321
02:03:19,420 --> 02:03:20,140
It was a blast.

2322
02:03:20,350 --> 02:03:21,790
Work on your costumes.

2323
02:03:22,910 --> 02:03:24,270
If you're gonna make them.

2324
02:03:24,430 --> 02:03:30,190
Uh uh, I've uh uh as a parent like spent a lot of time like last minute like

2325
02:03:30,350 --> 02:03:31,470
creating a costume.

2326
02:03:31,630 --> 02:03:34,590
Um so you know if you're gonna make it start now.

2327
02:03:35,070 --> 02:03:36,270
That's my PSA.

2328
02:03:38,990 --> 02:03:39,630
David.

2329
02:03:40,510 --> 02:03:41,550
Well, we can end there.

2330
02:03:41,710 --> 02:03:42,190
Okay, yeah.

2331
02:03:43,470 --> 02:03:44,030
Thank you so much.

2332
02:03:44,110 --> 02:03:45,150
This was fantastic.

2333
02:03:45,470 --> 02:03:46,910
Yeah, this is super fun, really.

2334
02:03:46,990 --> 02:03:49,310
Like one of the more fun uh discussions I've had with it.

2335
02:03:49,390 --> 02:03:50,320
So cool.

2336
02:03:50,400 --> 02:03:50,880
That's awesome.

2337
02:03:50,960 --> 02:03:53,200
Yeah, no, we have we have a lot of fun uh typing.

2338
02:03:56,800 --> 02:04:02,720
So David, we just uh spent another couple hours together with a guest and uh that

2339
02:04:02,720 --> 02:04:04,160
was a really fun episode.

2340
02:04:04,320 --> 02:04:06,400
Um and I'm looking forward to the next one.

2341
02:04:06,480 --> 02:04:09,840
I don't even know what the next one's gonna be because we haven't done it yet.

2342
02:04:10,150 --> 02:04:11,110
Yeah, I don't know either.

2343
02:04:11,350 --> 02:04:13,190
Could be could be Jordan Peterson.

2344
02:04:13,510 --> 02:04:17,030
Could be uh Don't David, don't debase yourself like that.

2345
02:04:17,190 --> 02:04:17,830
Come on.

2346
02:04:18,150 --> 02:04:20,150
No, it could be could be Lita Cosby.

2347
02:04:20,390 --> 02:04:21,670
Or could it could be a solo episode.

2348
02:04:21,830 --> 02:04:22,310
Who knows?

2349
02:04:22,550 --> 02:04:22,710
Yeah.

2350
02:04:22,950 --> 02:04:23,910
Maybe just you and me.

2351
02:04:24,150 --> 02:04:24,630
Yeah.

2352
02:04:24,870 --> 02:04:26,790
That that could be scary.

2353
02:04:27,030 --> 02:04:31,670
Yeah, that would be uh uh it would take the the frights to a whole another level.

2354
02:04:31,880 --> 02:04:32,200
Yeah.

2355
02:04:32,280 --> 02:04:35,080
Um anyway, but uh but thank you for listening.

2356
02:04:35,160 --> 02:04:41,160
And David, what can people do to support the podcast um materially or

2357
02:04:41,480 --> 02:04:42,680
existentially?

2358
02:04:42,840 --> 02:04:47,320
Um well, they can write us a kind review.

2359
02:04:47,480 --> 02:04:53,000
Uh they can support us on Patreon, they can say, hey, this podcast is

2360
02:04:53,000 --> 02:04:56,840
awesome on social media, but only if you truly believe that the podcast is awesome.

2361
02:04:56,920 --> 02:04:58,950
We don't want you to lie on our behalf.

2362
02:04:59,190 --> 02:05:03,430
So maybe that's the existentially relevant thing they can do is you can uh you think about

2363
02:05:03,430 --> 02:05:07,990
whether you actually do like this podcast and whether it's serving a uh a greater purpose.

2364
02:05:08,150 --> 02:05:13,910
And if so, uh maybe think about what your role to play is in that existential project

2365
02:05:14,230 --> 02:05:16,710
of spreading knowledge and wisdom about humanity.

2366
02:05:17,430 --> 02:05:19,350
This is a really grand uh outro.

2367
02:05:19,430 --> 02:05:20,070
I like this.

2368
02:05:20,240 --> 02:05:22,240
I feel like we should have some background music.

2369
02:05:22,480 --> 02:05:25,120
Maybe if you write some inspiring orchestra music.

2370
02:05:25,440 --> 02:05:27,760
Yeah, should we play John Williams in the in the background of this part?

2371
02:05:28,320 --> 02:05:28,640
Yeah.

2372
02:05:28,800 --> 02:05:31,200
Um, but uh, but yeah, but thank you for listening.

2373
02:05:31,280 --> 02:05:37,200
And yeah, please uh keep listening and uh please like and subscribe and uh and tell a

2374
02:05:37,200 --> 02:05:40,240
friend or an enemy or a neutral third party.

2375
02:05:40,480 --> 02:05:44,320
Or just randomly talk, shout at somebody in the street, just say Yeah, maybe if you if you

2376
02:05:44,320 --> 02:05:45,600
don't like it, that's something you could do.

2377
02:05:45,680 --> 02:05:49,250
Maybe tell your enemy to listen to it and then it's really great because then you'll waste

2378
02:05:49,250 --> 02:05:50,050
your enemy's time.

2379
02:05:50,130 --> 02:05:51,490
So that way every everybody wins.

2380
02:05:51,730 --> 02:05:52,370
It's like trans.

2381
02:05:52,610 --> 02:05:53,250
Oh that's interesting.

2382
02:05:53,410 --> 02:05:56,370
Okay we might have to sketch that out later a little later date.

2383
02:05:56,530 --> 02:06:00,290
Okay uh thanks again uh take care everybody see you next week yep