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Introduction
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Horror entertainment is paradoxically popular. It is one of the most consistently popular genres across media, yet it is designed to make audiences feel bad. An evolutionary perspective, one that builds on recent developments in cognitive and evolutionary psychology, can help explain the genre’s popularity as well as its form and function. This chapter argues that horror fiction is crucially dependent on evolved properties of the human central nervous system and that a nuanced and scientifically valid understanding of horror requires that we take human evolutionary history seriously. Horror targets ancient defense mechanisms in the brain. At the same time, horror changes in response to sociocultural context. Hence, the chapter argues for a biocultural critical approach to horror, one that is sensitive to cultural context as well as evolved psychological underpinnings. The chapter explains the rationale of the book and outlines its structure.
Title: Introduction
Description:
Horror entertainment is paradoxically popular.
It is one of the most consistently popular genres across media, yet it is designed to make audiences feel bad.
An evolutionary perspective, one that builds on recent developments in cognitive and evolutionary psychology, can help explain the genre’s popularity as well as its form and function.
This chapter argues that horror fiction is crucially dependent on evolved properties of the human central nervous system and that a nuanced and scientifically valid understanding of horror requires that we take human evolutionary history seriously.
Horror targets ancient defense mechanisms in the brain.
At the same time, horror changes in response to sociocultural context.
Hence, the chapter argues for a biocultural critical approach to horror, one that is sensitive to cultural context as well as evolved psychological underpinnings.
The chapter explains the rationale of the book and outlines its structure.
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