Why People Like Stressful Entertainment

June 30, 2021 Leslie Farnsworth

A sculpture by an artist named Weibel on the Saint Sulpice lakefront. He titled it “Le Cri du Poete.” Saint Sulpice, Switzerland. March 22, 2020.

As a kid, I enjoyed horror movies.

I have fond memories of huddling on the couch with friends and cousins, soaking in episodes of the “Friday the 13th” franchise or, much later, the “Scream” franchise. “The Exorcist” completely transfixed me.

In this period of my life, I read several books in Stephen King’s horror repertoire, from Salem’s Lot to Christine and Cujo and beyond. I can count in that reading list several lesser authors in the same genre.

Today?

I haven’t been able to muster interest in horror for decades now. Often, I need to convince myself to try books, films, and series in the horror and suspense genres—after which, in some cases, I’ve even had recurring nightmares.

(Update: I have a newfound love for horror in novels—though still not in film! Here’s an essay about my evolution from no-horror to horror-books-fan.)

In reflecting on my personal evolution from horror fan to horror-and-suspense avoider, I’ve grown to believe that as my life became more stressful and as I experienced and witnessed more real-life horrible things, the less I found hypothetical or fictional suspense appealing—unless it had some sort of edifying or literary purpose. (Yes, this exists. For example, I watched the film “Hotel Rwanda” and learned a lot—yet found it very stressful and wouldn’t watch it on repeat. Same with the first few minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” wherein the troops disembark on the beaches in Normandy.)

Life has enough stress and drama. I don’t want to experience more of it in my “down time” as entertainment.

However, I know people—grown adults with their own life trials and troubles—who love stressful entertainment. Further, beyond my personal network, I can’t deny that stressful entertainment, whether horror and suspense or even true crime and police procedurals, have prime place on lists of top movies, shows, games, and books.

Noting this, I began to wonder more broadly about why some people enjoy stress in their entertainment. Given that we use entertainment to amuse us, teach us, and provide us an escape, what role does stress, then, play in it?

I did a little research, as I do.

Defining “Stressful Entertainment”

First, let’s define “stressful entertainment” a bit more clearly.

In my thinking, stressful entertainment can come in any medium, whether in images or in text. Further, we can almost categorize it in any genre (even comedy). Anything that makes you feel afraid, causes you to jump or physically startles you in some way, or gives you that “edge of your seat” sensation, counts as stressful entertainment.

This could mean it drenches your psyche in gore, discusses or shows criminal activity, has you wandering through chaotic landscapes experiencing or (in the case of games) perpetrating violence, or even makes you cringe with embarrassment or anxiety for the characters.

In the simplest terms: If it provokes a stress response, it counts as stressful entertainment.

What, then, wouldn’t count as stressful entertainment? After all, sometimes the best way to test a definition is to ensure it has an opposite.

Most romance does not count as stressful entertainment, even if you fervently hope that the two main characters finally get together. Cooking shows, many reality programs, and animal documentaries, by and large (though not always), don’t count as stressful entertainment.

Even entertainment with a battle or war aspect that tends toward the reflective rather than the gory and suspenseful can count as nonstressful entertainment.

One Theory: Catharsis

The role of catharsis in entertainment comes from Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle said that tragedy, with its peaks of pity and fear, can help purify and even purge these emotions from the person experiencing the performance.

Though historians and philosophers have debated whether Aristotle felt the goal of tragedy was catharsis, rather than one of its effects, no one questions that he considered catharsis at least a byproduct of tragic entertainment.

Psychologists have since studied the truth of this theory. Does stressful entertainment help us rid our psyches of stress? Does it help us tap into our anxieties and release them in a way that improves our wellbeing?

Though a convenient theory, no one has definitively proven it true. Different research has shown different results, most notably among studies assessing whether using catharsis in therapy produces positive therapeutic change. (To review the studies and their different findings, see the section I’ve created below with links to the research articles I reviewed for this post.)

Perhaps the catharsis effect works for some people and not others. Perhaps it works in some situations and not others. And perhaps it works for some types of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger and not for other versions of these emotions.

(Either way, I can 100 percent confirm that it does not work for me. Stressful entertainment just provokes more stress and often long-lasting stress resulting in nightmares and night terrors.)

Another Theory: Adrenaline and Thrill-Seeking Behavior

Psychologists have suggested that stressful entertainment attracts some people due to the spike of adrenaline it produces.

Entertainment that sparks terror and shock turns on the adrenaline response, which gives the brain a charge. In some cases, the brain grows addicted to this spike in adrenaline, engendering a love for stressful entertainment—in the same way that it brings about a passion for intense rollercoasters, extreme sports, and gruesome car crashes.

Seems plausible. At their essence, chemicals in the brain provoke emotion. Just as people can change their brain chemistry—and, therefore, emotional response—via ingesting drugs (legal and illegal), I can believe they could change it as well via using external stimuli to provoke internal chemical responses.

In this case, even if I did enjoy stressful entertainment, this theory would turn me away from its intake. If the adrenaline rush stressful entertainment provokes is addictive, experiencing it will just cause me to seek ever more thrills and spills—which, it seems to me, can only lead to bad places.

No thanks.

A Third Theory: The Empathy Spectrum

We feel empathy when we recognize an emotion in another person and, in turn, feel that emotion in tandem.

Contrast this with sympathy, which references simply recognizing or acknowledging another person’s feelings—not having the recognition of someone else’s emotion provoke the same emotion in you.

Psychologists believe that the capacity to empathize falls on a spectrum—and that we can increase our ability to empathize. (Side note: I found this fascinating and wrote another article on empathy in humans and animals.)

Studies have shown that people who sit low on the empathy scale have a higher inclination to seek and enjoy horror films. (This inclination could apply to stressful entertainment in general, but the research has focused solely on horror movies.)

Further, women express more empathetic concern than men, according to studies, which could link to their lower interest in horror films as compared to men. (However, correlation is not causation.)

A Final Theory: Order in a Disordered World

In addition, psychologists and researchers point out that entertainment typically follows a thematic pattern in which justice is served and in which there is a straightforward good-versus-bad dichotomy—and they posit that this pattern and dichotomy returns psychological relief for people living in a chaotic, irrational world.

In other words, in most stressful entertainment, some people are mainly bad and some people are mainly good. The “bad” people wreak havoc and do bad things, yet they rarely get away with their misdeeds. The “good” people catch and stop them and punish them for what they’ve done.

Via these standard story arcs, psychologists hypothesize, stressful entertainment helps people living in a world that is anything but clear-cut gain a sense of order and control. Via entertainment, they enter an alternate reality in which there’s little ambiguity around good and bad and in which everything turns out as it should. The bad is stopped and contained. The good prevails. By the end of the tale, the mess is put back in order. Psychologically, this provokes a sense of order and relief.

I can see the logic in this theory. Perhaps some people watch stressful entertainment because it makes them feel that the world makes more sense than it does or because they enjoy seeing “bad” people get what they deserve.

Yet seems to me that entertainment filled with stress, crime, violence, and danger—even if solved and tidied at the end—just serves to provoke more stress and fear, rather than less.

Further, in my thinking, consuming entertainment wherein the “bad” is around every corner would serve to make evil seem more prevalent than statistics show it to be. (Take, for example, stressful entertainment themes around missing and abducted children versus its statistical reality.)

This disproportionality between imagined and real danger cannot be a positive for human psychology or the beneficial functioning of society overall.

My Reflections on the Research

Given that none of these theories de facto excludes another, every person who loves stressful entertainment could have one or more of these factors contributing to the enjoyment.

For example, someone could have low empathy combined with an addiction to the adrenaline spikes of stress underlying a passionate fandom for suspense films and series.

Which of these theories, though, do I believe carries the most weight?

Going into this research, I did expect to find one prevailing theory. And when I didn’t, I figured I’d uncover one that at least seemed the most plausible to me.

However, as I parsed the arguments, I realized that I may not have much right to judgement when it comes to which theory seems the most credible. After all, I don’t like stressful entertainment. I can’t speak to which factors might play into my personal enjoyment of tension-inducing entertainment—because I don’t enjoy it.

My Sources and Research References

I parsed my breakdown of the prevailing theories for the attraction of stressful entertainment out of several research papers, many of which put forward several theories at once.

Rather than citing each paper multiple times throughout this article, I’ve collected my sources and research references into one list:

If you find additional resources and references for me to consider and with which I can update or evolve this post, please share them with me.

Why Do You Think People Like Stressful Entertainment?

What do you think lies behind some humans’ interest in—if not craving for—stressful entertainment?

Perhaps one of these theories resonates with you more than another, or perhaps you have a completely different hypothesis.

I’d love to hear it.

And if you personally enjoy stressful entertainment, I’d love to hear why. What theory do you feel is at play in your own enjoyment of this type of material?