For many, it’s no different to the buzz you get from watching horror movies. Each stab, scream, or stalkery look comes with a rush of neurotransmitters and a physiological change in the body, such as an increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, and increased blood glucose levels – the same reaction we get with excitement. It also administers a dose of a dopamine into your brain, the neurotransmitter famously associated with pleasure, mainly food and sex, but also during times of fear.
We get this shot of feel-good chemicals because it's often helpful for our survival. If we are simply spectating the threat from a cool distance, however, then the neurotransmitters are there but in a very different context. It's effectively a safe place for us to relish in a binge of dopamine and adrenaline. [...]
Rubeking’s 2014 study looked into how we react to films and TV shows that tickle our sense of disgust and revulsion. Her team measured the physiological changes of participants as they watched videos that portrayed three different types of disgust: death, gore, and socio-moral disgust, like cheating and betrayal. When it came to death and gore, the initial reaction was negative, but it also provoked the strongest physiological indication of “arousal” and “attention”. [...]
However, this macabre interest in the topic far exceeds its scope. Realistically, the chances of getting nabbed by a serial killer are very, very slim. The curiosity might not be straightforward in its practicality, like learning to avoid foul-smelling meat, but it's a testament to our ability as super-brained mammals to toy around with abstract concepts like good, evil, and death.
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