People who count the days since August for Halloween and the Spooky Season to begin, those who turn their homes into horror mansions, put up the best altars for the Day of the Dead celebrations, and plan their costumes all year long… those people are the happiest and most normal people there are. Says Science.
“In a world full of stress and anxiety, people like to associate things that make them happy, and decorations evoke those strong childhood feelings,” explained Steve McKeown, psychoanalyst, founder of MindFixers, and owner of The McKeown Clinic. According to the researcher, “Decorations are simply an anchor or pathway to those magical emotions that connect us to our happiest past.”
In addition, the Journal of Environmental Psychology published a study conducted by the University of Utah and Temple University, which found that people associate decorated homes for the holidays as a way to “communicate friendship and cohesion with neighbors.” It’s the same principle as people who love Christmas decorating. However, there is something particular about those who prefer Halloween and the Day of the Dead.
Halloween and Day of the Dead Fans Love Risk Too
Multiple studies have shown that those who love Halloween and the Day of the Dead are less inhibited and more likely to put themselves in potentially dangerous situations. In other words, they are more adventurous and risk-takers.
Our understanding of fear and anxiety comes from several sources. Some physiological and some psychological. Your taste for fear may be due, in part, to a part of the brain called the amygdala, which sends fear signals to the rest of the brain and then to the body.
Studies in humans who have damage to the amygdala have shown that they are people who describe feeling less fearful. And let’s face it, fear can be fun, like in a haunted house or a scary movie: cognitively we know we are in a safe situation.
The horror elements at Halloween also work like tickling the amygdala: we put ourselves in fearful situations, but once the anxiety subsides, it becomes much less problematic and even enjoyable. Why do we love roller coasters, for example?
This story was originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
