Why do we like being scared? Dr. Daryl Appleton, Ed.D., LMHC, looks at the psychology of fear: why it reaches the body before the mind, what was behind a lab "ghost" and a 1921 "haunted" house, and why people pay to be frightened and leave in a better mood.
This Halloween bonus starts with our own ghost story. Something happened in our house with the twins that my husband, a man of science and very annoying logic, still can't explain. The science is real, and some of the explanations are stranger than the ghosts. Ours still doesn't have one.
What's your F word? Take the quiz: https://quiz.drdarylappleton.com/episodes
Season 4 starts Friday, November 20, with F is for Favors.
Listen and follow
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/feelings-and-other-f-words/id1647048598
Website: https://www.drdarylappleton.com/podcast
Instagram: @fofw_pod
Sources
- Pew Research Center (Dec. 7, 2023). Spirituality Among Americans. Alper, B. A., Rotolo, C., Tevington, P., Nortey, J., and Kallo, A. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
- LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. Simon and Schuster. https://books.google.com/books?id=7EJN5I8sk2wC
- Tandy, V., and Lawrence, T. R. (1998). The ghost in the machine. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 62(851), 360 to 364. https://www.sgha.net/library/ghost-in-machine.pdf
- Wilmer, W. H. (1921). Effects of carbon monoxid upon the eye. American Journal of Ophthalmology, 4(2), 73 to 90. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-9394(21)90825-0
- Kerr, M., Siegle, G. J., and Orsini, J. (2019). Voluntary arousing negative experiences (VANE): Why we like to be scared. Emotion, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000470
- Scrivner, C., Johnson, J. A., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J., and Clasen, M. (2021). Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality and Individual Differences, 168, 110397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110397
Her advisory, podcast, and media work are educational and are not therapy.
