Halloween is a time to embrace all things disgusting, from bloody slasher films to haunted houses full of fake guts and gore.
But the appeal to things that exhaust us goes beyond this annual holiday.
Flick through the TV channels and you’ll come across ‘adventure eating’ programmes, in which presenters and participants are presented with all sorts of stomach-churning experiences; reality shows that delve deep into the work of pimple-popping dermatologists; and dirty comedies in which tasteless humor – think vomiting and urination – is used to make viewers laugh.
You also see this in other forms of media. For example, in romance novels you can find depictions of consensual incest between siblings that are intended to titillate the reader. And most extreme of all, there are internet shock sites that host real images of death and mutilation for those willing to seek them out.
It’s not just a recent media phenomenon either. Early modern England had a similar culture of disgust, which I wrote about in a forthcoming book.
Why are so many people drawn to things that should, by all rights, compel them to turn away in horror? Modern science has an answer, and it has everything to do with how the emotion of disgust fundamentally works.
What is disgust?
Disgust is essentially an emotion of avoidance: it signals that something could be harmful to your body, and encourages you to avoid it.
Scientists believe that disgust originally related to food; Charles Darwin noted “how easily this feeling is excited by anything unusual in the appearance, smell, or nature of our food.” According to this theory, it slowly evolved to guard against all kinds of things that could put you in contact with dangerous pathogens, whether through disease, animals, physical harm, corpses, or sex.
Moreover, disgust appears to have evolved to regulate things that are symbolically harmful: violations of morality, cultural rules, and cherished values. This is why some people might say they are “disgusted” by an act of racism.
Because of these regulatory functions, disgust is often known as the “gatekeeper emotion,” the “exclusionary emotion,” or the “body and soul emotion.”
The lure of disgust
How then can we explain that disgusting things can sometimes fascinate us?
Psychological research shows that disgusting stimuli grab and hold your attention more effectively than emotionally neutral stimuli.
According to media scientists Bridget Rubenking and Annie Lang, this likely happens because, from an evolutionary perspective, it seems that “an attentional bias toward disgust – no matter how aversive – would better enable people to avoid harmful substances.” So while disgust can be an unpleasant feeling, the emotion has evolved to simultaneously grab people’s attention.
But disgusting things don’t just grab your attention; you can even enjoy it.
Psychologist Nina Strohminger suggests that the pleasurable features of disgust may be an example of what’s called “benign masochism”: the human tendency to seek out seemingly “negative” experiences for the purpose of enjoying “limited risks,” such as driving a roller skate. coaster or eating extremely spicy foods.
According to Strohminger, it seems “possible that any negative feeling has the potential to be pleasurable if it is stripped of the belief that what is happening is actually bad, leaving behind a physiological arousal that is itself exciting or interesting.”
So not only are you prone to being fascinated by disgusting things, there is also a psychological mechanism that allows you to enjoy them, under the right circumstances.
Shakespearean horror
Celebrating and taking advantage of this attraction is not a product of the digital age. It happened even in Shakespeare’s time.
The playwright’s infamous tragedy, ‘Titus Andronicus’, contains as much gore as today’s slasher films. By one estimate, the play contains “14 murders, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed limbs, 1 rape (or 2 or 3, depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of madness, and 1 case of cannibalism. – an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one in every 97 lines.”
Examining the “problematic appeal of this play’s violence,” literary critic Cynthia Marshall asks, “Why should an audience, any audience, enjoy Titus’s repetition of violence against the human body?”
The answer, I think, is due to the seductive nature of disgust that psychologists have documented. In early modern England there was essentially a cottage industry of disgust.
Large crowds watched public executions, and the corpses of criminals were hung on chains for the public to gawk at. In open anatomy theaters, curious spectators could watch doctors perform autopsies. In their stores, pharmacists displayed dismembered human body parts before eventually mixing them into medicine – a practice scientists today call “medicinal cannibalism.”
And it is not simply that the Elizabethans were insensitive and had a different threshold for disgust. Contemporaries expressed their disgust, even as they felt attracted to them. After seeing a charred body hanging in a merchant’s warehouse, diarist Samuel Pepys noted that “it pleased me much, though it was a bad sight.”
Then, as now, disgusting things grab our attention and can even give us pleasure – and the horrors of a play like ‘Titus Andronicus’ reflect the fact that the Elizabethans lived in a culture that encouraged people to stare at disgusting objects, even if they felt the urge to turn away. I think Shakespeare’s audiences embraced the disgusting fun, just as modern audiences do when watching the latest film in the “Halloween” franchise.
The human emotion that protects you from harm also allows you to take perverse pleasure in the very things you need to be protected from.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit organization providing facts and trusted analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Bradley J. Irish, Arizona State University
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Bradley J. Irish does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.