Whether it’s a friend popping out from behind a bush or accidentally walking into a web of fake spider webs, most of us will have fallen victim to a scare prank at some point.
Now scientists have come up with a theory about why “jump scares” are so often followed by laughter – with insights for pranksters hoping to come up with Halloween tricks that tickle rather than terrify.
A popular explanation for why certain jokes or situations elicit laughter is that humor is all about surprise: successful jokes tend to create an expectation that is subverted by the punchline.
“The problem with that theory is that we find all kinds of things funny that aren’t surprising, and there are a lot of surprises that we don’t find funny,” says Marc Hye-Knudsen, a PhD fellow and humor researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark , who led the research.
Another recent one theory is that humor requires both a violation in our sense of how the world “should” be, and the almost simultaneous judgment that this violation is harmless or benign. Such violations can take many different forms, from the violations of linguistic norms in puns and puns, to the social norm violations of embarrassing humor.
Hye-Knudsen and his colleagues suspect that something similar may explain why the initial shock of a jump scare is often quickly followed by laughter.
To investigate this, they examined evidence from various experimental and real-world situations, from toddlers’ experiences of peekaboo – a game that most initially find disturbing, until they learn it’s benign and it becomes hilarious – to a field study that at a haunted house attraction, which found that guests smiled or laughed three-quarters of the time after jump scares.
“Haunted house attractions and horror films both deliberately immerse audiences in their make-believe worlds to heighten their general state of fear, heightening their startle responses to the fright. But that terror also immediately pulls them out of that narrative world, so they can reevaluate it as benign,” Hye-Knudsen said.
The team also examined data from 100 online scare prank videos, and found that successful pranksters tended to amplify the stimulus their victims were exposed to – by targeting common phobias, for example, which may compensate for viewers’ psychological distance from these events.
“Seeing a video of a complete stranger being the victim of a scare prank might not register as much of an offense because you’re not socially close to them, so online pranksters have to spice up their pranks to ‘ get a bigger response,” Hye-Knudsen said. The research was published in Evolutionary Psychology.
Hye-Knudsen believes his findings could have implications for pranksters planning Halloween scares this week. “The main lesson would be, know your audience and adjust your Halloween scare accordingly,” he said. “Don’t dress up like a serial killer and hide in your grandmother’s closet, but don’t just walk up to your friend and say ‘boo’ either: you have to anticipate what level of terrifying your target is going to breach.” expectations, but they will also be able to laugh afterwards.
“When you laugh, you also invite them to laugh with you, so they don’t feel that they are being laughed at, and the situation is really benign.”
Dr. Coltan Scrivnera behavioral scientist at Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab, who was not involved in the study, said its conclusions fit with his own research on the psychology of scary games. It showed that fearful experiences like haunted houses is only experienced as playful if the fear is at the right level.
“Many people, including scaremongers, think that more fear is always better for the person who is afraid. However, research suggests that this is not the case. Instead, people are looking for a sweet spot of fear, where fun is maximized,” Scrivner said. “This paper suggests that humor can be one tool that a scare actor can use or promote, to help reach people [that] sweet spot
“Just keep in mind that one scare doesn’t fit all,” he added. “Everyone’s sweet spot of fear is a little different.”
