DiscoverScience on Player FMHow Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier - The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier - The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier - The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

Update: 2025-10-27
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Halloween isn't just costumes and candy. It's also a time when we indulge our interest in the scary and macabre. But there's also a taboo about gory horror movies and gruesome true crime shows - we often feel that being interested in blood and violence is unhealthy. The opposite is possibly true. 

Psychologist Coltan Scrivner (author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away) says that watching a scary movie or listening to a murder podcast is perfectly natural and in fact teaches us valuable lessons to enhance our emotional resilience.  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier - The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier - The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos