Many young people queue up to ride very fast and scary roller coasters, screaming but enjoying themselves. Other people like to read horror books or watch scary movies at night, scared to death but feeling excited. But why do people like being scared?.
In order to answer it, though, let's look first at the way in which people like to be scared. As we know, some people like scary movies and stories while some like amusement park thrill rides, and a substantial segment of the population actually likes engaging in challenges to their physical safety - like endurance tests and extreme sports. Some persons choose relationships and behaviors, which have the potential to cause great destruction, and still others love the threat of financial disaster (and success) that financial ventures, like the stock market. In other words, people have a whole lot of ways they "like to be scared." .
Actually in the first place, fear is an ancient way of surviving. And there are some evolutionary advantages to being able to adjust the system that is there to protect people. Being scared makes animals (including humans) flee from danger and save themselves. It is because of fear that we have lived through millions of years of evolution. Those who lacked a strong fear response were more likely to be killed and faced up to extinction. The innate reaction we humans get from responding to a threat or crisis is what motivates us to "like to be scared". At the moment we are threatened, we have increased strength, power, heightened senses and intuition. Basically, you can get this feeling defending yourself against a lion in the jungle or sitting in a theater showing a horror film. We, as humans, appear to be irresistible to be drawn to this feeling. It is older than we are as a species, and is tied to our survival; without it, we would have perished and died out long ago. .
How do scientists explain why shivering over such scary things is fun? "Some kids will go to a scary movie and love it and laugh over it, others will feel anxious and hide their faces and some won't even set foot in the cinema-, said Ned Kalin, a US scientist.
