Why do some people happily rewatch The Thing every January but refuse to sit through Terrifier? The answer may have less to do with how much blood is on the screen than with how our brains process fear, disgust, curiosity, and story.

“I Don’t Think I Actually Dislike Gore.”

I had one of those oddly revealing moments recently while talking about horror movies. Someone asked me a simple question: Do you like gore? Without thinking, I answered, “No.” It seemed obvious. But the more I reflected on it, the less convinced I became that my answer was actually true.

After all, I love The Thing. I love Alien. I enjoy the original Evil Dead films, where limbs fly through the air with almost cartoonish enthusiasm and gallons of fake blood become part of the joke. Freddy Krueger’s elaborate kills are often so over-the-top that they border on dark comedy. Even body horror can be captivating when it’s woven into a compelling story.

So maybe I don’t dislike gore.

Maybe I dislike one particular kind of gore.

That realization led me to an informal way of thinking about horror that I’ve never really seen discussed. Instead of treating all graphic violence as the same, I found myself sorting it into four broad categories. The first is grisly horror—violence that dwells on suffering itself. These are films that linger on torture, humiliation, or prolonged pain, asking the audience to endure the suffering rather than simply witness it. The second is what I think of as gnarly horror: body horror built around transformation, infection, mutation, or the unsettling violation of the human body. Then there’s gory horror, where graphic violence becomes almost a form of spectacle. Think elaborate practical effects, buckets of fake blood, or wildly creative monster kills that are designed to entertain as much as horrify. Finally, there’s what I call story-first horror, where violence exists but isn’t the point. Here, suspense, mystery, atmosphere, and character drive the experience, and the violence serves the narrative instead of replacing it.

At first, I assumed this was nothing more than a personal quirk. Everyone has different tastes, after all. But the more psychology papers I read, the more I realized researchers have been wrestling with a remarkably similar question for decades. Why do some frightening experiences become exhilarating while others simply become unpleasant? Why does one viewer walk away from a horror movie wanting to watch it again, while another decides they’ve seen enough after a single scene?

As it turns out, the answer has surprisingly little to do with how much blood is on the screen—and far more to do with how our brains process fear, disgust, curiosity, and storytelling.

Horror Is Supposed to Feel Bad

On the surface, horror movies don’t make much sense. Evolution equipped us with fear and disgust for a reason: they’re survival mechanisms. Fear sharpens our attention, raises our heart rate, increases blood pressure, and floods our bodies with stress hormones so we’re prepared to fight, flee, or freeze. Disgust serves a different but equally important purpose, pushing us away from things that might carry disease or threaten our health. These emotions evolved to keep us alive, not to entertain us.

And yet, every weekend, millions of people willingly pay to experience them.

Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as recreational fear: the deliberate pursuit of experiences that evoke fear or disgust in environments we know are ultimately safe. It’s the same paradox that draws people to haunted houses, roller coasters, ghost stories, escape rooms, and horror movies. We voluntarily expose ourselves to emotions that would normally signal danger because we understand there’s no real threat.

That raises a fascinating question. The mystery isn’t why horror movies are frightening; they’re designed to be. The real puzzle is why so many people find those frightening experiences enjoyable. What transforms an emotion that evolved to protect us into one we actively seek out for entertainment? That question has intrigued psychologists for decades, and the answers are proving to be far more nuanced than simply saying some people “like being scared.”

We May Have Been Asking the Wrong Question

For decades, psychologists have tried to answer a deceptively simple question: Who likes horror movies? Researchers searched for a kind of “horror personality,” wondering whether fans of scary films were simply adrenaline junkies, lower in empathy, or naturally higher in sensation seeking. The idea was appealing because it suggested there might be a single psychological profile that explained why some people eagerly lined up for the latest horror release while others avoided the genre entirely.

The evidence, however, never fit together quite as neatly as expected. A comprehensive review published in Frontiers in Psychology found that decades of research produced surprisingly inconsistent results. Some studies linked horror enjoyment to sensation seeking, while others found only weak relationships. Similar inconsistencies appeared for empathy, personality traits, and demographic differences. Part of the problem was methodological—many studies relied on small samples, used different definitions of horror, or measured enjoyment in different ways—but another issue became increasingly difficult to ignore.

Researchers were often treating horror as though it were a single psychological experience.

But that assumption begins to fall apart the moment you think about the movies themselves. Is The Blair Witch Project really engaging the same emotions as Saw? Does the creeping existential dread of Alien work the same way psychologically as the relentless graphic violence of Terrifier? They all fall under the umbrella of horror, but they ask very different things of their audiences. If those films evoke different combinations of fear, disgust, suspense, curiosity, and empathy, then perhaps it’s no surprise that research has struggled to identify a single “horror personality.” Maybe we’ve been trying to explain several different psychological experiences as though they were one.

Fear and Disgust Are Different Emotions

One of the most important insights to emerge from recent horror research is that fear and disgust are not simply two versions of the same emotion. They evolved to solve different survival problems and, as a result, push us toward very different behaviors. Fear tells us to pay attention. It heightens our awareness, prepares our muscles for action, and focuses us on identifying and escaping a threat. Disgust, on the other hand, serves a different purpose. It tells us to create distance—to recoil, avoid contamination, and get away from whatever our brains perceive as dangerous or unclean.

That distinction turns out to matter enormously for understanding why some horror movies are fun while others simply feel unpleasant.

A 2024 study published in Scientific Reports asked hundreds of participants to watch short scenes spanning several horror subgenres—including psychological, paranormal, monster, slasher, and gore—and then rate how frightening, disgusting, exciting, realistic, and enjoyable each scene was. The researchers discovered something that initially seems counterintuitive. Scenes that participants rated as more frightening were generally rated as both more exciting and more enjoyable. Disgust told a different story. The more disgusting a scene was, the less participants tended to enjoy it, even though those same scenes could still be highly exciting.

That may sound like a subtle distinction, but it fundamentally changes how we think about horror. Excitement and enjoyment are not the same experience. A movie can have your heart racing, your palms sweating, and your attention completely locked on the screen while simultaneously making you wish it would end. We’ve probably all had that experience of watching through our fingers or saying, “I can’t believe I’m still watching this.” Physiologically, the movie has succeeded. Emotionally, however, it hasn’t necessarily been enjoyable.

Reading that study, my own informal classification of horror suddenly didn’t feel quite so arbitrary. Perhaps the different kinds of gore I’d been thinking about weren’t merely differences in taste—they were engaging different psychological systems. Story-driven horror primarily trades in fear and suspense. Body horror leans heavily on disgust and our instinctive aversion to bodily violation. Slapstick gore often transforms violence into spectacle, while prolonged torture asks us to focus on suffering itself. They may all be labeled “horror,” but they aren’t asking our brains—or our emotions—to do the same thing.

Why Body Horror Feels Different

If fear and disgust are distinct emotions, then what exactly makes something disgusting? Film scholar Julian Hanich argues that it’s not simply the presence of blood, gore, or grotesque imagery. Instead, disgust arises when something feels psychologically too close. He describes this phenomenon as obtrusive nearness—the unsettling sensation that what we’re seeing isn’t merely on the screen but has, in some sense, invaded our personal space.

Think about how people physically react during certain horror scenes. They lean back in their seats, cover their eyes, grimace, laugh nervously, or involuntarily blurt out, “Ugh.” Some viewers even find themselves unable to look away despite wanting to. These aren’t just emotional reactions; they’re bodily ones. Disgust doesn’t simply tell us that something is unpleasant. It tells us to increase the distance between ourselves and whatever our brains perceive as contaminating, violating, or dangerous.

A recent example is The Substance. Much of the film’s impact doesn’t come from jump scares or even from the amount of blood on screen. Instead, it comes from watching the body behave in ways that violate our deepest expectations about what a human body should be. Skin stretches, flesh transforms, identities blur, and familiar anatomy becomes alien. The horror isn’t simply that the images are graphic; it’s that the film repeatedly forces us into an intimate confrontation with the body’s fragility and malleability. Many viewers find themselves fascinated and repulsed at the same time, exactly the paradox Hanich describes.

That helps explain why body horror often feels fundamentally different from other forms of horror. A monster leaping from the shadows may startle us, but a lingering close-up of an infected wound, a parasite emerging from beneath the skin, or a bone bending in the wrong direction invites us into an intimate confrontation with the violation of the human body. The discomfort isn’t necessarily proportional to the amount of blood on the screen. Instead, it depends on how closely the film asks us to engage with bodily transformation and vulnerability.

Viewed through that lens, body horror isn’t simply “gorier” horror. It’s operating on a different psychological channel. Rather than relying primarily on fear or suspense, it exploits one of our most deeply ingrained survival mechanisms: the instinct to avoid contamination and preserve the integrity of our own bodies. That may be why two films with similar levels of graphic violence can produce such different reactions. One leaves us exhilarated; the other leaves us squirming.

The Missing Ingredient: Morbid Curiosity

If thrill-seeking and sensation seeking don’t fully explain why people enjoy horror, then what does? Increasingly, psychologists are pointing to a trait known as morbid curiosity—the desire to learn about dangerous, disturbing, or deadly things from the safety of a controlled environment. Rather than asking why someone would willingly expose themselves to frightening experiences, morbid curiosity asks a different question: why are humans so eager to understand them?

That instinct shows up everywhere, not just in horror movies. We slow down to look at car accidents, devour documentaries about serial killers, read accounts of natural disasters, and become captivated by stories of survival against impossible odds. We aren’t necessarily enjoying the suffering itself. More often than not, we’re trying to make sense of it. We want to know what happened, why it happened, and what we might learn from it.

Horror movies tap into that same impulse. As viewers, we ask questions almost automatically. How does the monster work? What are its rules? Who is going to survive? What would I do in that situation? Even the most supernatural stories become puzzles that our brains are eager to solve.

A 2024 study published in Scientific Reports found that morbid curiosity was one of the strongest predictors of both excitement and enjoyment while watching horror scenes. In contrast, many personality traits that have traditionally been associated with horror, including sensation seeking, were much weaker once other factors were taken into account.

That finding changes the way we think about horror fans. Perhaps they aren’t primarily chasing an adrenaline rush. Perhaps they’re chasing understanding. Horror provides a safe laboratory for exploring death, danger, monsters, disease, violence, and the unknown. The fear may be part of the experience, but curiosity is what keeps many viewers leaning forward instead of looking away.

Can We Become Numb to Gore?

One of the longest-running debates surrounding horror movies is whether repeated exposure to graphic violence changes the way we respond emotionally. Critics have long argued that violent media desensitizes viewers, making them less empathetic or more accepting of real-world violence. Horror fans, meanwhile, often counter that they can easily distinguish fiction from reality. The scientific evidence has generally been more nuanced than either side suggests.

One study approached the question by asking participants to watch a series of nine violent movie clips, with comedy scenes inserted between them to help reset viewers’ emotional state. After each clip, participants rated both how much they enjoyed the scene and how much sympathy they felt for the victims. Rather than finding a simple, steady march toward emotional numbness, the researchers observed a more complex pattern. During the early clips, viewers actually became more emotionally engaged with what they were watching. Only later in the session did their responses begin to shift: enjoyment gradually increased while sympathy for the victims declined. Instead of a straight line toward desensitization, participants appeared to follow a curved pattern of emotional adaptation.

Just as important is what the study didn’t find. It did not demonstrate that horror movies make people violent, aggressive, or incapable of empathy in everyday life. Those are much broader claims that simply weren’t tested. What the researchers found was considerably narrower: over the course of a single laboratory session, repeated exposure to violent movie scenes was associated with short-term reductions in emotional responsiveness to those specific scenes.

That distinction matters. Becoming accustomed to fictional violence while watching several horror clips in a row is not the same thing as becoming desensitized to real human suffering. Like many areas of media psychology, the reality is less dramatic than the public debate often suggests. The study offers evidence that our emotional responses can adapt over time, but it stops well short of supporting the claim that horror movies fundamentally change our moral character.

Why Paranormal Horror Often Wins

One finding from the 2024 study genuinely surprised me. The researchers asked participants to watch clips drawn from five different horror subgenres—psychological, paranormal, monster, slasher, and gore—and then rate each scene on dimensions such as fear, disgust, excitement, and enjoyment. If all horror worked the same way, you might expect the bloodiest scenes to produce the strongest positive reactions.

Instead, the opposite happened. The gore clips elicited the highest levels of disgust, but they were not the most enjoyable. Psychological and paranormal horror consistently received the highest ratings for both excitement and enjoyment.

That finding fits remarkably well with the distinction between fear and disgust. Psychological and paranormal horror tend to immerse viewers in uncertainty, suspense, and anticipation. They invite us to imagine ourselves in impossible situations and ask unsettling questions: What if this happened to me? What if I couldn’t trust my own mind? What if the world wasn’t operating by the rules I thought it was? Those stories engage our imagination as much as our nervous system.

Body horror asks a different question: What if this happened to my body? Rather than threatening our sense of safety, it threatens our sense of physical integrity. Infection, mutation, decay, and transformation confront us with one of our deepest evolutionary fears—that our bodies themselves might become unfamiliar or uncontrollable. The result is often fascination mixed with revulsion rather than pure suspense.

Of course, many great horror films blend these approaches. The Thing, for example, works because it combines psychological paranoia with grotesque body horror, while Alien balances mounting suspense with shocking moments of physical violence. But the study suggests that when horror leans primarily on fear, mystery, and uncertainty, audiences often report enjoying the experience more than when it relies predominantly on disgust.

That may be one more piece of evidence that we’ve been using the word “horror” too broadly. Different subgenres don’t simply tell different kinds of stories—they appear to engage different psychological systems. And if that’s true, then understanding why we enjoy horror may begin with recognizing that there isn’t just one kind of horror to enjoy.

Maybe We’ve Been Using the Wrong Word

The more papers I read, the more convinced I became that “gore” is simply too broad a label. We use the word as though it describes a single kind of horror, but the research suggests otherwise. When someone says, “I don’t like gore,” what are they actually reacting to?

They could be talking about prolonged torture and human suffering. They might mean body horror involving infection, mutation, or mutilation. Perhaps they’re reacting to buckets of fake blood and exaggerated practical effects, or maybe they simply dislike any form of graphic imagery. Those experiences often get grouped together under one label, yet they appear to engage our minds in very different ways.

The psychology supports that intuition. Fear and disgust operate through different emotional systems. Morbid curiosity encourages us to explore danger rather than simply avoid it. Story-driven suspense seems to produce a different balance of excitement and enjoyment than scenes designed primarily to provoke revulsion. Even within horror, different subgenres evoke distinct combinations of anticipation, empathy, curiosity, suspense, and disgust.

In other words, “gore” may be no more psychologically useful than calling every form of comedy “funny.” Slapstick, satire, romantic comedy, and dark comedy all aim to make us laugh, but they do so through entirely different mechanisms. Horror may deserve the same level of nuance.

That’s why I keep coming back to my admittedly informal taxonomy. Grisly horror centers on suffering. Gnarly horror exploits our instinctive revulsion toward bodily violation. Gory horror transforms violence into spectacle or dark entertainment. Story-first horror uses violence sparingly, allowing suspense, mystery, and character to carry the emotional weight. These categories aren’t meant to be definitive, and many films blend elements of several at once. But they point toward something the current literature has only begun to acknowledge: graphic violence isn’t one psychological experience.

If that’s true, then perhaps we’ve been asking people the wrong question all along. Instead of asking whether someone “likes gore,” we should be asking what kind of horror they enjoy—and what psychological experience they’re actually seeking. That shift may explain why horror research has often produced inconsistent findings and why conversations among horror fans so often seem to miss the point. They aren’t necessarily disagreeing about the same thing. They’re using the same word to describe fundamentally different experiences.

None of the papers I reviewed proposes a taxonomy quite like this one, so I want to be clear: this is my synthesis, not an established scientific model. It grew out of asking why some horror films leave me exhilarated, others fascinated, and still others simply wanting to leave the room. The more I read, however, the more it seemed that the existing psychological research points toward different emotional systems rather than one generic response to “gore.”

Here’s the framework that currently makes the most sense to me.

Of course, no horror film fits neatly into a single box. The Thing is largely story-first, but it also contains unforgettable moments of body horror. Alien balances suspense with shocking bursts of graphic violence. Even Saw began as more of a psychological thriller before the franchise increasingly emphasized elaborate torture sequences. Horror movies often blend these ingredients, just as comedies can mix slapstick, satire, and romance.

What matters isn’t the amount of blood on the screen. Two films can have nearly identical body counts yet produce completely different emotional experiences. One may leave us gripping our seats in suspense, another laughing at outrageous practical effects, another squirming at bodily transformation, and another emotionally exhausted by prolonged suffering.

That’s why I think we’ve been focusing on the wrong variable. Instead of measuring how graphic a film is, psychologists may learn more by asking what psychological experience the violence is designed to produce. Fear, disgust, curiosity, empathy, suspense, and spectacle aren’t interchangeable, and neither are the horror films that rely on them. If future research begins distinguishing among those experiences instead of lumping them together under labels like “gore” or even “horror,” we may finally start to understand why one person’s favorite scary movie is another person’s worst nightmare.

The Takeaway

For decades, psychologists have tried to answer a deceptively simple question: Why do people like horror movies? Along the way, they’ve investigated sensation seeking, personality, empathy, fear, disgust, and morbid curiosity. The emerging picture is far more nuanced than the stereotype of the horror fan as someone who simply enjoys being scared.

Instead, the research suggests that horror succeeds by activating different psychological systems in different combinations. Fear heightens attention. Disgust triggers avoidance. Morbid curiosity draws us toward the unknown. Suspense keeps us engaged, while narrative gives those emotions meaning. Depending on how a filmmaker combines those ingredients, two movies that both fall under the label “horror” can produce remarkably different experiences.

That’s why I think we may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking whether someone likes horror—or even whether they like gore—we should ask what role the violence is playing.

Is it advancing the story? Is it creating suspense? Is it provoking curiosity? Is it confronting us with the fragility of the human body? Or is it asking us to witness prolonged suffering?

Those aren’t interchangeable experiences, even if they all involve blood on the screen.

A severed limb in The Thing doesn’t ask the same thing of the audience as a prolonged torture sequence in Terrifier. The grotesque transformations in The Substance engage us differently from the gleeful, over-the-top carnage of Evil Dead. Calling all of those simply “gore” may be convenient, but it glosses over the very psychological differences that make horror such a rich and enduring genre.

Whether my four-part taxonomy ultimately proves useful is beside the point. What the research increasingly suggests is that horror isn’t one emotional experience—it is a family of experiences built from different combinations of fear, disgust, curiosity, empathy, suspense, and spectacle. If psychologists begin treating those experiences as distinct rather than interchangeable, they may finally answer a question that has lingered for decades.

And on a more personal note, I finally have a better answer to the question that started this whole rabbit hole.

Do I like gore?

Sometimes.

It just depends on what the gore is trying to make me feel.