Lifestyle
Some people love to scare themselves in an already scary world − here’s the psychology of why
Experiencing controlled fear can enhance social bonds, increase resilience, and offer psychological benefits, making horror entertainment a healthy distraction from scary real-life terrors.
Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles with (chainless) chain saws as we waited in line, anticipating deeper frights to come once we were inside.
I’m not the only one who loves a good scare. Halloween attractions company America Haunts estimates Americans are spending upward of US$500 million annually on haunted house entrance fees simply for the privilege of being frightened. And lots of fright fans don’t limit their horror entertainment to spooky season, gorging horror movies, shows and books all year long.
To some people, this preoccupation with horror can seem tone deaf. School shootings, child abuse, war – the list of real-life horrors is endless. Why seek manufactured fear for entertainment when the world offers real terror in such large quantities?
As a developmental psychologist who writes dark thrillers on the side, I find the intersection of psychology and fear intriguing. To explain what drives this fascination with fear, I point to the theory that emotions evolved as a universal experience in humans because they help us survive. Creating fear in otherwise safe lives can be enjoyable – and is a way for people to practice and prepare for real-life dangers.
Fear can feel good
Controlled fear experiences – where you can click your remote, close the book, or walk out of the haunted house whenever you want – offer the physiological high that fear triggers, without any real risk.
When you perceive yourself under threat, adrenaline surges in your body and the evolutionary fight-or-flight response is activated. Your heart rate increases, you breathe deeper and faster, and your blood pressure goes up. Your body is preparing to defend itself against the danger or get away as fast as possible.
This physical reaction is crucial when facing a real threat. When experiencing controlled fear – like jump scares in a zombie TV show – you get to enjoy this energized sensation, similar to a runner’s high, without any risks. And then, once the threat is dealt with, your body releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which provides sensations of pleasure and relief.
In one study, researchers found that people who visited a high-intensity haunted house as a controlled fear experience displayed less brain activity in response to stimuli and less anxiety post-exposure. This finding suggests that exposing yourself to horror films, scary stories or suspenseful video games can actually calm you afterward. The effect might also explain why my husband and I choose to relax by watching zombie shows after a busy day at work.
The ties that bind
An essential motivation for human beings is the sense of belonging to a social group. According to the surgeon general, Americans who miss those connections are caught up in an epidemic of loneliness, which leaves people at risk for mental and physical health issues.
Going through intense fear experiences together strengthens the bonds between individuals. Good examples include veterans who served together in combat, survivors of natural disasters, and the “families” created in groups of first responders.
I’m a volunteer firefighter, and the unique connection created through sharing intense threats, such as entering a burning building together, manifests in deep emotional bonds with my colleagues. After a significant fire call, we often note the improved morale and camaraderie of the firehouse. I feel a flood of positive emotions anytime I think of my firefighting partners, even when the events occurred months or years ago.
Controlled fear experiences artificially create similar opportunities for bonding. Exposure to stress triggers not only the fight-or-flight response, but in many situations it also initiates what psychologists call the “tend-and-befriend” system. A perceived threat prompts humans to tend to offspring and create social-emotional bonds for protection and comfort. This system is largely regulated by the so-called “love hormone” oxytocin.
The tend-and-befriend reaction is particularly likely when you experience stress around others with whom you have already established positive social connections. When you encounter stressors within your social network, your oxytocin levels rise to initiate social coping strategies. As a result, when you navigate a recreational fear experience like a haunted house with friends, you are setting the emotional stage to feel bonded with the people beside you.
Sitting in the dark with friends while you watch a scary movie or navigating a haunted corn maze with a date is good for your health, in that it helps you strengthen those social connections.
An ounce of prevention = a pound of cure
Controlled fear experiences can also be a way for you to prepare for the worst. Think of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the films “Contagion” and “Outbreak” trended on streaming platforms as people around the world sheltered at home. By watching threat scenarios play out in controlled ways through media, you can learn about your fears and emotionally prepare for future threats.
For example, researchers at Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab in Denmark demonstrated in one study that people who regularly consumed horror media were more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic than nonhorror fans. The scientists suggest that this resilience might be a result of a kind of training these fans went through – they practiced coping with the fear and anxiety provoked by their preferred form of entertainment. As a result, they were better prepared to manage the real fear triggered by the pandemic.
When I’m not teaching, I’m an avid reader of crime fiction. I also write psychological thrillers under the pen name Sarah K. Stephens. As both a reader and writer, I notice similar themes in the books I am drawn to, all of which tie into my own deep-rooted fears: mothers who fail their children somehow, women manipulated into subservience, lots of misogynist antagonists.
I enjoy writing and reading about my fears – and seeing the bad guys get their just desserts in the end – because it offers a way for me to control the story. Consuming these narratives lets me mentally rehearse how I would handle these kinds of circumstances if any were to manifest in my real life.
Survive and thrive
In the case of controlled fear experiences, scaring yourself is a pivotal technique to help you survive and adapt in a frightening world. By eliciting powerful, positive emotions, strengthening social networks and preparing you for your worst fears, you’re better able to embrace each day to its fullest.
So the next time you’re choosing between an upbeat comedy and a creepy thriller for your movie night, pick the dark side – it’s good for your health.
Sarah Kollat, Teaching Professor of Psychology, Penn State
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
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child education
Special Education Is Turning to AI to Fill Staffing Gaps—But Privacy and Bias Risks Remain
With special education staffing shortages worsening, schools are using AI to draft IEPs, support training, and assist assessments. Experts warn the benefits come with major risks—privacy, bias, and trust.
Seth King, University of Iowa
In special education in the U.S., funding is scarce and personnel shortages are pervasive, leaving many school districts struggling to hire qualified and willing practitioners.
Amid these long-standing challenges, there is rising interest in using artificial intelligence tools to help close some of the gaps that districts currently face and lower labor costs.
Over 7 million children receive federally funded entitlements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees students access to instruction tailored to their unique physical and psychological needs, as well as legal processes that allow families to negotiate support. Special education involves a range of professionals, including rehabilitation specialists, speech-language pathologists and classroom teaching assistants. But these specialists are in short supply, despite the proven need for their services.
As an associate professor in special education who works with AI, I see its potential and its pitfalls. While AI systems may be able to reduce administrative burdens, deliver expert guidance and help overwhelmed professionals manage their caseloads, they can also present ethical challenges – ranging from machine bias to broader issues of trust in automated systems. They also risk amplifying existing problems with how special ed services are delivered.
Yet some in the field are opting to test out AI tools, rather than waiting for a perfect solution.
A faster IEP, but how individualized?
AI is already shaping special education planning, personnel preparation and assessment.
One example is the individualized education program, or IEP, the primary instrument for guiding which services a child receives. An IEP draws on a range of assessments and other data to describe a child’s strengths, determine their needs and set measurable goals. Every part of this process depends on trained professionals.
But persistent workforce shortages mean districts often struggle to complete assessments, update plans and integrate input from parents. Most districts develop IEPs using software that requires practitioners to choose from a generalized set of rote responses or options, leading to a level of standardization that can fail to meet a child’s true individual needs.
Preliminary research has shown that large language models such as ChatGPT can be adept at generating key special education documents such as IEPs by drawing on multiple data sources, including information from students and families. Chatbots that can quickly craft IEPs could potentially help special education practitioners better meet the needs of individual children and their families. Some professional organizations in special education have even encouraged educators to use AI for documents such as lesson plans.
Training and diagnosing disabilities
There is also potential for AI systems to help support professional training and development. My own work on personnel development combines several AI applications with virtual reality to enable practitioners to rehearse instructional routines before working directly with children. Here, AI can function as a practical extension of existing training models, offering repeated practice and structured support in ways that are difficult to sustain with limited personnel.
Some districts have begun using AI for assessments, which can involve a range of academic, cognitive and medical evaluations. AI applications that pair automatic speech recognition and language processing are now being employed in computer-mediated oral reading assessments to score tests of student reading ability.
Practitioners often struggle to make sense of the volume of data that schools collect. AI-driven machine learning tools also can help here, by identifying patterns that may not be immediately visible to educators for evaluation or instructional decision-making. Such support may be especially useful in diagnosing disabilities such as autism or learning disabilities, where masking, variable presentation and incomplete histories can make interpretation difficult. My ongoing research shows that current AI can make predictions based on data likely to be available in some districts.
Privacy and trust concerns
There are serious ethical – and practical – questions about these AI-supported interventions, ranging from risks to students’ privacy to machine bias and deeper issues tied to family trust. Some hinge on the question of whether or not AI systems can deliver services that truly comply with existing law.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires nondiscriminatory methods of evaluating disabilities to avoid inappropriately identifying students for services or neglecting to serve those who qualify. And the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act explicitly protects students’ data privacy and the rights of parents to access and hold their children’s data.
What happens if an AI system uses biased data or methods to generate a recommendation for a child? What if a child’s data is misused or leaked by an AI system? Using AI systems to perform some of the functions described above puts families in a position where they are expected to put their faith not only in their school district and its special education personnel, but also in commercial AI systems, the inner workings of which are largely inscrutable.
These ethical qualms are hardly unique to special ed; many have been raised in other fields and addressed by early-adopters. For example, while automatic speech recognition, or ASR, systems have struggled to accurately assess accented English, many vendors now train their systems to accommodate specific ethnic and regional accents.
But ongoing research work suggests that some ASR systems are limited in their capacity to accommodate speech differences associated with disabilities, account for classroom noise, and distinguish between different voices. While these issues may be addressed through technical improvement in the future, they are consequential at present.
Embedded bias
At first glance, machine learning models might appear to improve on traditional clinical decision-making. Yet AI models must be trained on existing data, meaning their decisions may continue to reflect long-standing biases in how disabilities have been identified.
Indeed, research has shown that AI systems are routinely hobbled by biases within both training data and system design. AI models can also introduce new biases, either by missing subtle information revealed during in-person evaluations or by overrepresenting characteristics of groups included in the training data.
Such concerns, defenders might argue, are addressed by safeguards already embedded in federal law. Families have considerable latitude in what they agree to, and can opt for alternatives, provided they are aware they can direct the IEP process.
By a similar token, using AI tools to build IEPs or lessons may seem like an obvious improvement over underdeveloped or perfunctory plans. Yet true individualization would require feeding protected data into large language models, which could violate privacy regulations. And while AI applications can readily produce better-looking IEPs and other paperwork, this does not necessarily result in improved services.
Filling the gap
Indeed, it is not yet clear whether AI provides a standard of care equivalent to the high-quality, conventional treatment to which children with disabilities are entitled under federal law.
The Supreme Court in 2017 rejected the notion that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act merely entitles students to trivial, “de minimis” progress, which weakens one of the primary rationales for pursuing AI – that it can meet a minimum standard of care and practice. And since AI really has not been empirically evaluated at scale, it has not been proved that it adequately meets the low bar of simply improving beyond the flawed status quo.
But this does not change the reality of limited resources. For better or worse, AI is already being used to fill the gap between what the law requires and what the system actually provides.
Seth King, Associate Profess of Special Education, University of Iowa
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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health and wellness
Understanding and Treating Rosacea: What You Need to Know
Rosacea is a chronic skin condition affecting over 16 million Americans, causing facial redness, swelling, and discomfort. Its exact cause is unclear, but triggers include sun exposure and stress. Treatment involves tailored skincare, lifestyle management, and medication. Crescel’s Skin Renewal Cream offers a scientifically-backed solution to manage symptoms effectively.
(Feature Impact) Rosacea is a chronic skin condition, mainly affecting the face, that causes redness, swelling, pain and changes in appearance. It is estimated that more than 16 million people in the United States have rosacea, according to the National Rosacea Society (NRS), but only about 1 million are under active treatment.
Physical impacts include prominent redness, acne-like bumps and pimples, highly visible enlarged blood vessels, pronounced dryness and unpleasant sensations like stinging, burning, itching and tingling. As many as half of sufferers also experience eye symptoms. Rosacea also affects emotional and social well-being. From lower confidence and self-esteem to avoidance of public contact and social engagements and missed work, the impacts are far-reaching. However, rosacea can be treated and managed.
Learn more about the condition with this information from the NRS and the experts at Crescel, who are transforming rosacea care by harnessing nature and science to heal skin with their Skin Renewal Cream. It holds the NRS’s Seal of Acceptance, and its therapeutic benefits and tolerance have been confirmed in multiple clinical studies.
“Sensitive and easily irritated skin is a common issue for people with rosacea, and harsh products can aggravate the condition,” said Andrew Huff, executive director of the NRS. “That’s why the NRS expertly evaluates skin care and cosmetic products to ensure they are gentle, clinically tested and found to be unlikely to irritate sensitive rosacea skin.”
What causes rosacea?
The exact cause of rosacea is not fully understood. However, research suggests facial redness is often the first step in a chain of skin inflammation. This process may begin when the nerves, blood vessels and immune system don’t work together as they should.
Researchers have also found a microscopic skin mite called Demodex may play a role. These tiny arachnids normally live within hair follicles and oil glands on everyone’s skin, but people with rosacea tend to have higher numbers on the face, which may contribute to irritation and inflammation.
Some studies have found links between rosacea and other health conditions, such as heart disease, digestive disorders, neurological or autoimmune conditions and certain cancers. These findings suggest rosacea may be related to inflammation throughout the body.
What are the most common symptoms?
The most common symptoms of rosacea include:
- Easy or severe blushing or flushing
- Persistent redness
- Bumps and pimples on the skin without blackheads
- Burning or itching sensation
- Swelling
Symptoms are different for each person and can change over time. There may be times when symptoms are worse and instances when they become milder.
What triggers a flare up?
Rosacea patients can improve their chances of maintaining remission by identifying and avoiding lifestyle and environmental factors that trigger flare-ups or aggravate the condition.
Common triggers include sun exposure, stress, extreme temperatures, heavy exercise, alcohol consumption, spicy foods and some skin, hair and makeup products.
What causes a flare-up in one person may have no effect on another, making this a highly individualized process. Knowing what triggers your flare-ups can help reduce discomfort, improve treatment results and prevent the condition from getting worse.
How do you treat rosacea?
Because the signs and symptoms of rosacea vary from one patient to another, treatment is tailored by a physician for each individual case. It typically involves three key elements:
- Skin care: Committing to a gentle routine using mild, non-irritating products.
- Lifestyle management: Identifying and reducing exposure to triggers.
- Medication and other therapies: Combining topical and oral treatments along with laser therapy to target various symptoms.
As the world’s first intelligent therapeutic, Crescel’s Skin Renewal Cream harnesses nature and science to heal skin. The cream contains:
- Pioneering microemulsion technology that enables continuous delivery of critical cellular nutrients that are essential for skin healing.
- A unique absorption system, whichallows healing nutrients to easily enter the cell.
- Mitochondria reboot technologythat restores the mitochondria’s ability to repair dysfunctional skin cells while reinforcing the skin’s natural barrier, reducing the risk of future irritation and flare-ups.
Talk with your dermatologist about your treatment routine and visit crescel.com to learn more about rosacea care.
SOURCE:
Crescel
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Lifestyle
A Legacy of Service: How family stories shape service
Legacy of Service: Discover how military service creates lasting family legacies across generations. Explore powerful veteran stories from the Veterans History Project, including Pearl Harbor survivors and Code Talkers, and learn how to preserve your family’s service history.
Last Updated on February 6, 2026 by Daily News Staff
A Legacy of Service: How family stories shape service
(Family Features) Major historical events like war or military service make a lasting impact on family identity, values and traditions, often reverberating across multiple generations. Veterans frequently speak about their military units as if they were family, given the unbreakable bonds that develop between comrades. However, for some veterans, “brothers in arms” is more than a figurative turn of phrase. Throughout the 20th century, entire families felt the firsthand effects of war, with multiple generations serving. Brothers enlisted together. A father’s military legacy inspired his children to join up. Sweethearts met and married while in uniform. These stories not only illustrate the experiences of individual veterans but also provide an intimate glimpse into family legacies of military service. Consider the Veterans History Project, a program overseen by the Library of Congress, which collects and preserves the firsthand remembrances of U.S. military veterans and makes them accessible for future generations to better understand veterans’ service and sacrifice. These personal stories encompass original correspondence, memoirs, diaries, photographs and oral history interviews, all offering deeper insight into the long-term impact of military service. Veterans’ narratives are collected by volunteers, and anyone who served from World War I to today can submit their personal story, regardless of whether or not they saw combat. The collections frequently shed light on the importance of family in military experiences. Whether expressed through heartfelt letters home, enduring family legacies of service or the experience of serving alongside loved ones, these stories reflect profound connections.
Family Identity During the Cold War, Jennifer McNeill rose from Army Dental Assistant to Command Sergeant Major at the Army Eisenhower Medical Center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. Her collection includes a poignant photograph of her mother sharing images of her four military daughters in uniform, underscoring how family identity and military service are closely connected. Values Military service makes a lasting impression on veterans, shaping the experiences and the values that guide them through life. Ray Chavez is one such example. He was the oldest known Pearl Harbor survivor before his passing in 2018. For most of his life, he remained silent about his experiences, but in 1991, his daughter, Kathleen Chavez, who served in the U.S. Navy during Desert Storm, convinced him to return to Pearl Harbor. That trip marked the first time he spoke openly about his service. Kathleen shared their family’s deep military legacy in her oral history for the Veterans History Project. Traditions Across Generations Serving in the military is a deeply personal journey, but for many veterans, it’s an experience that transcends generations. Bill Toledo enlisted in the Marine Corps in October 1942 at the age of 18. Along with his uncle, Frank Toledo, and cousin, Preston Toledo, he served as a Code Talker transmitting military messages through secret codes. In his oral history, Bill vividly recalled both the challenges of combat during the invasion of Iwo Jima in February 1945, and the treasured moments spent with his uncle. These and many other family stories of military service and remembrance are available to the public at loc.gov/vets. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock (men looking at scrapbook)
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress (man and woman on park bench) Author
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