Category Archives: evolutionary psychology

Two items on horror and psychology

July 6th, 2020 | Posted in evolutionary psychology, games, horror, horror studies

A couple of items have appeared over the last week or two that are worth noting in regards to horror and psychology. The first is “An Infectious Curiosity: Morbid Curiosity and Media Preferences During a Pandemic” published in Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. This article was picked up by a lot of popular media outlets, […]

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Scientific journal article: “Possession myth as a lens for understanding cultural and psychological evolution”

April 21st, 2020 | Posted in cultural studies, evolutionary psychology, possession

Boutwell, Brian B., Mathias Clasen & Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen. 2020. “We are legion”: Possession myth as a lens for understanding cultural and psychological evolution. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. doi:10.1037/ebs0000197. In most religious traditions, there exists the conception that human beings can lose their freedom of will to an invading consciousness. We argue that possession myths emerge from […]

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Interview with Mathias Clasen on a Biocultural Approach to the Appeal of Horror

July 2nd, 2019 | Posted in Biocultural, evolutionary psychology, horror, horror studies

A few years ago I broadened the academic lenses through which I study religion. This involved a biocultural approach which includes disciplines like social psychology, the cognitive science of religion, and evolutionary psychology. Since an important emphasis of this blog is to look at the intersection of religion, genre, and pop culture, I was pleased […]

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Titles of Interest – Primal Roots of Horror Cinema: Evolutionary Psychology and Narratives of Fear

April 9th, 2019 | Posted in evolutionary psychology, horror, Titles of Interest

This looks like an interesting volume. I’ve drawn attention to a similar one previously, Why Horror Seduces, that seeks to understand horror through evolutionary social psychology. See my prior interview with the author below, Carrol Fry, on his book Cinema of the Occult. Primal Roots of Horror Cinema: Evolutionary Psychology and Narratives of Fear Carrol […]

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Titles of Interest: Why Horror Seduces

October 31st, 2017 | Posted in evolutionary psychology, horror, Titles of Interest

Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen (Oxford University Press, 2017) From vampire apocalypses, shark attacks, witches, and ghosts, to murderous dolls bent on revenge, horror has been part of the American cinematic imagination for almost as long as pictures have moved on screens. But why do they captivate us so? What is the drive to […]

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