Like Being Scared? Here’s Why

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Like haunted houses? Scientists do! That’s because they’re an excellent place to study how humans respond to – and even actively seek out – fear. In an immersive threat setting, as opposed to a carefully controlled lab, researchers can learn a lot about what scares people, why and how additional factors (like the presence of friends) might affect our experiences.

So what have they learned? What determines a good scare versus a bad one? And what’s the evolutionary reason for all of this, anyway? In today’s episode, producer Hannah Chinn heads to the haunted house in search of answers.

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Transcript

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1:03.0	Hey, Short Wavers, Regina Barber here, joined by producer Hannah Chin.
1:03.5	Hey, Han.
1:04.4	Hey, Gina.
1:06.6	Okay, so I have a confession to make.
1:07.3	Okay.
1:10.3	I used to be a huge scarty cat.
1:10.7	Okay. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of big dogs. I was afraid be a huge scaredy cat. Okay.
1:33.0	I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of big dogs. I was afraid of scary movies. You name it. I was afraid of it. Han, I am still that way. But I think anyone who knows you knows that that's not true for you anymore. Like, what happened to help you with your fears? So partially, it was growing up. And honestly, partly, it was this one job that I worked right after college at a haunted house.
1:34.6	I would not have done that.
	...

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