For some, Halloween is the greatest holiday of the year.
Unlike religious holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah and Yom Kippur or national holidays such as Independence Day and Labor Day, modern-day Halloween has been celebrated in its current form (trick-or-treating and parties) for less than a century.
Americans have embraced Halloween celebrations much more than any other country, and yet culturally, our ties to it are weak when compared to other major holidays that take place across the U.S.
Why do we love Halloween, and what does that say about who we are?
“People like to party,” said Sanjay Srivastava, a University professor who researches personality and social psychology.@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Sanjay+Srivastava@@ “I don’t know that this is what Halloween has always been about, but it certainly is about it nowadays.”
Srivastava noted the attention the loud and rowdy parties receive isn’t necessarily indicative of what most people do on the holiday.
“I think it’s important to point out not everyone celebrates Halloween, and not everyone celebrates it in the same way,” he said. “But there’s parties, and then there’s parties.”
A trademark of any Halloween party is the costumes. Holly Arrow, a University professor in social psychology, explained the fascination with dressing up.@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Holly+Arrow@@
“Sometimes they dress up to protect a very different identity, or their own identity,” she said.@@I am wondering whether ‘protect’ is the correct word here; maybe it was ‘project’?@@
The act of dressing up among a group of people is something that psychologists call “deindividuation.”
“Deindividuated individuals do not attend to their own behaviors and lack awareness of themselves as distinct entities,” wrote James Tedeschi, a State University of New York at Albany professor, in The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science.@@http://www.wiley.com/legacy/products/subject/psychology/corsini/contrib.html@@
Srivastava recalled Castro, a well-known gay neighborhood in San Francisco, and how Halloween has always been a big event and held a particular meaning for the local community. “In some ways, it was a way to celebrate being different but also being all together in being different,” he said.
Arrow articulated the effects of deindividuation within a crowd.
“Deindividuation makes it easier for a different social dynamic to occur within a group,” she said. “The ways that you signal your individuality and separateness are decreased. You can play at being someone else.”
She went on to explain that a decreased sense of individuality can help facilitate short-term encounters and interactions with people whom one might otherwise not connect with.
Like costume parties, watching scary movies with friends is a big part of Halloween celebrations.
“For most of us, we’re fortunate to not have to be scared to death on a day-to-day-basis,” Srivastava said. He then described why we enjoy watching frightening films: “We want to learn about the spectrum of human experience, to learn how our body and thoughts respond to things.” In other words, the experiment goes beyond the thrill of a chemical rush.
“There are definitely things that the adrenaline and physiology are a part of it, but the exploration of learning is a big part of it also.”
Arrow said people like scary movies because of something that psychologists call “misattribution of arousal.”@@http://sciencethatmatters.com/archives/39@@
She described misattribution of arousal from recalling a famous experiment at Cornell University@@http://www.cornell.edu/@@. In the experiment, one group of male subjects walked across a scary suspension bridge that was very high and long, while a second group of male subjects traversed a non-fear-arousing bridge. At the end of both bridges, an attractive female interviewer asked the subjects to fill out questionnaires containing Thematic Apperception Test pictures.
The study, completed by Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron and published in the Oct. 1974 “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,” is a classic example of misattribution of arousal, Arrow said.@@http://whywereason.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/the-psychology-of-attraction-how-to-flirt-with-science/@@
The authors wrote in their abstract, “Sexual content of stories written by (subjects) on the fear-arousing bridge and tendency of these (subjects) to attempt post-experimental contact with the interviewer were both significantly greater. No significant differences between bridges were obtained on either measure for (subjects) contacted by a male interviewer.”
Arrow summarized the findings of the study: “(When your) heart rate goes up, you become aroused. You will misattribute that to the person you’re with.”
She explained that people enjoy scary movies because as we scare ourselves, our bodies become aroused, and we then associate that arousal with the people we are with.
“That’s why watching scary movies together is more fun than watching alone,” she said.@@very cool@@