Why We Are Startled by Jump Scares: A Neuroscientific Approach

Summer, the season of adrenaline, approaches. In order to relieve heat, people watch horror movies and special TV programs that incorporate scary elements. One of the essentials–may be clichés–of horror is the jump scare, a technique to make a sudden appearance of a shocking image, often with a burst of loud music, which is used after raising the audience’s tension to the extreme and focusing them on the scene. But why are we startled and scared by such jump scares? And why is the jump scare effective?

While watching a horror movie, we usually remain suspicious and anxious about when and where a scary thing would pop up. This is because of the amygdala, which plays a significant role in fear learning and memory in our brain. We have an intrinsic fear of certain situations such as a dark atmosphere, and horror movies effectively utilize such elements in particular, which stimulate our amygdala. When the amygdala gets excited, it stimulates the hypothalamus, which brings out the response of our bodies to fear. Thereby our pupils enlarge and our hearts beat faster, as a response to fear from the horror movie.

Before a jump scare crops up, we are unwittingly focusing on the scene. This is called overt attention, meaning that you move your gaze according to the movement of an object and focus on it. The reason why we concentrate on something is that hormones named norepinephrine are synthesized in our brains. The region called the locus coeruleus, or ‘blue spot’, in our brainstems is in charge of physiological phenomena like stress and fear. Here norepinephrines are constantly synthesized, which makes us pay close attention to the movie scene.

The main reason why we startle due to the jump scare is that our bodies immediately have a motor response to a sudden stimulus, especially to loud noise. Our bodies go into a defensive posture, regarding the jump scare as an external threat that attempts to hurt our bodies. Once an external stimulus is delivered into our bodies, the sympathetic nervous system secretes epinephrine, a stress hormone, which helps activate our body’s fight-or-flight response, such as raising our heart rate and muscle tension.

Overall, our bodies, which have been concentrating on the movie screen through the secretion of norepinephrine from the blue spot, activate the amygdala regarding external stimuli like jump scare as threats. Simultaneously, our bodies start to respond to fear, attributing to the stimulation of the hypothalamus, such as our heart beating faster and our pupils dilating. Furthermore, our bodies react to stress in a way by getting startled, along with the secretion of epinephrine from the sympathetic nervous system.

In conclusion, jump scares in horror movies are effective because they tap into our innate fear response system, which includes the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the sympathetic nervous system. Our bodies react to sudden stimuli and loud noises as if they are external threats, leading to a defensive posture and the secretion of stress hormones. Understanding the science behind our fear response can help us appreciate the effectiveness of horror movies and why we enjoy being scared, even though it may seem counterintuitive.