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How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier  by Pushkin Industries

How Horror Movies and True Crime Can Make You Happier

from The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

by Pushkin Industries

Published: Mon Oct 27 2025

Show Notes

Halloween isn't just costumes and candy. It's also a time when we indulge our interest in the scary and macabre. But there's also a taboo about gory horror movies and gruesome true crime shows - we often feel that being interested in blood and violence is unhealthy. The opposite is possibly true. 

Psychologist Coltan Scrivner (author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away) says that watching a scary movie or listening to a murder podcast is perfectly natural and in fact teaches us valuable lessons to enhance our emotional resilience.  

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