It’s October, and all around us are the smells of fall. The leaves are falling, pumpkins are lined up in grocery store windows, and I’m wearing my favorite hoodie on cool morning runs. Most importantly for me, Halloween decorations are starting to pop up, marking the beginning of the spookiest season of the year.

As someone who researches fear, I absolutely love Halloween—I love horror movies, haunted houses, skeletons lining neighbors’ walkways, and creepy crawlies adorning trees and bushes along my street. Some people really hate Halloween and hate to be afraid, which is reasonable, as fear isn’t the most comfortable of emotions. Others find excitement in this spooky season, as it is a way to feel fear without feeling threatened in any real way.

Why do some of us feel discomfort in the face of a haunted house while others are excited? Why do some avoid scary movies like The Plague while others seek them out? Do we all experience fear a little differently?

The old-fashioned view of emotions like fear is that it is universal and evolutionarily endowed to protect us from danger. In fact, researchers have provided evidence that people from all over the world can recognize the same basic emotions, including fear, happiness, anger, and sadness, from individuals from any country, regardless of whether they have experience with the culture or language (Ekman & Friesen, 1971). According to this perspective, fear is something that exists in all people and lives in the brain—more specifically, in a region called the amygdala, which has been shown to be active during fear learning and when looking at photos of fearful faces.

This sounds like a simple enough story and........

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