i just recently got into watching scary movies and that's a huge step for me i don't think
i could fully put into words how scared i used to get scary movies gave me nightmares but even
worse they heightened my anxiety like you wouldn't believe i am a fully grown man and even watching
a silly zombie movie like shawn of the dead was torture for me and although i'm an adult i have
no problem admitting how truly scared i used to be this past year things changed a little bit
i've been dating my lovely girlfriend for coming up on about four years and she loves scary movies
and up until recently i pretty much just let her watch him alone then my son started becoming
interested in the youtube channel deadmeat and he really wanted to watch the it remake
hey dylan i got a surprise for you hey dylan what up man hey i'm here with your dad chris he told
me you're awesome and you know what i don't think he's a liar so keep being awesome and good people
man wish you were here one day i decided it was time to fight my fear because i don't want my son
to be in his 20s and 30s as scared as movies as his dad was so my son and i started watching scary
movies with my girlfriend and we watched a lot of them when we first started my son and i would sit
next to each other on the couch and close our eyes together but after months of some exposure therapy
him and i watch scary movies and scary tv series like a couple of champs he absolutely
loves watching scary movies with us and not to brag but i think i've impressed my girlfriend
with how not scared i am these days but after diving deep into the horror movie genre i started
noticing something interesting about the human mind and how we think while watching scary movies
i know there are plenty of fellow horror fans out there so i thought it would be fun to blend
a little psychology and critical thinking with how we watch horror movies something i noticed
while watching horror movies is that a lot of us have a lot of opinions while we watch the movie
we say what we do in those situations and we have ideas about what the characters should
and shouldn't do aside from previously being extremely afraid of scary movies something
else that makes me a little less manly is that i'm not a huge sports fan but i imagine we watch
scary movies like people who yell at football games on tv about what the players and coaches
should be doing as i've grown more familiar with horror movies i've also started to notice that
the horror community is quite critical of these films well i could do a whole different video
about the nuanced discussion around preferences for what makes a good horror movie or tv series
i wanted to cover something that i noticed while doing some self-reflecting since coming
to this realization it's not only helped me enjoy horror movies a bit more but i also
try to use it in my daily life to help me better understand the decisions that other people make
which i may find silly or irrational but before we get started if you're new to the rewired soul
make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell here we analyze different topics to improve
our critical thinking skills and to gain a better understanding of the world as a whole
recently we watched the haunting of blind manor which was the follow-up season to the haunting
of hill house on netflix not to spoil much but there's one scene in the early episodes where the
main character danny goes down to the basement alone and sees a doll sitting there by itself
as i watch this scene i remember thinking turn all of the lights on all of the lights
right now and why are you walking down there run run down there grab the doll and leave
it was then that i realized a major thinking error that many of us have so i started thinking about
it and i noticed it even more as i watched more scary movies and shows this thinking error is
what psychologists call the curse of knowledge and it can also fall into the category of the
false consensus effect bias this is a problem we all have where we think that other people know
what we know or have the same information that we do before i dive deeper into this thinking error
we should first discuss the theory of mind the theory of mind is something that separates us
humans from non-human animals and it's our ability to tune into others and predict what they know for
years psychologists have studied children to see when various stages happen and they found that
the theory of mind typically develops around age four or five in 1983 they first did the classic
experiment testing for theory of mind they brought children in of different ages for the study and
here's what they did as explained in this article from the guardian in the experiment children were
presented with two dolls sally who has a basket and anne who has a box sally puts a marble in
her basket and leaves the room while sally is away anne takes the marble from the basket
and hides it in her box finally sally returns to the room and the child is asked three questions
one where will sally look for her marble the belief question two where is the marble really
the reality question and three where was the marble at the beginning the memory question the
critical question is the belief question if the children answer this by pointing to the basket
then they have shown an appreciation that sally's understanding of the world doesn't reflect the
actual state of affairs if they instead point to the box then they fail the task arguably because
they haven't taken into account that they possess knowledge that sally doesn't have access to
what's interesting is that although we develop theory of mind by early adolescence
we still fail theory of mind tests on a regular basis and i think scary movies are a great example
we assume that people know what we know and see what we see and this is the curse of knowledge at
play in another experiment from 1990 at stanford university they paired people up as either the
tapper or the listener the tapper would pick a well-known song like the happy birthday song and
the listener would have to guess it as the tapper played the song on a table before the experiment
started the researchers asked the tappers the probability that the listener would guess
correctly and they predicted about 50 percent but what actually happened the listeners only
had an accuracy ratio of 2.5 why was accuracy so low but the predictions were so high the curse of
knowledge the tappers hear the song in their head with various notes playing whereas the listener
only hears the tapping on a table and a certain rhythm if you've ever played a game of pictionary
you've most likely been frustrated by your curse of knowledge as you try to draw what you think is
the perfect image of a cat so bringing it back to scary movies and tv shows i've enjoyed them quite
a bit more when i leave my curse of knowledge to the side as soon as we turn on a scary movie we
already have a lot more information than most of the characters in the movie the biggest piece of
knowledge that we have is that we know the genre of the movie we know what the typical scary movie
brings to the table which can include things like an antagonist supernatural occurrences and the
possibility of jump scares if we've seen previews of the movie or the movie as a sequel we know even
more about what the unsuspecting characters are going to be facing if we revert back to the theory
of mind we could take a step back and realize that some of the characters in the movie don't know
what we know when we watch from this perspective i've noticed that it makes the movies much more
enjoyable don't get me wrong there are a lot of bad scary movies like the turning which was based
on the same ghost story as blind manor but there are some scary movies that are much better than we
give them credit for when we realize the writers did a great job writing around what the characters
do and don't know at different points throughout the film not only does this make scary movies more
interesting to watch but when we remember this in our daily lives we start cutting people some slack
so many of our disputes with other people are because of the curse of knowledge and we neglect
to realize that the other person doesn't know what we know when we take a step back and come from a
place of understanding and overcoming our curse of knowledge we can enjoy scary movies a lot more
while simultaneously improving our emotional intelligence in our everyday relationships
all right everybody thank you for watching this quick video essay i really wanted to get a video
out for spooky season at the time of recording this halloween is tomorrow but i hope this is a
video that you can come back to and help you enjoy scary movies a little bit more and by the way i
am not exaggerating with how scared i used to be of scary movies like it is embarrassing to think
about but now i watch them and i'm just like boom stoic as possible you know what i mean but anyways
uh yeah let me know uh what some of your favorite scary movies are i might do some more stuff of
just breaking down scary movies and diving into some psychology and philosophy and things like
that so if there are any of your favorite scary movies that you want me to dive into
let me know down in the comments or just if you have some suggestions we're always looking
for new stuff all right but anyways that's all i got for this video if you like this video please
give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a
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usually in the description down below all of you are awesome and i will see you next time