Why The Zombie Apocalypse Prepared Us For Pandemic Coronavirus

Coltan Scrivner is morbidly curious about morbid curiosity. He studies what makes people interested in violence and horror, trying to understand what people get from engaging in ‘recreational fear,’ by watching true crime shows or horror movies.

But when the novel coronavirus spread, he started wondering whether people who were already into zombie apocalypse or pandemic movies reacted differently to the pandemic. “My collaborators and I had already been discussing the idea that people who play with scary things might learn how to cope better with scary things in real life,” Scrivner, a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, told me. “The pandemic offered a pretty unique opportunity to study this.”

Now, in a new paper published in Personality and Individual Differences, Scrivner and his co-authors report that “exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.” Fans of horror movies or ‘prepper’ genres were not only more prepared for the pandemic, they exhibited greater psychological resilience.

“In this study, we found that people who watched a lot of zombie movies and other apocalyptic-type films reported feeling more prepared for the pandemic. For example, they reported that they knew what kinds of supplies they should buy to prepare and that the consequences of the pandemic didn’t really catch them by surprise. This makes sense if you’ve ever watched a good zombie movie. Though exaggerated for entertainment, many of the features of a zombie-infected world resemble the features of the world during a pandemic,” said Scrivner.

Tales of the zombie apocalypse are so popular, the CDC uses zombies as a way to teach people about disaster preparedness. It all started with one article that told people how to prepare for a disaster, except it was all about zombies. I remember surprising my husband with a case of bottled water for the trunk after reading it. But the campaign was so successful, that CDC has built it out to an entire educational platform to teach people how to prepare for all sorts of hazards, all in the guise of “zombie preparedness.”

So it’s not as big of a reach as it may seem at first that Scrivner and his colleagues believe that fans of horror movies are not just entertaining themselves, but are unknowingly preparing for disasters like the pandemic. In the paper they write, “One explanation for why people engage in frightening fictional experiences is that these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather information and model possible worlds.”

The preparation extends beyond simply knowing what supplies to buy. According to another of the study authors, John Johnson, professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State, horror film lovers were also more mentally prepared and showed more resilience in the face of the pandemic. “After factoring out personality influences, which were actually quite strong, we found that the more movies about zombies, alien invasions and apocalyptic pandemics people had seen prior to COVID-19, the better they dealt with the actual, current pandemic. These kinds of movies apparently serve as mental rehearsal for actual events,” said Johnson in a press release. “Stories are not just entertainment, but preparation for life.”

Studying Zombie Aficionados

The study looked at 310 individuals, who answered a survey. The questionnaire included thirteen items meant to assess the participants’ positive and negative resilience. There were also six questions covering how prepared people were for the pandemic.

Next, the survey asked extensively about the participants’ entertainment interests. It assessed their interest in the following genres: horror, zombie, psychological thriller, supernatural, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, science fiction, alien-invasion, crime, comedy, and romance. The study also evaluated their level of morbid curiosity in general, a trait which the researchers now consider part of personality. To make sure the survey was valid, it also included a variety of other questions used as controls.

But the researchers were particularly interested in responses to their questions about participants experience in the past and present with shows or movies specifically about pandemics. And that is where one difference emerged.

It turns out that while fans of horror films demonstrated more psychological resilience during the pandemic, they were not necessarily better prepared. But fans of the ‘prepper’ genres like alien-invasion, post-apocalyptic, and zombie films were both resilient and prepared. And those with trait morbid curiosity were more resilient and showed interest in pandemic films during the pandemic.“Fiction acts as a simulation of possible worlds where people can learn what particular situations would look like,” said Scrivner.

One of the emerging themes in psychology right now is our need for psychological safety. That’s important, but the trick is balancing that with gaining skills to manage adversity. That’s what Scrivner thinks scary movies provide us.

“Because we often try to avoid feeling afraid or anxious, we don’t always have a lot of practice dealing with these emotions and learning how to overcome them,” he said. “So by playing with fear and anxiety in a safe setting, people who watch a lot of horror movies or are generally morbidly curious might be learning how to regulate their reactions to these aversive emotions in a way that resembles techniques like those taught in cognitive behavioral therapy.”

The study is validating for scary movie lovers out there, but it’s probably not time to fire your therapist so you can binge on zombie movies just yet.