鬼屋研究：恐惧与牵手关联亲近感，事后聊天或更关键

鬼屋里的恐惧，为什么可能拉近人

人类是高度社会性的动物，与他人建立联结与整体健康和心理福祉密切相关。已有研究显示，一起大笑、一起在演唱会上欢呼这类共享积极情绪会放大亲近感；另一条研究线索则指出，恐惧这类负面情绪也会促使人寻求同伴，共同面对威胁，甚至出现心率同步、群体凝聚力增强的现象。但这些实验多依赖人工实验室情境或真实威胁，很少考察娱乐性恐惧——即明知安全却仍被吓到的场景。

佛罗里达大学的研究者正是从这里切入。Jane Wiley 与导师 Lawton K. Swan 都是恐怖与鬼屋爱好者，Wiley 提到，Swan 一次在万圣节恐怖之夜的约会后来走向婚姻，自己则在与论文合著者 Garrett Johnson 一起闯鬼屋后成为密友。这些轶事促使他们把“一起被吓”当作可研究的社交情境，在佛罗里达一家商业鬼屋 Gainesville Fear Garden 连续三个万圣节季开展了五项子研究。

五项研究看到了什么

第一项研究在感官剥夺主题鬼屋结束后立即调查了986名游客，约48%的人认同这次体验让自己与同行中最亲近的人更近了。自评恐惧每高1分（7点量表），这种“被拉近”的感受平均高约0.2分；牵手、途中交流、享受体验也都预测更高的评分。这属于相关证据。

第二项研究在下一季招募500人，在入场前和出场后各测一次亲近度，并继续聚焦同行中最亲近的人。恐惧程度依然预测“觉得更近了”，58%的人认同这一点；但前后评分几乎没有变化：入场前平均6.27，出场后6.12（满分7）。研究者怀疑是天花板效应——关系本来就被评得很高，量表上没有多少上升空间。

第三项研究转向同行中最不亲近、或最常争执的人，调查554人。恐惧和身体接触仍是“被拉近”的强预测因素，约45%的人觉得与这位最不亲近的同伴更近了；而就整个同行群体而言，约64%的人觉得大家更近了。作者提示群体层面的效应可能更强，但这两个数字来自不同问题，不能直接比较。

第四项研究是唯一预注册的一项，聚焦最不亲近的同伴，收集了263名游客的完整前后测数据。恐惧、身体接触和享受程度再次预测亲近感提升，并且首次检测到统计上显著的前后变化：从入场前4.61升至出场后4.81，平均仅增加0.21分（7点量表）。变化虽小，却与约一半人说“被拉近”形成反差，促使研究者转向访谈。

关键可能在散场之后

第五项研究访谈了20名刚完成鬼屋和问卷的游客，问他们“更亲近”对自己意味着什么、为什么分数没怎么变。20人中有16人表示，事后谈论、大笑、交换被吓到的故事——比如在回家的车上——是让他们感到更亲近的核心环节；14人提到体验的新奇感，不少人说蒙眼或害怕时互相依靠带来了脆弱感；还有12人谈到问卷本身，有人说当时还没来得及消化体验，也有人承认答题时没有区分“整体关系”和“此刻的关系”。

Wiley 对 PsyPost 表示，最令她意外的正是反复看不到前后变化，直到意识到“事后反思”对联结必不可少。她的解释是：单靠一起闯鬼屋，若没有之后聊天、回忆、大笑的时间，似乎不足以产生显著的联结。

不能忽略的边界

这项研究有几处明确限制。五项子研究都在同一家鬼屋完成，且该鬼屋形式逐年变化；研究没有设置一起做非恐怖活动的对照组，因此无法证明是恐惧本身、而非仅仅共同出游带来了亲近感。亲近度用单个问卷条目测量，只有第四项研究预注册；访谈中，参与者在被要求解释之前已被告知此前的零结果，这可能影响他们的说法。

样本是鬼屋现场愿意参与的便利样本，种族、能力与收入分布不均，结论只能推广到本来就会和朋友或家人去鬼屋的人。问卷还是在鬼屋酒吧里填写的，音乐嘈杂、有人饮酒、同行者并排作答，环境干扰可能影响回答。研究也只考察了鬼屋，不能直接推及恐怖电影或极限运动等其他娱乐性恐惧。

此外，被吓到一起并不是关系的万能修复。各项研究中只有约一半人认同鬼屋让自己更近了，也有相当比例的人不同意。作者推测，当两人的恐惧反应严重不匹配、或一方感到没被支持时，共享恐惧反而可能给关系带来压力，并提出娱乐性恐惧或可视为一次人际压力测试：以安慰和幽默回应受惊的同伴可能强化联结，做不到则可能削弱。Wiley 表示，后续研究希望加入实验操纵，让部分参与者有时间事后复盘、另一部分没有，以检验因果关系，并考察其他形式的娱乐性恐惧。

A new study published in the journal Emotion provides evidence that visiting a haunted house with others is linked to feeling more connected to them. People who felt more scared, and who held hands or made physical contact, were more likely to say the experience brought them closer, though before-and-after closeness ratings barely changed, and interviews suggested that talking about the experience afterward may be where much of the bonding happens.

Humans are highly social creatures, and forming bonds with others is strongly linked to overall health and psychological well-being. Scientists have gathered substantial evidence showing that sharing positive emotions, like laughing at a comedy show or cheering at a concert, amplifies interpersonal closeness. A separate line of research suggests that negative emotions, specifically fear, also push people to seek out the company of others. When people face a common threat, they often prefer to face it together rather than alone.

Beyond simply seeking company, shared emotional arousal can create a sense of unity. Previous studies indicate that fear can spread from person to person, synchronizing heart rates and potentially reinforcing group cohesion. Most previous experiments exploring the link between fear and social bonding relied on artificial laboratory settings or situations involving genuine threats. The researchers wanted to investigate how fear affects relationships in a recreational context, where the threat is entirely simulated.

Jane Wiley conducted this research as an undergraduate student at the University of Florida and is now an incoming social psychology doctoral student at the University of Virginia. The project grew out of a passion Wiley shares with their faculty advisor and the study’s senior author, Lawton K. “Ken” Swan.

“He and I are huge horror and haunted house fans,” Wiley told PsyPost. “We have shared plenty of stories (and have heard many others from haunted house guests) of how going through a haunted house together can be a strong bonding experience.”

Wiley noted that anecdotal success stories served as inspiration for the project. “A first date he had at Halloween Horror Nights led to a happy marriage, and I got very close with a best friend — Garrett Johnson, another author of the paper — after we went through a haunted house together,” they said. “This interpersonal focus had not been researched in recreational fear literature when we began, so that was what drew us to studying what we did.”

Millions of people seek out recreational fear every year by riding roller coasters, watching horror movies, or visiting haunted attractions. The scientists designed this project to test whether the fear experienced in these playful, safe environments translates into stronger social ties. They wanted to know if the temporary thrill of a scare can generate a lasting sense of interpersonal warmth among friends, family members, and acquaintances.

To explore these ideas, Wiley and their colleagues at the University of Florida conducted a series of five studies over three Halloween seasons at a commercial haunted attraction in Florida, the Gainesville Fear Garden. In the first study, the team surveyed 986 attraction attendees immediately after they finished a sensory deprivation haunted house. The participants answered questions on a 7-point scale regarding how much fear they felt, how much they enjoyed the attraction, and whether the experience brought them closer to the person in their group they already felt closest to. The researchers also asked if participants communicated or held hands with their companion during the event.

About 48 percent of participants agreed that the experience brought them closer to their companion. Higher levels of reported fear predicted a stronger feeling of having bonded, with each additional point of fear on the 7-point scale associated with about a fifth of a point higher rating on the bonding question. Holding hands, communicating during the event, and enjoying the experience also predicted higher ratings. This provided preliminary, correlational evidence that shared fear in a fun setting is linked to feeling closer.

To verify these findings and look for measurable changes, the researchers conducted a second study with 500 participants during the next Halloween season. This time, guests completed surveys both immediately before and right after navigating the attraction. This method allowed the scientists to measure shifts in interpersonal closeness. As in the first study, participants were asked to focus on the person in their group they felt closest to.

Once again, the amount of fear a person felt predicted how much they believed the experience brought them closer to their companion, with 58 percent agreeing that the attraction brought them closer. Yet, when the scientists looked at the direct difference between the before and after closeness ratings, they found no measurable change: participants rated closeness at an average of 6.27 out of 7 before entering and 6.12 after exiting. The researchers suspected a ceiling effect, meaning that because these participants already rated their relationship so highly before entering the attraction, there was very little mathematical room for their closeness score to increase on a 7-point scale.

For the third study, the researchers adjusted their focus to see if the bonding effect applied to less intimate relationships. They surveyed 554 participants, asking them to focus on the group member they felt the least close to, or someone they argued with most often. Participants were asked if the attraction brought them closer to this specific person, how much fear they felt, and if they made any physical contact.

The scientists found that fear and physical contact remained strong predictors of feeling brought together, even for the least close companions. Approximately 45 percent of participants agreed that the experience made them feel closer to their least close group member. When asked about their party as a whole, an even higher percentage, about 64 percent, felt the experience brought their entire group closer. This suggests that the link between fear and feeling closer is not limited to already-close relationships, and the authors suggest the effect may be even stronger at the group level, though the group and individual figures came from different questions.

In the fourth study, the only one that was preregistered, the researchers again attempted to capture a measurable shift in closeness from before to after the haunted house. They maintained their focus on least close companions to avoid the ceiling effect seen in earlier attempts. The researchers collected complete survey data from 263 attendees who rated their closeness to their least close groupmate before entering and then again after exiting. The team also asked the participants to rate their fear, enjoyment, and physical contact during the immersive 30-minute experience.

The predictive model held up for a fourth time, with fear, physical contact, and enjoyment all predicting perceptions of enhanced closeness. Additionally, the researchers finally detected a statistically significant increase in closeness ratings from before the experience to afterward, rising from 4.61 before entering to 4.81 after exiting, an average increase of just 0.21 points on a 7-point scale. This modest change raised questions about why about half of participants said the experience brought them closer, even though their numerical closeness ratings barely moved.

“Our most surprising finding was when we kept seeing no pre-to-post change in closeness, prior to figuring out that post-haunt reflection is essential for bonding to occur,” Wiley noted.

Wiley added that this lack of initial change was difficult to interpret at first. “This ultimately ended up being a good obstacle to encounter since it led us to transition to qualitative data collection (which helped us deduce the post-experience reflection bit), but it was hard to make sense of at the time,” Wiley said. “So I would say the most surprising finding is that going through a haunted house together alone, without the time to talk and laugh afterwards, does not seem to be sufficient for significant bonding.”

To understand this paradox, the researchers conducted a fifth and final study consisting of face-to-face qualitative interviews. Qualitative research involves gathering non-numerical data, such as conversational responses, to understand underlying concepts, opinions, and motivations. The researchers interviewed 20 guests right after they completed the haunted house and the quantitative survey. They asked the participants what feeling closer meant to them and why their numerical scores might not have changed despite reporting a stronger bond.

In the interviews, 16 of the 20 attendees said that talking, laughing, and swapping stories about the scares afterward, such as on the car ride home, played a central role in making them feel closer. Fourteen described the novelty of the experience as part of its appeal, and many said that relying on one another while blindfolded or frightened created a sense of vulnerability. Twelve commented on the survey itself: some said they had not yet had time to process the experience, and several said they had not distinguished between their overall closeness and their closeness in that moment when answering the questions.

“Haunted houses seem to have the ability to make two people feel closer together, whether these two people were previously very close or not,” Wiley explained. “In other words, going through a haunted attraction with either your best friend or your annoying coworker will likely prove to be beneficial to the relationship. However, this link is quite contingent on what you and that other person do after the experience.”

Wiley emphasized that what happens after the scare may matter most. “Post-haunt reflection is important to the process of bonding: the haunted house on its own may not do much to strengthen the relationship, but if you talk, reminisce, and laugh about the experience afterwards, you’ll probably feel more bonded with that person,” they said.

As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. All five studies took place at one attraction whose format changed from year to year, and none compared haunted house visitors with people doing a non-scary activity together, so the studies cannot show that fear itself, rather than simply sharing a fun outing, drives the sense of bonding. Closeness was measured with single survey items, only the fourth study was preregistered, and in the interviews, participants were told about the earlier null results before being asked to explain them.

“As there is with any study, ours certainly had limitations,” Wiley noted. “We used convenience samples of people who were already at the haunted house, so not only were race, ability, and income unevenly distributed, but our conclusions can only really be generalized to people who would normally show up at a haunted house with their friends or family (this is a double-edged sword though — we’re interested in recreational fear, so we are particularly interested in people who seek out these experiences on their own time anyway).”

Environmental factors during the surveys might have also influenced the data. “We were surveying people inside the bar of the haunted house, which was a pretty chaotic and high-traffic space: the music was loud, people were drinking, and participants filled out surveys side-by-side with other participants, who in some cases were the people they came with,” Wiley explained. “So it was definitely not a distraction-free environment we were collecting data in, which may have impacted responses. We also only examined the impact of haunted houses in particular, so we cannot make these same conclusions yet about other forms of recreational fear, like horror movies or extreme sports.”

Scaring people together is not a guaranteed relationship fix. Across the studies, only about half of participants agreed the haunted house brought them closer, and a notable minority disagreed. The authors speculate that shared fear might strain a relationship when people’s fear responses are badly mismatched or one person feels unsupported, and they propose that recreational fear may act as an interpersonal stress test: responding to a frightened companion with comfort and humor could reinforce a bond, while failing to do so could weaken it.

Expanding the research could yield useful insights into how shared emotional intensity shapes human connection over time. “We would definitely like to expand on this study, particularly adding an experimental manipulation where some participants have time for post-experience reflection while others don’t, in order to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship,” Wiley said. “We’d also like to see if this bonding pattern exists for other forms of recreational fear.”

The study, “Haunted Attraction: The Effects of Recreational Fear on Interpersonal Bonding,” was authored by Jane K. Wiley, Alexa A. Rivers, Otho Garrett Johnson, Cristina S. Negraru, Jake T. Watson, Tara M. Perreault, Rebecca Martin, Sara C. Slayton, Steffano I. Segovia-Palacios, Benjamin R. Stanisky, Kate E. Doherty, and Lawton K. Swan.