Haunted attractions are illustrative examples of recreational fear in which people voluntarily seek out frightening experiences in pursuit of enjoyment. We present findings from a field study at a haunted-house attraction where visitors between the ages of 12 and 57 years ( N = 110) were equipped with heart rate monitors, video-recorded at peak scare points during the attraction, and asked to report on their experience. Our results show that enjoyment has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with fear across repeated self-reported measures. Moreover, results from physiological data demonstrate that the experience of being frightened is a linear function of large-scale heart rate fluctuations, whereas there is an inverted-U-shaped relationship between participant enjoyment and small-scale heart rate fluctuations. These results suggest that enjoyment is related to forms of arousal dynamics that are “just right.” These findings shed light on how fear and enjoyment can coexist in recreational horror.

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In this article, we argue that a predictive processing framework (PP) may provide elements for a proximate model of play in children and adults. We propose that play is a behavior in which the agent, in contexts of freedom from the demands of certain competing cognitive systems, deliberately seeks out or creates surprising situations that gravitate toward sweet-spots of relative complexity with the goal of resolving surprise. We further propose that play is experientially associated with a feel-good quality because the agent is reducing significant levels of prediction error (i.e., surprise) faster than expected. We argue that this framework can unify a range of well-established findings in play and developmental research that highlights the role of play in learning, and that casts children as Bayesian learners. The theory integrates the role of positive valence in play (i.e., explaining why play is fun); and what it is to be in a playful mood. Central to the account is the idea that playful agents may create and establish an environment tailored to the generation and further resolution of surprise and uncertainty. Play emerges here as a variety of niche construction where the organism modulates its physical and social environment in order to maximize the productive potential of surprise.

We review previous attempts to study mystical experience and point to problems inherent to certain methodologies. Focusing on studies that use controlled environ ments we advocate taking an experimental approach to mysticism. To demonstrate the viability of this approach, we report findings from a new study that probes the poten tial for eliciting mystical experiences in the laboratory. We find that our experimental paradigm is indeed enough to elicit mystical experiences. Based on subjective ratings of experience, rich descriptions from interviews, and data obtained three months after the study, our data indicate that the experiences reported by the participants had a high degree of authenticity and had lasting effects in terms of memory and attribution. These findings demonstrate that at least some forms of mystical experience can be studied in a controlled environment. Prospects and limitations for the experimental approach to mysticism are discussed.

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