Why Do We Enjoy Fear, but Not Nausea?

Our results raise some difficult questions when the frequency of different activities are compared. Why is the degree of liking for sad movies or music, or physical exhaustion, or thrill rides much higher than the scores for liking stinky cheese, bitter foods, or flashes of cold pain?

We do not know; in part this may be due to both exposure to the relevant experiences and cultural norms. For example, we are confident that enjoyment of the burn of chili pepper is more common and more extreme in Mexico than in the United States.

Perhaps more puzzling is the fact that some negative sensations never seem to be liked by anyone: nausea is a salient example, and perhaps this is true for any visceral pain (as distinguished from muscle pain). Visceral pain or other discomfort (e.g., nausea) is essentially a signal that something is not working properly, and this strong link to pathology may interfere with a “benign” interpretation.

In addition, it is very difficult to be certain that visceral discomfort is actually “safe”, thus making it difficult to create the distance that allows for a protective frame or “benign” interpretation. It is in fact the case that almost all of our benign masochism activities are actually harmless, though the body responds to them as though they are harmful. Perhaps recreational parachuting or scaling of cliffs do not qualify, but these activities seem more exceptional than those we study in this paper.

It is also notable that we have no experience of people claiming to enjoy boredom, though its opposite, overstimulation, may be quite popular (e.g., amongst teenagers).