There’s a cool piece on the Psychology Today blog that answers the eternal question: Why we are afraid of zombies?
MD Stephen Schlozman says that it centers around pattern recognition and how humans use this process.
A two-year-old can tell you a dog is a dog because it looks like a dog, even if she is being shown a toy poodle and a mastiff. These are adaptive responses that help us to quickly size up a given situation and to draw conclusions around how best to proceed. Mind you, this tendency is also the source of prejudice. Someone might expect that a man in a dark alley intends to take your wallet, and yet he might think the same of you. We make up our minds quickly in part because the drive to categorize and classify declares itself early and profoundly so we can get by in the world largely on autopilot.
The problem with zombies (and ostensibly, other things that we fear) is that zombies break the pattern. It’s the familiar becoming increasingly unfamiliar.
That guy is staggering, so perhaps he is drunk. But wait! That kid is also staggering, and kids don’t get drunk. And that woman is staggering; when was the last time I saw three staggerers at the same time? Things are not fitting into my usual patterns. I do not recognize this pattern, and I am therefore forced to switch off automatic and to perilously fly manually. Most of the time we’re flying by instrument, but not now. Now, we need to look around.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain the unrelenting horror that is Kim Kardashian.
Via.
I’m not afraid of zombies. I just fantasize about society crumbling so I can prove myself to be the hero that I know that I am.
A) I do not fear something that does not exist
B) People who are fascinated by zombies are almost always serious nerds, yourself included:)
I’m more afraid of the little baggies of dogshit that people “accidentally” leave lying around when they get tired of carrying them.
And here I thought it was because they represent the possibility of an existence beyond death that’s restless, hellish and tortured, where you remorselessly attempt to devour the ones you once loved. Or, conversely, being forced to brain people you care about.
The explanation– at least, as quoted above– seems just as true a justification for why the uncanny valley is creepy but I don’t have the same aversion to random poorly-animated video game children.
Does than mean there I am always seeing zombies on Burnside, Hawthorne, and under the I-5.
Q: “when was the last time I saw three staggerers at the same time?” A: After lunch at city hall or the mercury.