Enjoying the Unenjoyable: Paradoxical Attraction to and Reward of Negativity and Threat

Numerous examples exist in our everyday lives of our being paradoxically drawn to all forms of negative emotion-evoking stimuli, even when they are not “enjoyed” per se. Traffic gets backed up for miles on highways because drivers are seemingly unable to control their tendency to observe the aftermath of an accident (i.e., rubbernecking). Likewise, a prominent slogan of the media is “if it bleeds, it leads,” which highlights how tragedy is used to bait us into the news. And it works! Then there are numerous examples of our not only being paradoxically drawn to, but under certain conditions, actually enjoying aversive states (e.g., benign masochism). Finally, under the right circumstances, aversive conditions in our lives can serve as the raw resource for intense pleasure (e.g., flow and humor states). We review each of these interrelated phenomena (i.e., our attraction to threat, enjoyment of it, and ability to transform it into intensely positive experiences) with a focus on what they mean for some of the basic assumptions of many theories of emotion, and specifically to the conceptualization of emotional valence. Critically, such examples, numerous as they are, draw into question the application of a simple, static label (i.e., negative) to them. We illustrate this by drawing on three common characterizations of valence, namely (1) approach- (positive) versus avoidance- (negative) motivation, (2) subjectively felt positivity and negativity, and (3) information and goal congruency (positive) versus incongruency (negative).