BATON ROUGE — With spooky season in full swing, some people are flocking to haunted attractions like The 13th Gate or queueing up horror movie marathons, but others prefer to avoid the thrills entirely.

According to experts, whether you crave a good scare or dread it comes down to a blend of biology and personal history.

Dr. Katherine Brownlowe, a neuropsychiatrist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, explains that how we respond to scary situations is heavily influenced by two main factors: genetics and experience.

"We all get born with a certain set of temperaments," Dr. Brownlowe says, noting that people naturally fall on different sides of the fear spectrum from birth.

Past trauma or your upbringing plays a major role. "If [someone] always saw their mom kind of be afraid of scary movies or be afraid of dogs, they might be more likely to be fearful of those things," she adds.

When faced with something scary, this combination of nature and nurture triggers a "fight-or-flight" response in the amygdala—the brain's emotional and threat-detection center.

In adults, the amygdala works alongside the frontal lobe, which steps in to assess the actual danger and reason through the situation. The frontal lobe essentially signals to the body: "This is just pretend, this isn't really real, you are safe."

That internal safety valve isn't fully built in children yet. Because a child's frontal lobe is still developing, they have a much harder time distinguishing between real threats and make-believe scares.

Dr. Brownlowe advises parents not to force kids into uncomfortable situations during Halloween and to handle fear with empathy, "If they get really afraid, don't tell them, 'Oh, you shouldn't be afraid.' Acknowledge the fear first because they're really feeling it. They really can't calm their brains down, but then help them to calm their brains down—maybe help them to see, like, 'Look, it's just Mr. Smith, see, he took off his mask, it's just really him under there.'"