Hauntings of Human Nature: An Evolutionary Critique of King’s The Shining

The central conflicts of Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining are rooted in human nature and reflect evolutionarily recurrent adaptive problems—the problem of balancing conflicting evolved motives, such as motives for selfish status striving versus motives for affiliative nurturing behavior, and the problem of surviving the hostile forces of nature. Moreover, the supernatural elements of the novel resonate with evolved intuitions about nonmaterial, moral forces at work in the world. That is why the novel continues to engage readers worldwide, and why we need an evolutionary perspective to account for the novel’s meaning, effects, and continued popularity.