Why Your Morbid Curiosity Is Actually Useful
The psychology of morbid curiosity and why reading The Stand proved useful during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I often write (and talk) about fear and avoidance and the way that exposure to scary stimuli and events can lead us to avoid them in the future and even generalize from these stimuli to other, similar things. A fear of a specific dog after a bite can lead to fear of similar-looking dogs or even all dogs in general. This phenomenon, called fear conditioning, can be adaptive—but overwhelming fear, anxiety, and the resulting avoidance usually are not. Generalized fear can paralyze us and prevent us from updating our information about what is dangerous, what is not, and what is actually very safe.
Morbid curiosity—the tendency to seek information about threatening and dangerous situations—looks almost like the complete opposite of avoidance. Morbidly curious people (I guess you are one if you’re following my page) purposefully seek scary entertainment, such as horror movies, true crime documentaries, and scary, gory videos. They (we!) seek creepy and violent news, and some of us take part in disaster tourism. Does it mean we’re never anxious?
Quite the opposite.
What Kind of People Are Drawn to Morbid Things?
Morbidly curious people tend to be younger, more rebellious, and more socially curious in general. Their motivation for morbid curiosity can be sensation-seeking and— not mutually exclusive— a desire for knowledge1. Interestingly, they also tend to be higher in neuroticism and more anxious. This sounds somewhat paradoxical—didn’t I just write that morbid curiosity is like the opposite of anxiety-related avoidance? Interestingly, it seems like this curiosity is a sort of preparation. Threat-related information on the screen or in a book is not an actual threat, and controlled exposure to it can be safe and helpful in creating resilience. It is almost like we are doing cognitive-behavioral therapy on ourselves and also learn plenty of useful things along the way.
What Kind of Morbidly Curious Are You?
Scivner2 created the Morbid Curiosity Scale to assess morbid curiosity. The scale has four domains: curiosity about the minds of dangerous people (like serial killers, mass murderers, etc.), interpersonal violence, paranormal danger, and body violation (e.g., what happens to the body during surgery or after death).
What domain interests you the most? Let us know in the comments.
Apart from showing interests in these domains, the morbidly curious are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories—a sentiment I must say I do not share. The reason is likely similar: the desire to make sense of threats and understand them¹.
Did Your Morbid Curiosity Prepare You for COVID?
If indeed morbid curiosity is (at least partially) motivated by the need to know and prepare, it could be like any kind of play. Play—in humans and other animals—has the goal of preparing us for future behaviors, such as fighting, escaping predators, hunting, and so on.
Does it mean that we, horror fans and the morbidly curious, are more prepared for scary real-life events?
In theory, definitely. What about in practice?
A study from 20213 suggests that our endless exposure to dystopian worlds and environments has indeed some benefits in real life, as morbidly curious participants showed increased psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the control group. I knew reading The Stand multiple times since I first got it in the mid-1990s was worth it!
As always, a disclaimer. It’s important to remember that this is a correlational study, so perhaps it’s not the exposure to horror and morbid things that led participants to develop higher resilience, but a trait (or set of traits) that leads to both morbid interest and higher resilience.
Let me know what you think. Do you feel that your morbid curiosity or love for horror has actual benefits in the real world?
If you want to read more:
1. Oosterwijk, S. Choosing the negative: A behavioral demonstration of morbid curiosity. PLOS ONE 12, e0178399 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178399
2. Scrivner, C. & Stubbersfield, J. M. Curious about threats: Morbid curiosity and interest in conspiracy theories in US adults. Br. J. Psychol. 115, 129–147 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12682
3. Scrivner, C., Johnson, J. A., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J. & Clasen, M. Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal. Individ. Differ. 168, 110397 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110397