The psychology of morbid curiosity: Development and initial validation of the morbid curiosity scale

Abstract

The success of horror films, popularity of true crime, and prevalence of violence in the news implies that morbid curiosity is a common psychological trait. However, research on morbid curiosity is largely absent from the psychological literature. In this paper, I present a novel psychometric tool for assessing morbid curiosity, defined as a motivation to seek out information about dangerous phenomena, and use it to investigate the psychological nature of morbid curiosity. In studies 1 and 2 (ntotal = 1370), the Morbid Curiosity Scale was developed and its relationship to personality was assessed. Morbidly curious individuals were rebellious, socially curious, and low in animal reminder disgust. Study 3 (n = 317) demonstrated that trait morbid curiosity is stable over 4-6 weeks and that morbidly curious individuals prefer movies where threat is a central theme. In Study 4 (n = 137), participants were presented with a choice between a morbid stimulus and a highly controlled non-morbid stimulus. Morbid curiosity predicted over half the variance (r 2 = .53) in decisions to further investigate a morbid stimulus. These four studies provide evidence that morbid curiosity is a normally occurring psychological trait that can be accurately assessed using the new 24-item Morbid Curiosity Scale.

Curious about threats: Morbid curiosity and interest in conspiracy theories

“…Research on age and conspiracy theory belief has been mixed, with some studies reporting that young people are more prone to conspiracy theory belief (Douglas et al, 2016;Galliford & Furnham, 2017;Goertzel, 1994;Green & Douglas et al, 2018) and others suggesting no age effect (Buturoiu et al, 2021;Cookson et al, 2021;Douglas et al, 2016;Ross et al, 2006). Younger age is also associated with higher morbid curiosity (Scrivner, 2021b). One possibility is that younger people are still exploring and uncovering many aspects of the complex social environment.…”

“…The 24-item Morbid Curiosity Scale (MCS) was used to assess trait levels of morbid curiosity (Scrivner, 2021b). Participants indicated the extent to which they agreed with each statement from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree).…”

“…Though the subject matter varies across the domains, the unifying thread between them is the potential to learn threat-related information. General morbid curiosity appears to be a common behavior (Oosterwijk, 2017) and the trait has been found to be normally distributed in samples (Scrivner 2021b). People with more morbid curiosity tend to be younger, more rebellious, more socially curious, and less disgusted by or afraid of death (Scrivner, 2021b).…”

“…One solution to this problem is to seek out threat-related information in situations where the perceived costs are low and the perceived benefits remain high. The tendency to seek out information about threats in this manner has been called morbid curiosity (Scrivner, 2021a;Scrivner, 2021b;. The propensity for morbid curiosity can help explain the allure of frightening and violent entertainment, including horror films, true crime, and violent sports.…”

Why Frightening Imaginary Worlds? Morbid curiosity and the learning potential of horror

“…The general motivation for humans to seek out information about threatening scenarios for entertainment is a feature of morbid curiosity. Only recently has psychology begun to parse the psychological features of morbid curiosity (Scrivner 2021a;Oosterwijk, 2017).…”