Do you run to a haunted house every Halloween? Do you rubberneck after a grizzly car crash? Do you devour grotesque true crime documentaries? If so, that’s natural—and it may even be good for you, according to Coltan Scrivner, a researcher of all things macabre and a fan as well—one recent project was founding a horror film festival where he lives in the Ozarks.
In his new book, Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away, Scrivner extols the virtues of entertaining our darker interests.
Why did morbid curiosity evolve?
It’s good for prey to know about the predators they live around. It’s good for a zebra to know about the lions that live around it. It’s good for a deer to know about the wolves that live around it. How does the zebra or deer learn about predators? They don’t have books, language, or similar ways to transmit information. The only way to learn is to be curious about it, to feel like they should observe it under certain circumstances. You don’t always want to observe, because then your chances of being caught go up. But prey animals have evolved to pay attention to danger when it’s safest to do so, like if they’re surrounded by a lot of other animals or if the predator is further away.
You see the same thing with humans. The difference is that we have culture and language to tell stories, so we don’t have to learn about it firsthand. That drastically reduces how dangerous it is to learn about threats. You can learn about almost any kind of awful, terrible danger from the comfort of your home. Our brains pick up on that.
How does that manifest in modern times, where we have different threats?
It may not always help us, but the machinery is there, and it picks up on cues that historically would have helped us. An easy example is true crime. True crime tends to focus on 1) who the suspect was 2) signs we should have seen but didn’t, maybe about the perpetrator’s childhood or beahvior 3) what the victims missed and how they found themselves in the situation. There’s a lot you can learn about keeping yourself safe.
I wonder if someone has ever listened to true crime, realized a predator was in their midst, and then changed their behavior or even saved themselves.
We’ve done studies where we asked true crime fans if they changed their behavior because of true crime, and if they felt like they learned something. Huge portions say yes! There’s an empirical study, from about 10 years ago, where people read passages of victims being abducted and how they got away or didn’t. The researchers asked which parts of the story were most interesting, and participants were most interested in the useful tricks—how people got their handcuffs off or slid out of a rope, how they escaped, what they failed to do. People are interested specifically in those aspects of the stories.
Has morbid curiosity ever changed your own behavior?
I was in Switzerland one time, walking through this beautiful valley where people were hang gliding. I’m not an adrenaline junky, but it looked fun, so I thought I’d sign up later that day. A few minutes later, I saw someone crash. They were in the air, something went wrong, and they took a nosedive. A helicopter had to fly in and get them from the wreck. I quickly changed my mind! A piece of me wanted to, but since I’d seen how it could go wrong, I couldn’t.
You have some interesting research about the benefits of morbid curiosity during the pandemic. What did you find?
When Covid hit, “Contagion” was a nine-year-old movie. It had some box office success, but it wasn’t a hit, and it wasn’t on the charts. Searches for “Contagion” shot up around March 2020, and the film climbed the charts. People were seeking out fictional stories of something that seemed relevant to them.
We did an online study of several hundred people in April 2020. We asked what movies they were fans of—horror, romance, action, comedy, pandemic, apocalyptic, prepper, etc. Even when we controlled for personality, age, gender, and income, people who were high in morbid curiosity were more resilient in those early months. They felt better about the situation and they weren’t as distraught. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult or they weren’t scared; they just had a little more confidence in themselves and society that they would get through. They had more positive resilience. We also found that people who watched even one prepper movie felt more prepared. And people who were horror fans were more resilient to the negative effects of stress.
Why might morbid curiosity have those benefits?
Morbid curiosity challenges you to feel afraid or anxious, but then overcome those feelings in a safe setting. You’re not actually in danger. You can pause and practice down-regulating your emotions. (Those skills are also taught in cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy.) Over time, if you practice that in a playful setting, you’re going to get better at it and better at doing it unconsciously. That can transfer to real-world scenarios.
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What are a few examples of how adults can indulge their morbid curiosity and develop these skills?
Haunted houses. True crime. Horror movies or scary books. You could also just go somewhere you’ve never been before by yourself. Or somewhere you don’t speak the language. Anything that makes you feel afraid or anxious and, importantly, that gives you the opportunity to pause, reflect, and get over your fear.
What are the biggest misconceptions about morbid curiosity?
One of the biggest misconceptions is about horror movies and empathy. Some older studies, from the 80s, suggested horror fans had low empathy. There weren’t very many, and I was critical of their methodology. It also didn’t make sense to me. (Why does someone enjoy scary movies? They enjoy feeling afraid. Why do they feel afraid? Because they’re empathizing with the protagonist. How is that possible if they’re lower in empathy?)
I did a study with updated measures of cognitive and affective empathy and found that people who enjoy horror more were no lower on empathy than anyone else. In fact, they were a little higher on cognitive empathy. The same finding emerged from another study asking how many of the top 50 horror movies participants had seen.
There’s this idea that if you like something gross and scary, you must not care about people. But empirically, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, you might be a tad higher in empathy and caring about others’ well-being.
Do ghosts and the paranormal fall under the umbrella of morbid curiosity?
Ghosts are one item on the morbid curiosity scale, and that correlates pretty highly with the others. Ghosts pertain to danger, death, or being messed with. It’s a little like aliens. Aliens aren’t inherently dangerous. What’s dangerous about the concept of aliens is presumably they’re more powerful and technologically advanced than us because they can reach us. Despite that, they stay hidden from us. That taps into what a predator does. If something is big and strong but it’s hiding—not chest thumping, for example—it’s usually trying to harm us. Like a serial killer. A serial killer is trying everything to not signal they’re dangerous. Aliens and ghosts are difficult for us to perceive, interact with, and know about, yet they try to hide and deceive us. This raises red flags.
Have you experienced any phenomena in that realm?
I’ve been on several ghost investigations and paranormal investigations. On one, I stayed in a haunted hotel room, said to be haunted by the ghost of Michael, an Irish stone mason who had fallen and landed on a beam in that room. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I was interested in experiencing something I couldn’t explain.
The ghost hunters pulled out two plastic cat toys they bought the day before. They were clear plastic balls with a red button that lights up when a cat hits it. We touched them to see how sensitive they were—you had to shake them to light them up. Then we backed up against the wall and the ghosthunter said, “We heard that there’s a ghost or spirit in the room named Michael. If true, light up the left ball for yes, or the right ball for no. There was a two- or three-second pause, and then the left ball just lit up. I got goosebumps. It was creepy, and I couldn’t explain it. It made something in my brain go, “What if?” Humans are the most morbidly curious animal because we can ask, “What if?” ⏹