Why Morbid Curiosity Is So Common—And So Fun

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, this is Flora Lichtman, and you’re listening to Science Friday. Today on the show–

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– Here’s Johnny.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: That was from The Shining, of course. And it makes you wonder, why do we want to watch a murderous psychopath try to ax down a bathroom door so he could kill his family? What draws us to horror? And why are some people more thrill-seeking or morbidly curious than others? Here to flesh out some answers are two experts who happen to fall on opposite poles of the horror fandom genre.

Dr. Ken Carter is horrified of horror. He’s also a psychology professor at Emory University and author of the book, Buzz, Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies. And we have horrorphile Dr. Coltan Scrivner, a behavioral scientist at Arizona State University and author of the new book, Morbidly Curious, A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away. Ken, Coltan, welcome to Science Friday.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Thank you very much.

KEN CARTER: Great to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It seems like horror is having a moment right now. Am I imagining that? And if it is having a moment, is there any reason why?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Well, I don’t think you’re imagining it. If you look at the box office share of horror over the past 30 years, and it was around 17%, which is about two to three times its typical share. And is the highest that it’s been in recorded history, at least since we’ve been collecting comprehensive records.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah. And so if it’s highest at the box office, it’s probably also more common on streaming platforms. And if it’s more common on streaming platforms and in the box office, you’re probably also seeing it in big box stores and other places as well.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you have a hypothesis for why that is so?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: I do. The short answer– and I’ve actually only came across this idea recently. It got a lot more popular in 2020, so it had about 12% of the box office share in 2020, which was around double what it normally gets, and at the time, was the highest that it ever had. And I think what happened was a lot of people started watching horror movies around the time COVID hit. And a lot of those people that started watching horror movies were people who wouldn’t normally watch horror movies. And so I think we have a new crop of horror fans that have popped up in the past couple of years, and filmmakers have taken note of that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Ken, this is kind of counterintuitive to me because the correlation of the world going through this kind of nightmare scenario and then people wanting more nightmare scenarios in their leisure time, that seems surprising.

KEN CARTER: Yeah. Where there’s a lot of uncertainty, I think people are also often drawn to cathartic experiences. And so sometimes people say, I just needed a good cry. And so sometimes people just need a good scare, I think, in order to flush out some of the emotions they may be feeling. Plus, on the screen, there’s a lot of clarity about who’s the big bad and who’s good and who’s bad. And you don’t often get that in everyday life.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Colton, if you like horror, does that mean– what personality traits go along with that? Are you less sensitive? Are you lower in empathy?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: I think it’s intuitive to believe that would be the case. I’m pretty sympathetic to that intuition, that, hey, if you like watching movies that are filled with suffering, maybe you’re a little lower in empathy. That’s not a bad hypothesis to start with. And it was the default answer for a long time. And I decided, well, I’m a scientist. I’m interested in horror. And I should probably study this because it seems like a lot of people haven’t. And when I did that, I found that horror fans score just as high as everyone else in affective empathy, meaning that they feel what other people feel to the same extent as anyone else.

And they actually score, in some cases, a bit higher in cognitive empathy, which relates to perspective taking, taking another person’s perspective. And they also score a bit higher in compassion, so caring about another person’s well-being. And again, that sounds counterintuitive at first. But if you think about what a horror movie is and why it’s scary, and it’s scary because you’re empathizing with the protagonist who’s in danger. The protagonist is undergoing a high-adrenaline, high-sensation experience, and you’re empathizing with that. And that’s what causes you to then have a high-sensation adrenaline experience.

KEN CARTER: Yeah, it’s a really great perspective because I do study a lot of the people that we often call thrill seekers, who are really out for these unusual sensations, whether or not they are experience seeking of sensations of the mind and the senses or physical things. And so one of the things we often think about is bungee jumpers and wingsuit fliers, and there’s physical sense, but there’s a lot of cool stuff in terms of what’s happening in the brain and the body for those emotional kinds of connections, like you see in horror movies.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, what is happening in the brain and the body?

KEN CARTER: Yeah, so we know that a lot of high sensation seekers, who are out for those sort of chaotic experiences, experience much more dopamine when they are exposed to those things. That’s that pleasure neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. But they often have a lower cortisol response. So they’re not having as much of a stress response. So they’re really enjoying that in a very different way. So a low-sensation seeker like me does not have a lot of dopamine but has a lot of that stress hormone. So I’m just really frightened but don’t have that sense of enjoyment that a lot of high-sensation seekers will feel.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Listeners, if you want to your horror tolerance better or your sensation-seeking score, we’re going to have these self-guided sort of quizzes on our website. So, Colton, you have this morbid curiosity quiz. And we’re going to put it on our website at sciencefriday.com/morbid.

And the questions are like, if a head transplant was possible, I would want to watch the procedure, highly agree or highly disagree? I’m interested in how Ouija boards work, highly disagree, highly agree? So I took this quiz, and I scored very low on almost every category. All the ones about violence, I was on the very low end, except for paranormal, where I was off the charts. I was like at the very high end.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Really?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah. So that’s who I am. How do you score on this, Colton?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: I score pretty high, low 5s probably, across the board and overall.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The top is 6, just so everybody know.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: The top is 6. So it’s a pretty normally distributed trait, meaning that most people have some morbid curiosity. They might score around a 2.5 or a 3 out of 6. And a few people have a little bit. And a few people have a lot. So it looks kind of like an inverted U, if you were to plot everyone’s scores on a chart.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Ken, have you taken this quiz?

KEN CARTER: I did. And I will say that as I took it– I’m not sure if you’ve ever listened to anyone take it before, Colton–

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yes.

KEN CARTER: But as I was going through, I was just saying, no, why, with every question. So I scored a 1.5.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Wow. That’s actually one of the lower scores I think I’ve seen.

KEN CARTER: I thought that was very generous, actually.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You think you could even be lower than a 1.5.

KEN CARTER: Probably, yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Ken, it’s so interesting to me that you study sensation seeking when you, it seems like, are low sensation-seeking. Is that right?

KEN CARTER: Yeah, very low. Yeah, I’m pretty low on the scale, compared to most people. In fact, I’m an 8 out of 40 on the scale.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Ken, on your quiz, which we’ll also have at sciencefriday.com/morbid, I was like a 37.

KEN CARTER: Wow. That’s pretty high.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s very high. It’s out of 40. So I was very high on that and very low on yours, Colton. So it makes me wonder if these are separate– that there’s overlap, probably, but these are maybe separate traits.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Well, let me ask you, do you like horror movies? Or do you enjoy anything like that?

FLORA LICHTMAN: I don’t, really. I don’t, really.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: So high in sensation-seeking but don’t necessarily enjoy horror movies. And that, again, five years ago, people would have thought, well, Flora’s crazy, that everybody who loves horror is high in sensation-seeking, and most people who are high in sensation-seeking must love horror. And again, that was one of those things that I thought, that just doesn’t seem right. Anecdotally, I knew a lot of people who were not sensation seekers at all and loved horror. And of course, I knew many people who were high sensation seekers and hated horror. And so I thought, this is an interesting thing to study as well.

And so I went to the highest sensation-seeking horror experience I could think of, which would be a haunted attraction during Halloween, a very immersive horror experience. So I thought, if horror fans are really sensation seekers, this is where you’d see it. You’d see it at a haunted house. And I had devised this scale that pulls a lot from work that Ken does in sensation seeking, for example, and it essentially categorizes people into sensation-seeking horror fans, scared horror fans, or horror fans who use horror as a way to overcome difficult emotions.

So the first group, we called them adrenaline junkies. The second group, the fearful ones, we called them white knucklers because they walk through with their fists clenched, as they were going through the haunted house. In the third group, who used horror to cope, we called them the dark copers. And what we found was that a huge portion of people at this haunted attraction were not categorized as adrenaline junkies. Some of them were. But many people said no, I didn’t actually enjoy the fear itself. But I did like the opportunity to overcome my fear.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Interesting.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: And so they were very afraid. And so this was a great opportunity for them to safely experience fear and then have a chance to overcome that. And it was the overcoming of that challenge or that fear that they really liked. And then, of course, the dark copers felt that the experience helped them understand their own fears and anxieties a bit better.

FLORA LICHTMAN: As someone dressed in a zombie costume chased them with a chainsaw.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah.

KEN CARTER: And that doesn’t surprise me at all. There’s a huge aspect of emotional regulation that really flows throughout a lot of high sensation-seeking individuals, the ability to be able to practice really controlling their emotions and using those for good things. So, for example, a slackliner that I interviewed called, Slackline Girl–

FLORA LICHTMAN: And a slackliner is– just give us a– yeah.

KEN CARTER: Yeah, so a slackline is a sort of woven narrow band about the width of a credit card that you can balance on. And Slackline Girl is one of the few people who can do it in high heels, as well.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Amazing.

KEN CARTER: And so part of what she talks about as the ability to be able to do that is really around her ability to control her emotional reaction while she’s trying to focus and balance. And so you see the same things in horror kinds of experiences, like haunted houses, where really, you’re fighting against your own emotional reaction.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah. I wonder if that is something that is maybe somewhat universal among humans, that desire to control emotions that make you feel like you’re out of control. And then in high sensation-seekers, horror movies, for example, are just not enough for them. It doesn’t actually get them to that point. And so they go to more high adrenaline activities, like slacklining 100 feet in the air, or skydiving, or bungee jumping, whereas people who are a little bit more low in sensation-seeking, maybe a horror movie is enough to get them to that point.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: We have to take a quick break, but don’t go away, because when we come back, what’s up with our love of zombies?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Zombies, I think, tap into all four domains of morbid curiosity. So those domains are minds of dangerous people, violence, bodily injuries, and the paranormal.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Stay with us.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: Colton, this one’s for you.

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– These things ain’t sick. They’re not people. They’re dead. Ain’t gotta feel nothing for them ’cause all they do, they kill. These things right here, they’re the things that killed Amy. They killed Otis. They’re gonna kill all of us, unless we do–

– Shut up!

– Hey, Hershel, man, let me ask you something. A living, breathing person, could they walk away from this?

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FLORA LICHTMAN: I heard from you laugh. I assume you clocked it. This is from The Walking Dead,

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Season 2. I even what episode that is.

FLORA LICHTMAN: True expert on the line. Why are we fascinated by zombies, in particular?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah. Yeah, zombies are kind of interesting because zombies, I think, tap into all four domains of morbid curiosity. So those domains are minds of dangerous people, violence, bodily injuries, and the paranormal. So zombies certainly tap into violence, as we heard from that clip. You probably don’t need a visual to that was a violent scene. And zombies obviously commit lots of violence. They also, though, are kind of people. And you heard in that scene, too. That character kept saying that they’re not people. These aren’t people anymore. Some of the other people in that scene thought that the zombies were still people, or there might still be a person kind of behind the eyes.

And they, of course, tap into bodily injuries because they are walking bodily injuries. Their flesh is falling off, and their body parts are only barely hanging on by a thread. And they, of course, cause bodily injuries. And because they are both living and dead, they do kind of violate our intuition about how things can exist. And so they’re kind of a paranormal entity as well. And so they capture a broad audience. Whether you’re interested in the paranormal, or bodily injuries, or violence, or minds of dangerous people, there’s something about zombies that can tap into each of those.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They tick every box.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: They tick every box. And that’s why they tend to be the most popular general audience type of horror. The Walking Dead had, at its height, something like 15 or 16 million viewers a season.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Colton, are there benefits of being scared? Not for the survival of a species, not in terms of evolutionary time, but just for the individual personally?

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah, maybe. It seems like there can be. Experiencing scary things in a safe or playful setting is a really good way to practice emotion regulation skills. I would say, that’s the primary benefit that you can get from it. And in fact, one lab in the Netherlands has developed a scary game, essentially, for kids with anxiety. The player wears an EEG headband that measures brainwaves associated with relaxation. And as the player moves through the game, if they get too afraid, the EEG headband will pick that up, and a pause screen will pop up, and remind them, like, hey, this is just a game. You can overcome this. Here are some tips.

And when the player begins to calm down, they get more powerful in the game, and they’re able to defeat the monsters more easily. So there’s some reinforcement there of, if you can face your fear and overcome it, you’ll be stronger in the end. And what they found in repeated studies is that playing this game, playing this scary game, is as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy for treating anxiety in kids, which is incredible, because cognitive behavioral therapy is the gold standard for treating anxiety.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is dark coping in action.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah, it kind of is dark coping in action. That’s right. Before I let you both go, any parting wisdom as we celebrate spooky season? I would say, just keep in mind that it’s OK to be morbidly curious. It’s OK to indulge during Halloween.

KEN CARTER: And for the low-sensation seekers out there, I’ll say it’s OK to be frightened of things. And for the high-sensation seekers, just try not to scare your friends too much.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you both for joining me today.

COLTAN SCRIVNER: Yeah, thanks.

KEN CARTER: Thanks for having us,

FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Ken Carter, psychology professor at Emory University and author of the book, Buzz, Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils and Adrenaline Junkies, and Dr. Coltan Scrivner, behavioral scientist at Arizona State University and author of the new book, Morbidly Curious, A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away.

Before we get going, do you crush at trivia? Do you hoard nerdy facts? Do you like free swag? Listen up because we are concocting a science trivia game. And we need a listener, maybe you, to play with us on air. So if you want to play, please call us at 877-4SCIFRI, 877-4SCIFRI, and tell us your best, nerdiest fun fact, and you might just get a chance to play. Today’s episode was produced by Shoshannah Buxbaum. I’m Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.

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