The Psychology of Morbid Curiosity: Development and Initial Validation of the Morbid Curiosity Scale
Coltan Scrivner
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 (n_total = 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 (r2 = .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.