The Science of Morbid Curiosity w/ Dr. Coltan Scrivner

This week Scott is joined by true crime and morbid curiosity psychologist, Dr. Coltan Scrivner. Scott and Dr. Scrivner discuss how to determine your level of interest in morbid curiosity, why some people have a higher level of tolerance (and even attraction) to scary things, and how to spot a “bleeding-heart" horror fan. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is it possible that one of the reasons why certain
women are attracted to bad boys is because they score
high themselves in morbid curiosity?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I would say that that's never going to be the
sole factor, but probably in every case that is a
factor of why.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Wow. Today we have doctor Colton Scrivener on the show.
Doctor Scrivener is a leading expert on the science of horror,
true crime, and morbid curiosity. Boy, was this a fun chat.
I must admit I score pretty high in all forms

(00:39):
of curiosity, including morbid curiosity, so I had so many
questions for him about his groundbreaking research. Doctor Scrivener defines
morbid curiosity as an interest in or curiosity about unpleasant things,
especially death. In this episode, we take a deep dive
into the various studies that have been conducted on this
topic so far. Did you know that the average person

(01:01):
possesses at least some degree of morbid curiosity? However, some
people are much more interested in horror movies, horror stories,
and true crime documentaries. What are these people like? The
results may surprise you. As doctor Scrivener puts it. In
the title of one of his papers, there exists quote
bleeding Heart horror fans, maybe you will identify as one

(01:26):
regardless of whether you score high in morbid curiosity. I
think you'll find this episode fascinating as I did, so
let's get into it. I bring you doctor Colton Scrivener.
Colton Scrivener, so nice to have you on the Psychology Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, but when you talk to you for a while
about your very unique and groundbreaking research within the field
of psychology, I want to start off just by asking
if you could just introduce yourself to my audience a
little bit in your own path research path, and you know,
when you was what were you interested in? What was
your own curiosity as a child? Like start there and

(02:05):
then just like path, tell me everything.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, yeah, I think one of the most common questions
I get is, you know, are you a horror fan
or have you liked horror since you were a kid,
because the topics I study, right, I was. I didn't
dream of growing up to be a psychologist who studies
horror by any stretch of the imagination. But I did
like scary things as a kid, and I enjoyed playing

(02:28):
scary games and watching scary movies. I never really put
much thought into it. I think a lot of people don't.
And when I got to college, I have a very
sort of interdisciplinary background. So I studied biology and cultural
anthropology in college, and I was very interested in stress

(02:48):
and why and how people got stressed out. Robert Sapolski
was a huge influence on me as a as an undergraduate,
and I was, you know, really I loved his sort
of unique approach to studying stress. And then I went
on and I did a master's in forensic science, and
then my PhD is in behavior biology, and so I

(03:10):
kind of span the spectrum from sort of cultural anthropology
through psychology and sort of more biology or evolution approaches
to human behavior. And in graduate school, I you know,
I was interested in a lot of things. I was
still interested in stress. In fact, I was in a
hormone lab that mostly studied stress and in humans, and

(03:34):
I got interested in why people are interested in watching
or being a part of violent events, of events that
are stressful for most people, so things like UFC or
boxing or you know, why did the Romans build the
Colisseum and why was that successful? Because everywhere I looked,
I kept seeing examples of violent entertainment popping up across

(03:55):
cultures across history, and so I was really intrigued by
this because usually we would say that violence is a
moral and it should never happen except for in very
special cases, in which case it's entertainment. And so I
started looking into that, and then I had a side
interest in why people were scaring themselves for fun for

(04:16):
some of the same reasons. And over time those kind
of just morphed into this conglomerate of why people enjoy
things that are sometimes dangerous or threatening or scary.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Well, what do you think genetically within you predicted could
have predicted this? Are you high in sensation seeking and
we're going to get to all your correlates something. What
do you think I'm starting with you personally?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, sure, yeah, I'm actually not that high in sensation seeking.
I've spent a long time since I've taken one of
the sensation seeking scales, but I score above average, but nothing,
nothing too far in the right tail. But what's interesting
is actually a lot of morbidly curious people don't score
incredibly high in sensation seeking. They do tend to be
kind of in that average to above slightly above average range.

(05:03):
But yeah, what what would have predicted that? I think?
I mean, I have pretty I'm pretty high in openness
and curiosity, and you know, so things that are frightening
or maybe a bit taboo also interest me. And then that,
combined with a little bit of sensation seeking, I think

(05:23):
probably is a good recipe for someone to do what
I do.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Very cool. Well, let's start with one of the landmark papers.
Let's start with the landmark paper, not one of the
Let's start with the landmark nineteen eighty six. Zuckerman and
a little Marvin Zuckerman, who is a legend in the
field of psychology and the study of sensation seeking. And
no offense, I don't know, Patrick Little is sorry from

(05:51):
maybe he's grand students. No offense, Patrick Little.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
If you call out their paper with Zuckerman, I mean,
you're going to be the second bench.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
And you know, you know what I'm saying. You know,
I like Patrick. I don't know. But anyway, nineteen eighty six,
all due respect to Patrick Carle, they wrote this paper
Personality and Curiosity about Morbid and Sexual Events. That was
one paper, and they in the same year they wrote
a paper called Curiosity about Morbid Events uh, the CAAM
scale Enjoyment and Watching Violence and Death. These are two

(06:21):
papers that came out in the same year. So they
created the scale and then they also focusing on violence,
and then they I think the other paper must have
come later. I'm just saying I think it, yeah, even
though it was published in the same year. I assume
the way they conducted the research, they created the scale,
then they branched out to the sexual demand to look
at correlations between interest in violence and interest in poor

(06:43):
and pornography. So let's start off with the seminal paper
and six that created the scale. Tell me about the
game scale.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
That was obviously the first thing that I came across
when I started looking into this, right I you know,
kind of as you do as a scientist, you get
this idea and you get really interested in it, and
you're the first thing you have to do is go, Okay, wait,
has anyone else had this idea? And if they have,
have they published on it? Right in my case, there
wasn't much research on morbid curiosity. There was this sort

(07:11):
of you know, like you said, ground like groundbreaking or
pioneering paper on it, and I obviously devoured the paper
because I was very interested in what they came up with,
and it's a great paper. It unfortunately hasn't been the
scale hasn't been used that much since then. So you know,

(07:31):
when you create you know this very well. You know,
when you create a scientific scale, you kind of do
a lot of validation studies and you run it on
different populations if you can use it to test different
questions that are sort of adjacent to that. And for
some reason, you know, people didn't really pick up the
scale afterwards, and so I, you know, I was going

(07:51):
to use it, but as I started looking into it,
it seemed a bit narrow to me, like it only
tapped into maybe one side of the dangerous things that
people are curious about. So this one focused especially you know,
the violence side of it focused on violence, right, and
it was really about and with scales, it really matters
how you word things too. You know, there's a difference

(08:11):
in saying I am interested in violence and I am
interested in watching violence. Those are maybe different things, right,
and they're going to predict different things. You know, how
you respond to that might predict different things. And so
you know, I thought, you know the fact that that
nobody had really picked up this scale and done a
bunch of studies with it, and that I had my
own sort of maybe issues with conceptually what it was

(08:33):
tapping into. I decided to go ahead and make my
own scale because it was, you know, at the time,
it was forty years old as well, and so research
has advanced quite a bit since then, and so I
just seemed like it was time to maybe do a
new scale for morbid curiosity.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
I definitely want to get to the all the new stuff,
and we're going to that's going to be the main
focus of the rest of the interview. But I'm stuck
in this nineteen eighty six peop because I actually really
like it.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, yeah, tell me about what do you about it?

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well? I liked it because they link it to increase
in peripheral catechola.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Means in this second paper, is that the second Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
I actually like the second paper better than the first paper.
I found the first paper a little boring, to be honest,
but I really like the second paper. It's very very
interesting to me, this positive correlation between interest in in
violence interest in like pornography, for instance, because nowadays there's
a huge proliferation in violent pornography. So the combination of

(09:32):
the two, right, and that's very controversial, that's very contro
right like, but but at the same time it's getting
millions and millions of views, these thing So we're not
talking about like we allowed, we allowed to be honest
about that. There is a seems to be a desire
for it, that's that's very very large in the population

(09:53):
for consuming you know, fantasy about it. And then and
obviously at the same time, we want to really condemn
it in reality, you know, if it's non consensual, right, Okay,
So how do we hold both of these things at
the same time. As a segue into your work, which
the spirit of your work really right there, you say

(10:14):
in the beginning of your whole paper, your your seminal,
your seminal two thousand and one paper, your seminal two
thousand and one paper, you open up and say, we're
we're morbidly curious as a species. Yeah, So do you
see how I'm winking these things together? Like, let's let's
be let's let's have a really open, honest conversation about
like the appeal of a lot of these things. Yeah,

(10:34):
and then talk about the morality of it later. Let's
first talk about the human nature.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's something that gets missed. And
you know this too and psych research in general, because
we're talking about people, we want to go straight to
morality first and like should we study this or not studied?
And I think I'm personally the opinion that we should
know what we're dealing with first and then we can
decide what we want to do with it. But I
think it's important to know, you know, what's influencing our
behavior and what's influencing our decisions, and then we can

(11:02):
decide if we want to you know, allow that or
change that or modified in some way.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Correct, And I definitely do want to have the morality discussion,
but let's let's review all the facts first. Yeah. So yeah,
So walk me through this two thousand and one paper,
which just seems like a really nice sequel to the
original eighty six studies and in huge extension, you know,
because you know, they really were groundbreaking correlating things that
a lot of researchers have never correlated with each other

(11:28):
and then linking it to a specific biological system. Yeah,
that's what I really like about that second paper. So
now enter Coulton, doctor Colton Scribner tell me about your
two thousand and one paper, and why how you your methodology?

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, sure, so's tales and twenty one, not twalsan and one.
I would have been I would have been pretty young
in two thousand and one. One.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, it's okay, of course, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
A much more impressive if I did that in two
thousand and one.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
But yeah, well yeah, no, you absolutely twenty twenty one.
It's important to note this you did it during the
COVID era. Yeah, and you had some really cool studies
around the same time linking it to COVID related things.
You have two papers in particular, and so we'll get
into that. Yeah, okay, go go.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, so through this twenty twenty one paper. Yeah, you
know in twenty twenty. I did a lot of the
studies for this twenty twenty one paper between twenty twenty
and twenty twenty one, so, as you know, right during
COVID it was basically I, like I mentioned, I had
some issues conceptually with the idea that morbid curiosity was
only about liking violence. That seemed a little too narrow

(12:31):
to me. And so you know, the first thing I
did is I put together a bunch of essentially statements
about that that I thought tapped into seemed like more
bid curiosity and interest in threats that seemed much more
tangible to me. Right, there's you know, humans have this
not just a negativity bias where things that are negative
or bad tend to, you know, come to the four

(12:52):
for us and gather our attention more strongly. But things
in particular that are threatening tend to do that even
more so than things that are just broadly negative. And
so to me it seemed like morbid curiosity might be
rooted in that it's really about things that are threatening
and paying attention to those and learning about those things.
And so that's kind of how I started off conceptually

(13:13):
with the with the topic. And then I thought, okay,
what are some things that are conceptually threatening to humans?

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Right?

Speaker 2 (13:18):
And violence certainly is one of those, but so are
understanding the intentions of dangerous people, not just the act
of violence, but actually the intentions of the people who
are doing it. And another thing are injuries, whether that's
an accident or it's caused by something external. That knowing
how to deal with injuries is certainly one And even
though it sounds weird, the paranormal Obviously I couldn't leave

(13:39):
out because for everyone who you know wouldever say that
they're morbidly curious, most of them are going to say
they love a good ghost story, right, And so there's
something about that that seemed like it was tapping into
more be curiosity as well. And so I put together
this long list of items. Did you know, factor analysis
rand them on a bunch of people. Did factor analysis
kind of saw how these items clustered together and how

(13:59):
they related to one another. And what I found was
that there seemed to be, at least with the items
that I had, four sort of clustering or four groups
of things that loaded onto this one factor. And those
four clusterings were an interest in violence, an interest in
the minds of dangerous people, an interest in supernatural or

(14:19):
paranormal phenomenon, and an interest in bodily injuries or body violations,
and all of those things kind of mapped onto this
one trait, which I called more curiosity. The next thing
you do after that is you run a validation. You
confirm the factor analysis that those are the groups. And

(14:39):
so I did that, and then I ran a bunch
of studies showing how these traits linked to other personality traits,
how they linked to behaviors, how they linked to different interests,
And that's kind of what I've been doing the past
couple of years.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
That's wonderful. I want to walk our listeners through the
finer details of your findings. So first with the factor
analysis and the different the four factors you found. Let's
make this concrete. So I'm gonna give an example item
from each of the four types for four factors. So
this first one is an example of violence. If I

(15:14):
lived in medieval Europe, I would be interested in attending
a public execution. Okay, here's an example of body violation.
If a head transplant was possible, I would want to
watch the procedure. The third factor, motives of dangerous people.
Here's an example. I am curious about crime and enjoy
reading detailed news accounts about murders and other violent crimes.

(15:38):
And then paranormal danger. Here's an example from paranormal danger.
I think the supernatural is an interesting topic. Okay, here's
something I find really that is interesting. It struck me
about the body of violation when I had a bit
of an aha moment. You know, I've gone really being
a morbidly curious human such as myself. I've studied a

(16:01):
lot of these serial killers and their early childhood development,
trying to look for the signs that to try to
understand it. And the thing, the only thing that stands
out about Jeffrey Dahmer and his early childhood, the only
thing is his intense curiosity of the human anatomy and

(16:22):
what people would look like on the inside. That's it. Yeah,
Its most animals.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, yeah. And he even said I think during his
confession that it was one of the bodies that he
buried under I think it was a family member's house.
I can't remember the exact details, maybe you know, but anyways,
he buried this individual under the house, and when he
was asked about it, he went back and actually checked
on the body after he had buried it, and he

(16:49):
was asked, you know, why did you do that? And
he said, morbid curiosity, And he kind of used the phrase,
you know, in a non academic sense, but in a
colloquial sort of understanding of I went back because I
was more curious, and I think, you know, at another
point he said, uh, something I'm paraphrasing, but you know,
all these people watch these horror movies. The only and
I you know, the difference with me is I do

(17:10):
it in real life.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
That was gonna that's what I was gonna say. I
didn't know he had that quote. I didn't know he
had that quote. I thought I was I had a
great insight, but he just admitted it.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's right, And that's that
is a key difference though between I think, you know,
this normal typical morbid curiosity and you know morbid curiosity
when it's fueled by psychopathy and the lack of empathy
and all those other traits that that form that.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Right, I think that's a greater nuance actually than his quote.
It's not like just the only difference. It's like it's
like people.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Like I just do it in real life. Yeah, I
just it's not.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
He's he's still not getting it, you know what? Do
you know what I mean? I do saying that just
shows what severe lack of empathy he has. But he
doesn't get it because he doesn't know what it's like
to have the chip that most humans have, you know.
So you know, so I know that I could nerd
out with you on this at a very very deep level.

(18:11):
So let's just jump let's just jump it to the
deep end. Sure. Yeah, so, yes, a lot of people
do have a murder caiossity. There are individual differences. You
have found that these four factors are correlated with each other,
with the average inner correlation about point three eight or so,
so it's moderate. But these can break apart in various ways.

(18:34):
You know, It's possible Jeffrey Dahmer was maybe not as
high in some others, you know, supernatural. I don't know,
as maybe he's he really stood out on the second
one or maybe the first one as well, the violence.
But but if you look at the correlations of this
trait that that do vary in the general population. One
thing I want to point out is that the research

(18:56):
that has replicated on this has shown quite clearly that
there is really no correlation between this scale and empathy
and compassion. Yeah, one one way or the other. Now,
that would be truly fascinating if there was a positive correlation.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
There is in some cases actually with scales of empathy. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, yeah, we can talk about empathy if you want,
or we can keep on this whateverhere. Do you want
to take this?

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Well, because of the jeffre Dahmer thing and why I
don't think he got it. I don't think he got it.
I would like to double click on that. Yes, I
would double empathy confessionally, because I do think that most people.
I think it's really important to distinguish an interest in
morbid morbid curiosity from serial killers. Yeah, I want to really,

(19:41):
you know, particularly someone who me who scores very high
in more and compassion.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Right right, you know, I want to one path, you're
a dark impath. We'll talk about that later.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
I'm sure I don't know if I don't know if
I would identify as a dark end maybe because dark
end pass that's corel with the dark try and the
dark t Yeah. Yeah, And I don't really think I
score high in the dark triad. I think I just
scorre high in morbid curiosity. I think I scre hiding
morbid curiosity and the light triad.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
That would actually be a bit unusual. We should talk
about We'll talk about that. I'm sure that I would
love to chat about that. Yeah, okay, So so empathy
and compassion that some of the more recent studies I've
done have been on that, because you know, in the
eighties there was kind of this a bit of a
panic about horror movies because horror movies were now being

(20:31):
put on vhs and coming into the home, and there
was this huge panic about, like, we're having all of
these awful, violent movies in the home. And of course,
scientists tend to reflect some of those concerns that people have,
and so there were studies in the eighties about empathy
and horror movies, and you know, if you want, you
we can talk about those afterwards and some issues I
have with them. But basically, there hadn't been many studies

(20:52):
on or any really on morbid curiosity and empathy or compassion.
And so one of the recent studies I did looked
at whether or not people who are morbidly curious, who
are horror fans, do they have lower higher levels of
cognitive empathy or affective empathy, so the ability to kind
of take someone's perspective or the ability to sort of

(21:13):
feel what other people feel, and do they have higher
lower levels of compassion? And for the compassion measure I used.
Are you're familiar with the the PPI, right, the Psychopathic
Personality Inventory? I think it's Lillienfeld's.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yes, yes, although I would have some qualms that some
of those facets really are indicators of psychopathy, such as rebelliousness.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, yeah, so rebelliousness. Yeah, I kind of agree with you,
but he has he has a measure on their one
of the facet. I only used one facet. I just
used the cold heartedness facet.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Oh got it. Well that's a good one. Get that one.
I like, yeah, that one related to psychopathy.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Exactly, And that one really taps into like, you know,
you're if you if you're high in cold heartedness to
just not care about other people or you just have
no care for them.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
You found a small negative correlation between morbid curiosity.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Correct. Yeah, so that's what I was saying. There's actually,
you know it's there's there for compassion and for cognitive empathy.
Actually there's a slight positive correlation. I think for some
of the facets. I can't remember exactly which ones. I
think it was a perspective taking and online simulation or
something like that. There was a small, small positive It
would need to be replicated to see if it was
truly interesting. But yeah, basically, across the board, no matter

(22:30):
how I looked at it, whether I asked people you know,
rate yourself how much of a horror fan are you?
Or if I ask them how many of these top
fifty horror movies have you seen? And I counted them up?
Or you know, No matter how I measured it, I
kept finding that there was basically no correlation between empathy
and compassion and being morbidly curious of being a horror fan.
And if there was a correlation it was small and
positive with higher levels of empathy or compassion.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
So given that finding, why when I said I I
score high in light try it as well? Is more
big curiosity be like, oh, well that would kind of
go against the grain, as opposed to based on what
you just said, it would be like, oh that makes
sense considering it's a neutral sort of relation direct. I'm
curious why you made that comment when I said what.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
I said, because and all the other studies I've done
as well, morbidly curious people are score a little bit
higher in the dark triad. In machicanism, no in all
three usually is if you get a big enough sample,
some of them go away. I think I think like
narcissism kind of dwindles down to be mostly non significant.
It's like very small if it's positive, and I think

(23:32):
psychopathy and machi vellianism though stay positive, and all the
ones I've done. What's interesting is that, for example, when
I've used the PPI it measures, I can't recall all
the facets, but it's got six or seven different factors
associated with it, and morbidly curious people score higher, and
all of those facets accept cold heartedness, so they score
high and all these other things about related to psychopathy,

(23:56):
but with cold heartedness they actually score lower and consistently low.
Or it's not high. It's a small correlation, but it
is a consistent negative correlation with cold heartedness. That's actually
what got me into the empathy research in the first places.
I was really intrigued by this finding that you know,
these people are essentially dark triad somewhat dark triad people,
but they score low, really low, lower than average on

(24:18):
this one trait that people tend to associate with psychopathists,
cold heart indust trait.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
What do you think is going on there?

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Man? I wish I knew, because that's fascinating, right, I mean.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
That's I am so fascinated by that finding right now.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
And I thought, I go back to that paper at
least so after I published that's in that twenty twenty
one paper. That first time I found that, I went
back to that paper at least four times and reran
the data because I was like, I know that I
just I reverse coded something and did it wrong. Like
I went back and just neurotically checked it. And I'm
a very non neurotic person, very low in neuroticism, and

(24:53):
that was the one thing that just like plagued me.
I would go back and check it because it didn't
make any sense. You know, maybe we can we can
chat about this towards the end. I actually think we
have psychopathy. I think subclinical psychopathy is pretty misunderstood. Uh
and it does not track straight into clinical psychopathy like
we conceptualize it.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
But I bet we can figure this puzzle out together. Yeah,
I feel I feel like you bring both of our
minds together and our background.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
I know, and I'm telling you. I I just that
that finding like both intrigued me and haunted me because
I was like, there's no way this is right.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
So if it turns out that at the at the
highest level of the hierarchy, well the highest level, you
can have a general factor, but right under that if
you have a two factor model of the of the scale,
it says the cold hardness subscill typically does not hold
onto either factor.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Oh of the PPI. Yeah it yes, yeah, So there
are a lot of issues with the PPI where like
researchers when they use the PPI to study psychopathy, they
will just drop the cold hardness, which is kind of
a problem because to me, that actually taps into psychopic
clinical psychopathy.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
That's exactly why I think the mystery of this puzzle
is connected that that fact that that cold hardness is
kind of an odd man out on these other factors.
So one factor is fearless dominance, self centered in pulsivity.
M hm, oh, those are the two factors. Fearless, yeah,
and self centered inpulsivity. It's the I agree with you

(26:27):
that it feels like cold hardness is really is really psychopathy.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Well's certainly anti social personality disorder, right, and that's kind
of the defining feature of you know, there's not really
like a you don't get diagnosed as a psychopath, get
diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, and cold hardedness is kind
of the the core of that. To my knowledge. No,
I'm not a clinical psychologist. But my understanding is that's
kind of the core of it. But you know that
would mean to me again that that subclinical psychopathy. Right,

(26:55):
So there's there's clinical which you know, you get that
you get, which is a bit different. But clinical psychopathy,
I think is a bit misunderstood, and I think people
use it as kind of a proxy for clinical psychology
clinical psychopathy, when it might in fact be something a
bit different. The origins of subclinical psychopathy, I think are
probably different, The biological substrates are probably different than clinical

(27:18):
psychopathy for that reason, right.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
I mean, this is you're really hitting on something that
I think is important, and you know, we're still trying
to make sense of what it means. But let's talk
about this study that that is very recent called Bleeding
Heart Horror fans enjoyment of horror media is not related
to lower empathy or compassion. So they found enjoyment of

(27:41):
horror movies was unrelated to affective empathy, which we call Yeah,
I mean, just that's what most people think of when
they think empathy, right, they think that you feel the
emotions of other, yes, negatively associated with codeheartedness. There it
is again, There it is again, replicated and positively associated
with cognitive empathy.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Right, So like perspective taking or which which kind of
makes sense for a horror fan. Right, if you're you know,
if you are watching a scary movie, what makes that
movie scary?

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Right?

Speaker 2 (28:13):
The thing that makes it scary is that you are
taking the perspective of the protagonist and imagining yourself and
their shoes and being afraid sort of their shoes. So
if you can't take their perspective or you're not good
at it, you're not going to enjoy scary movies or
other kinds of scary play, right, because you can't actually
take the perspective in order to enjoy it. So that
that finding actually makes sense to me that you would
be a bit higher in perspective taking.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Do you know if serial killers enjoy watching horror movies?

Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's a good question. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
I do monsters, And do real life monsters enjoy watching.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Horror monsters enjoy monsters? Yeah? Yeah, So dah Dahmer had
a weird obsession with a very obscure horror movie, so
the Exorcist three, which was not that's what you remember.
He would like make his victims watch it, and he
loved it and will watch it over and over again.
But that was more of like a specific obsession. Man,
Like he didn't have you know, Halloween posters up on

(29:05):
his wall. He just was like really obsessed with this
one movie.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
He did that to get in character, he said, yeah, yeah, ye,
he had to do that to get into an altered
state of consciousness in order to do what he had
to do, or else he would have guilt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, he had a lot of other things going on
than just his morbid curiosity. He had a lot more.
He had a lot more going on than just that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, I think we really need to make that point
very clear in this episode today. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
I mean that's how right now, Like I'm working on
a book and the last chapter just starts with that
story and just tries to use that to like flip
the script a little bit.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
So there's this this picture that we're painting here that
that people can score high in morbid curiosity and it
it just seems to be related more to behavioral activation.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Well, well here's this was interesting. It seems like both
and behavioral avoidance. Like I think neurotic people neuroticism, you know,
neuroticism is going to predict the extent to which you're
morbidly curious so that you can try to learn about
the world and avoid danger and threats in the future.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, yeah, so I one of the findings that I
usually find it kind of depends on the sample, but
typically there is a small positive correlation between measures of
anxiety and measures of morbid curiosity. Neuroticism is a bit
more mixed, because neuroticism, I think, is a little it's
a little bit broader and like conceptually and what it captures.

(30:38):
But anxiety does so trade anxiety and state anxiety both
to some extent track with morbid curiosity. It's small, it's small,
but it's positive and consistent. I find it over and
over again, and you find it in related studies, you know,
like things about adjacent topics that sort of are corroborating
evidence for that for the same reasons. You say, Right,
if you're anxious, what are you, Well, you're more vigilant

(30:59):
towards threat in your environment. If you're morbidly curious, what
are you, Well, you're kind of interested in learning about
threats in your environment. Right, So those two kind of
promote each other. Which comes up which which creates this
really funny situation where you have you know, a lot
of people have a perception of let's say, like a
horror fan or a morbidly curious person, of being this
like sort of psychopath who's not afraid of anything, And

(31:20):
in reality, a lot of morbidly curious people are a
bit anxious and nots not psychopathic at least, not cold hearted,
not low in empathy. Right, so that you get these
this weird situation where they really defy kind of the
stereotype that a lot of people have about morbidly curious people.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, have they conducted the study yet on the morbid
curiosity scale and interest in BDSM?

Speaker 2 (31:42):
No, But I imagine those would be positively correlated. I
would be shocked if they weren't. I would the same
for the same reason, right, for the same reason.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
That's right. Well, that's right, that's right. And and the
studies some interesting studies I've seen. And the reason why
I bring this up is because I've seen that a
lot of very high percentage of people interest in b
S m DE score high neuroticism m H.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
And that Yeah, I mean that's essentially what you're doing, right,
You're kind of role playing a dangerous situation and in
many cases, which is I mean, just nail on the
head exactly what morbid curiosity is for.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
So interesting, This is also interesting. I want to keep
going through these papers. There there's a really good body
of research on this topic. First of all, I want
to say congratulations to you, you know, really going into
this field, studying a topic that is not well studied,
and really charting a path on this which has now
produced a number of really high quality studies on it.

(32:41):
So really congratulations, thank you. Let's let's let's go through.
Let's talk about a really recent paper which is going
to relate to a sole episode I'm doing later on
New Nice Guys. Finished Last is an episode I'm recording
later for my podcast. But but this paper, I'm gonna
definitely talk about this paper, Behavioral attraction predicts morbidly curious

(33:03):
women's mating interest in men with dark personalities. I mean,
that's a that's a mouthful, that whole title. That was.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
A change in the revisions to make it clear what
the paper was about. It initially had a shorter title,
I think, but there was a change during the revisions
where we tried to make the title more specific to
the finding.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
I mean, couldn't you say why women like bad boys?
I mean, why do you have to be like beha attraction?

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah? Yeah, initially it was yeah, something more like that.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
I get it, I get it. But let's talk about
this study. So why is it possible that one of
the reasons why certain women are attracted to bad boys
is because they score high themselves in morbid curiosity?

Speaker 2 (33:47):
I would say that that's never going to be the
sole factor, but probably in every case that is a
factor of why Wow yeah ye yeah, same thing with
serial killers. Right? Are serial killers morbidly curious? Yeah? Probably
most of them or all of them would score above average.
But is that why they're a serial killer?

Speaker 1 (34:04):
You know?

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Now?

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Right? And we've been, we've been, we've we've been wanting
to make that point clear from the beginning, over and over.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, And I think I think it's actually
a bit you know, with with interest in the bad
boy interested in this case, it was like dark triad men, right.
I think that more bi curiosity probably plays a much
stronger role in that than it would be a serial killer. Right,
like the and as far as the behavioral the behavior
of it, right, the behavior of going out and short
term meeting with dark triad men probably more be curiosity.

(34:32):
You know, I would say influences that more than being
a serial killer, because there's just so many other factors
that are involved with, you know, pushing you over the
edge of killing someone versus pushing you over the edge
of going on a couple of dates with a guy
who seemed like a jerk.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Oh definitely. But but I'm double clicking on is the
attraction to them?

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, you know, let's let's.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Let's uh, let's put the serial killer stuff to the
side for a moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just focus on
the attraction to bad boys. You can be a bad
boy not be a serial killer. So yes, I'm talking
about just you know, just dark people who have manipulative
you know, men who are liars, cheats, their manipulative and narcissistic.

(35:13):
Why would that be attractive. So one of the reasons
this research shows is more big curiosity.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, which you know, especially in especially in modern sort
of dating situations, it's easier I think, to short term
date someone and then ghost them or not have them
be in your life in twenty twenty four than it
was in nineteen twenty four, Right, it's much easier to

(35:41):
to go in a few dates with someone and then
sort of remove them from your life more safely, which
means that what you're doing is you're lowering the cost
associated with interacting with someone like the dark Triad man
right now. You know, I think almost all of the
literature on dark tread and mating shows that dark Triad

(36:02):
men are a bit more desirable in general for short
term than they are for long term. Generally, women actually
do prefer a lot more yeah, within within dark triad
but then you know, within like who would you prefer
for a mate, it's a bit more mixed. Like women
tend to prefer non dark Triad men for long term mates,
which makes a lot of sense, and then for short
term it's a bit the findings that I've seen are

(36:24):
a bit more mixed, where like some prefer dark Triad man,
some prefer non dark Triad men. And the question is
why would you ever prefer a dark Triad man for
short term dating? And I think that's what we were
trying to answer with this, And I think one possibility,
especially in modern situations, is that it's really easy for
you to kind of learn about their deception and learn

(36:44):
about the tactics they use, and learn about the ways
that they might fool you in a long term relationship
from the short term relationship, and then you can have
this like behavioral sort of repertoire that you can look
out for when you're looking for a long term mate.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
So you say it again, why why would they? Why
would they ever? Why would anyone ever be interested in
meeting with the dark individual?

Speaker 2 (37:03):
So well, first, how about so there was I think
a nuance in this, in the finding from this paper
that maybe would help make sense of this too. There is. Yeah,
so there are two types of or sort of two
things that influence attraction. One of those is sort of
an effect. It's kind of like with empathy. There's an
effective attraction and there's a behavioral attraction. So what we

(37:27):
found in this paper was that women, morbidly curious women
or otherwise were not really more effectively attracted to dark
tried men. They didn't feel warm towards them, you know,
cozy towards them. But morbidly curious women were behaviorally attracted
to dark triedment. They were very interested in them, They
were interested in learning more about them, And how do
you learn more about someone well, you go on a
couple of dates with them, and you can learn about

(37:49):
someone pretty well. Right, And why would you want to
learn about a dark triad man. Well, one reason that
you might want to do that is that it will
help you spot them in the future, especially when you're
looking for long term mates, because the whole point of
a dark triad man's mating strategy is that they are
being deceptive. They're not going to let you know that
they're a dark triad man. So the only way that
you can find out sort of their tricks is to

(38:09):
actually play the game a little bit, right, to play
the game to to kind of go through the motions,
learn how they're being manipulative, and then you kind of
can look out for that, you can spot that. And
it doesn't mean that all of this is conscious, right,
doesn't mean that a woman is going into a short
term mating situation knowing that that's why she's doing this,
or even doing it intentionally for that reason. But I
do think that that's a motivating factor, even if it's

(38:31):
operating below the sort of conscious level of awareness.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
So where does lust fit in is that within the
god scientists are so nerdy behavioral. I mean, how unsexy
are those? Right? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Doctor idea?

Speaker 1 (38:46):
It's a hey, every attraction versus off active attraction? Where
does it? Where? Where is it where you're just getting
really turned on by someone? What is where? What bucket
does that belong in?

Speaker 2 (38:57):
You know, it's probably, it's probably it's it's got to
be some like combination of both, right, like you've got
to feel a little warm towards him. But also, I mean,
the behavioral attraction I think is probably closer to lust
than affective attractions.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
You guys didn't look at I mean, you didn't look
at the extent to which women are more sexually aroused
by dark triad men. Right, you don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
But has that paper? I feel like that's a paper that.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Surely has surely done that.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Surely surely that's that sounds like a study that's been done. Yeah, No,
we didn't look at that.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yes, yeah, if it's been done, it's done it.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, that's that, It's within his purview perfectly.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
I'm just curious, like, yeah, like what bucket that fits into? Well?

Speaker 2 (39:48):
I think you know, when you talk about arousal, you're
talking about too You know with uh, if you watch
a scary movie, your body gets aroused, right like you're
you're what you're experiencing something dangerous in a safe setting,
You're going to get aroused in a very sim way
as you would if you were experiencing in a dangerous setting.
The difference is you kind of have a cognitive toolkit
to tell you I can pull myself out of this
if I need to. I can get out of this

(40:08):
if I need to. I'm not in true danger. And
there could be something similar going on with the you know,
dating a dark triad man, especially again in twenty twenty fours. Yes,
are you at higher risk than if you weren't dating them?

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
You are. But is the risk tolerable for the amount
of information and the type of information you might learn? Maybe? Right,
especially if it's if it's influenced by both interest and
sort of this lust motivational sets right, If it's influenced
by both of those, it's going to push you towards
a behavioral committing the behavior as opposed to avoiding it.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah. Good point. You've really got me thinking about a
lot of things, like, for instance, what is lust anyway?
What is lust? You know there are studies showing that
if you walk on a really wobbly bridge and you
think you're going to die and your heart is racing, yeah,

(41:06):
if you see a female at the end of that bridge,
you'll attribute that heart racing to being attracted to the female.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, forget, like you rate her more attractive when you
walk on the bridge than if you met her in
them all.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
And that's a classic psychological study. So it makes me
wonder the extent to which sometimes some of these women
are confusing lust for being.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Like thrilled, I'm almost scared. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Actually
I hadn't made that connection, but that, you know, especially
with the bridge, that classic bridge study, I mean, that's
exactly what they were looking at.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Right, Yeah, I'm just like making connections between different areas
of research, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, Well, if you ever want to do a study
in a bar, let me know, that's the perfect one.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
I would love to do that study. But I think
we had to really be mindful of IRB and not
actually scaring people and you know all them.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah yeah, yeah, well that's you know a lot of
my research I do at haunted houses for that very reason, right,
I can't scare people to the extent that you can
out in.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Let's talk about that. Let's let's now talk about haunted houses,
because I I've been meaning to talk to you about
that as well. Sure, and I and I really, I
really think this this episode is going to be so
interesting to so many people. I think that we're just
having such an honest, exportive conversation about humans in a
way that I just think that so many people are
going to be so interested in this. So let's talk

(42:34):
about haunted houses. I watched a really interesting documentary the
other day about these extreme horror houses. It was the
first time that they came on my radar. I was
not aware they existed, and I was not aware there
were a large, large, large, large number of women who
are like sign me up. You know. I was struck

(42:54):
by the gender difference as well in this. In this, uh,
there's a really creepy guy, you know in this in
this uh Netflix documentary. I'm banking on the name of this.
It was supposedly the most well known extreme horror house
manor maybe that's exactly what it was. That's exactly what
it was. This really really creepy guy, you know, Like

(43:16):
I mean, I mean, oh my Gosh.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
He's also like a wedding singer. Did they show that
in the documentary? Oh my god, He's like he like
sings at weddings too, which just makes it even creepier
for some reason.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Gosh, the things he did to these people which they
consented to. Yeah, we're really extreme. Yeah, it was hard
for me a lot, even even me who I like
Carr movies. But but I guess this was because this
was real.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
This is real footage, and you can tell that he
derives pleasure out of doing that. He's you know, he's sadistic. Yeah,
he derives a lot of pleasure out of doing that,
which is which is different from just enjoying like jump
scaring your friends, right, Like if you I think this
guy seems like he like wants to torture people and
can't legally do it, so he does this.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
I think that's what it is. I think that's yeah.
But then there's the other side. Let's talk about the
other side. Sure, a lot of these individuals and there
were some men who went through it. It was so
like adrenaline, you know, yeah, and there was a feeling
for them. I think maybe not so different than people

(44:22):
who do extreme sports. Sure that they overcame something. There
was a sense of I got a sense that they
felt a sense of mastery. Oh yeah, go through going
through it. So is that another element we should bring
into this conversation.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, I mean I think that's the only reason anyone
goes to mccamie manner. I don't think they go there
for any other reason, right than that feeling.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
They're being tortured. Yeah, voluntarily consentually.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, yeah, with and I can't remember in mcamei manner,
I mean most of so there. I mean, there are
like haunted houses that you go to during Halloween, and
then there's like on the far right tail that these
extreme haunts. There was a famous one in LA I
think it was called Blackout. I don't know if it's
still around. And then there's like mccamie manor where they
you basically consent to them to do whatever they want.

(45:05):
Most of those have like a safe word or something
you can use to still get out of it. I
don't know if McCamey Manner does or not. I don't
know's I've seen that documentary.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
At least according to the documentary, he plays very fast
and loose with that he does yeah, he decides.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, exactly, and I really need to go.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
And that's the problem to me.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
No, no to me too, especially for like a scary
play situation. The whole point of the play is that
you can end it when you're done right. Otherwise that's
no longer play. That's something else.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
It's something else. I mean, that's like straight up psychopath
level shit there.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, yeah, he's It's been a year or two since
I've seen the documentary, but I remember even being shocked
at that. I was thinking, and I was shocked too
at the you know, there's a waiting list for people
to get into.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Time place, so relating to our prior topic, not only
a waiting list to get into it, he's got a
winning list of girl of women who want to be
his girlfriends.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
He does. Yeah, I know that.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Oh yes, I mean the documentary showed these beautiful young women,
beautiful young women just clamoring and fighting for his attention.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Huh. Maybe this is a different documentary than I've seen.
I don't remember that part.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I mean they really the documentary you saw didn't
showcase his exes.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
No, but there have been no, but there have been
a couple of documentaries about mechini manners, so I probably
watched an older one. But yeah, I guess I believe
it in a weird way, like I can kind of
see that, right, I mean, serial killers get the same thing,
even if they're not that attractive. I mean, like Ted
Bundy's kind of the classic charming, handsome serial killer. But
there are a lot of less attractive Like even Jeffrey Dahmer,
who was who was gay, would get women writing him
love letters in prison.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
What is going on? Why? And then you have all
these nice guys that feel like I haven't.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Even been to I'm not even a fell in, and
I can't get anyone. Yeah, I think, you know, as
confusing as the women writing, and in the case of
here killers is really as a subset of women as well.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
But that's good in the.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Case of I think at the same time that it's
really confusing and weird. It kind of makes sense from
this orbid curiosity framework, because what do you have if
you have a serial killer who's in prison for life,
let's say, or awaiting you know, execution, you have like
arguably one of the most dangerous individuals you could ever
personally meet, right, and you have them in a place

(47:27):
where they can never harm you. That's like a perfect
recipe for engaging in morbidly curious behavior, right, and in
the case I mean that again, wanting to like marry them,
That's maybe some other factors going into that, but I
think like wanting to learn about them, being behaviorally interested
in them, maybe writing them letters, getting to know them.
I mean, that is the that is the safest way
to learn to learn from the horse's mouth what it's

(47:50):
what a serial killer is like. Right, there's no film,
there's no middleman there, there's not a documentary crew. It's
just you writing the letter to the serial killer and
him writing back. And so I think you just have
this rare scenario where you have an incredibly dangerous individual
who you can interact with, who can't hurt you in
any kind of way.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
I think a lot of this, a lot of this
ties to Noel Carol's theories about the paradox of horror.
I'm sure that you have in your studies read his work.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Yeah, especially early in my studies. That it's you know,
early in grad school I was reading his stuff. What
are you thinking?

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Though? In grad school I would go to Paul Boom's
lab meetings and we would discuss why horror is so popular,
so big shout out to my one of my mentors,
Paul Boom, But it just seems related. It is like,
why are people so fascinated by horror? Well, the learning,

(48:48):
the learning that it can bring us, you know, and
being able to reduce fear and anxiety about the world
through knowledge and yeah, and making sense trying to make
sense of things that don't make sense about people.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, And I think you don't only learn about the
dangerous things, but you also learn about your own reactions
to those dangerous things, right, Like you're learning about if
I'm watching a scary movie, let's say your true crime
documentary or something, I'm learning about dangerous people, but I'm
also learning about my own sort of responses to that
and what it feels like to feel anxious and feel afraid.
And you know, for better or worse than our modern world,
most people don't have a Most people, like living in

(49:24):
the US, don't have a lot of daily situations where
they should feel incredibly anxious or incredibly afraid, right, And
so we're not very familiar with those feelings and we
kind of push them away, which is not always bad,
but it does mean that when they come up, they
inevitably come up, Right, We're not very good at dealing
with them because we haven't experienced them and played with

(49:44):
them and learned how to regulate those things. You have
to experience bad emotions to learn how to regulate bad
emotions or negative.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
That's a really great point. So another aspect of it
is is is to increase resiliency and I think so skills. Yeah,
and and that's consistent with this study why frightening imaginary worlds? Yeah,
morbid curiosity in the learning potential of horror. I mean,
that's a paper. That's a paper I would direct people to.
Maybe I can in the show notes add some of

(50:12):
these studies actually that might be really valuable to our listeners.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah, yeah, I think you know that. That was a
that was a commentary to a paper about why people
enjoy imaginary worlds in general? Right, great, really great paper,
fascinating paper about it was a BBS paper why do
people enjoy imaginary worlds? And they put together this whole
theoretical model about it. And you know, one of the
questions that I had when I read that paper was well,

(50:37):
why are there always Yes, I think it is about
openness and exploring new places. But why do these new
why do these new fictional places almost inevitably have a
bad guy? Almost always they have an evil, awful, terrible
person living there doing terrible things to the good people
who live there. And so that's what that commentary was about,
saying that, like, yes to all of this about why

(50:58):
we love imaginary world, but one missing piece might be
that we also love them because we can safely interact
and learn about, interact with and learn about villains, dangerous people,
people who are gonna cheat us or or harm us
or or otherwise bad for our existence.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Makes a lot of sense. It's funny your face was
frozen there for a second with this look of expression
with your eyes wide open.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Like why I like a fear face?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Right again again, I would to take a screen capture.
I think that'll be a good picture picture. Well, this
links The way mine mind works is my mind I'm
like an encyclopedia knowledge of the field of psychology. So
I just go back and you know, I mean, that's
part of my autism. But I'm able to always kind

(51:49):
of just think of how this relates that that that
that so at this also relates to our understanding. You
know Roy Baumeister's work on why is the bad so
much more attention robbing them the good? There's this particular
paper that ties it all together called Choosing the Negative,
a behavioral Demonstration of morbid curiosity. So they found that

(52:10):
social negative images were chosen more often than other negative categories.
People delibered, quote, people deliberately subject themselves to negative images.
And that's what you found in your twenty twenty one
study for study study four.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Yeah. Yeah, So that paper, that's a great paper, and
it was the first I would say that was the
first modern paper on morbid curiosity. Was that Choosing the
behavioral Choosing the Negative? That was probably the first. I
think it was like a twenty seventeen or eighteen paper.
So that paper used Are you familiar with eye apps?
The International Effective Picture System, I think is what that

(52:46):
stands for. It's a collection of images that have been
pre rated for valence and arousal and different emotions basically,
and so there's you know, ones that are negative or positive,
or high arousal low or else. Well in what that
paper and a lot of psychology studies use i apps.
I actually have a huge problem with IAPS. I think
it's I think it's like one of the most ecologically

(53:10):
invalid things you could use. But it does its job
in that it's a very standardized set of images that
you can use to reliably, you know, see differences between images.
To that paper, Yeah, use the i APPS image set
of prereated images for like social negative images or positive
social images or negative non social or positive non social

(53:31):
or neutral. Yeah. Basically found that people prefer when given
the choice to look at a negative image, and in
particular a negative social image, which makes a lot of
sense because we have sort of this negativity or threat bias,
and we also have a social bias where we pay
attention to social information. So if you get people just
the choice to look at these two images, they're going

(53:51):
to choose the one that's negative because it's potentially more
important information and the one that's social because it's potentially
more important information.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
But there's something really deep going on here about the
wiring of the human brain, which is suggested by this
twenty twenty study by Susanne ooster Wich.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
At All.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Finding that choosing intensely negative stimulating gages similar brain regions
as those that support extrinsic incentives and regular curiosity, such
as the astratum inferior frontal gyrus, anterior insulin, and anterior
sing with cortex. So could it be that we're like
wired as humans to find negative information more rewarding than

(54:37):
positive information. That's my question for you.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
I would say, yeah, rewarding, I mean rewarding from like
the from a from a like neurobiological perspective. Rewarding. Yeah, yeah,
I would say so. I would. I would say that Susanna,
she showed that in that in that paper. Yeah, but yeah,
I would say that that seems consistent with anything that
I've ever found or you know, my pay I mean,

(55:00):
that's I think that's the proximate explanation for why we
do it. So approximate explanation is that it's more rewarding
from a neurochemical.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Perspective than from an evolutionary psychology perspective, as these researchers
argue in the paper Interested in serial killers more bid
curiosity in college students. It's a lot about protective vigilance,
and that could be a big you could imagine on
the savannah, you know, if you have the one serial
killer in the tray and the kind of plan, you know,

(55:31):
like you want to find that one, you know what I'm.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Saying, Yeah, and I actually need to bring up to Savannah. Actually,
you know, a lot of my thinking in when I
when I as I was, as i've as I've done
my research over the years, a lot of my thinking
ties back to animals because I did behavioral biology degree
and my advisor was a we studied monkeys, right, So
I was kind of just always in this like, well,
what do other animals do? Mindset? So are other animals

(55:56):
morbidly curious? Was one of the questions that I asked
myself as I was doing this research. And I think
the answer is yes, they have fewer opportunities to exercise that,
but when given the opportunity, they do seem to be
morbidly curious. So like on the Savannah, for example, Thompson's
gazelle's will observe their natural predators as opposed to just

(56:17):
running from them.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
So, like if you've got or let's take like lines
and zebras for example, because you can probably find photos
of this online. If you have a group of zebras
who are grazing and a lion is often the distance
you might imagine like, oh, well, if a zebra sees
that lion, all the zebras are going to run away,
because why would they not. That's what zebras do when
they see a lion. But that's actually not what zebras
do when they see a line. It's not what a

(56:40):
gazelle does when they see a cheetah. What they do,
depending on how far away the predator is and how
big of a group they're in and some other factors,
is they actually observe the predator. It's called it's got
its own name, it's called predator inspection. And presumably they're
observing the predator because they're trying to learn about the predator.
What does it look like like, what is it? What

(57:00):
are its movements like? Does it look like it's hunting,
does it look like it's relaxing. They're vigilant towards the predator. Right.
I think humans do the same thing. The only differences
and it's a big difference. But the only difference is
we can create completely safe scenarios with stories where we
can engage in predator inspection, right, So that means that

(57:21):
we can exercise our morbid curiosity almost infinitely, whereas you know,
for a gazelle. The cheata has got to be, you know,
at least thirty yards away. It gets closer, it gets
a little too dangerous, it's got to run, you know.
They can't go back to the They can't go back
to gazelle town and tell stories about cheetahs. They have
to just observe firsthand what the cheetah looks like and

(57:42):
learn about it that way. Humans can create a million
different documentaries and books and movies and TV shows and
other kinds of stories about dangerous situations or dangerous and
predators or individuals and learn about them that way, and
not only that, but learn about them in situations that
have never exist or have an existed yet, but are
likely to exist. This is exactly why we like apocalyptic movies.

(58:04):
Right The apocalypse has not happened yet. Many small apocalypses
have happened around the world to different groups, but you know,
one big one hasn't happened. But what can we do. Well,
we can tell a story about what might happen, and
we can learn about that, and we can maybe learn
how to prevent that. We can learn how to take
steps to prevent that. We can learn about or imagine

(58:24):
ourselves in that situation and ask ourselves what would we
do in that situation?

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Right?

Speaker 2 (58:28):
That's like most of what more bi curiosity is is
what do they do? And what would we do?

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Yeah? Wow, this is all really coming together so nicely
and in a way where we're really starting to understand
the systems involved here and how being interested in and
fascinated by these things is really a separate system than

(58:55):
being the perpetrator correcting, correct, I mean, I think that's
a read actually running through this whole episode. Yeah, So
kind of just tying it all together, I think it's
a good kind of place to end for people, so
they can kind of see the arc of this episode
and how we synthesized a good number of studies. There's
more we could talk about, of course, like conspiracy theories
and COVID fascination. Look that I read all the studies,

(59:19):
you know, in preparation for this, and I'm I think
it's such a cool body of literature that really explains
a lot about humans.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yeah, yeah, and something that's been missing, right, something psychology
kind of just overlooked in some ways for so long.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Agreed, agreed, and and and it tells us a lot
about humans as well as certain humans, you know, and
and why certain humans are not fascinated by that. You know,
it's I would say, you know, because I love horror movies.
I would say on dating apps, it's hard for you
to find women who love horror movies and who are
also compassionate, loving women, which is my type as well,

(59:56):
you know, so being able to find that combinations like
a unicorn from So, if you're listening to this podcast
and you like horror movies and you're a good person,
hit me up on Instagram. But all, you know, all
joking aside. Colton is so so nice to have this
chat with you, and I'm glad I could try to
spotlight on your very seminal work in the field.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Yeah, thank you. It's been one of the more I mean,
I've done lots of podcasts. This has been probably one
of the most interesting conversations.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Wonderful, So glad to hear that. Definitely, I hope sure
it was nerdy. We're the most dirty.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Definitely the nerdiest