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1:47

How many of you have watched a horror movie

1:49

this month or decorated your lawn with

1:51

skeletons and zombies or

1:53

visited a haunted corn maze? October

1:55

may be the month that our fixation on

1:57

things ghoulish, grisly, and scary

2:00

But for many people, assassination

2:03

with the darker side of life isn't

2:05

limited to Halloween. Some of us

2:07

love being scared out of our wits all year

2:09

long. There are a dozen

2:11

Friday the 13th movies, the Scream

2:14

franchise released its sixth film this year,

2:17

and a list of the top 25 podcasts in the

2:19

US include shows called Crime,

2:21

Junkie, Morbid, and My

2:23

Favorite Murder. Clearly, there's a

2:25

big appetite out there for horror, true

2:27

crime, and other types of terrifying entertainment.

2:31

So why is that? Why do we love to scare

2:33

ourselves silly? Are there certain

2:35

personality traits that people who are drawn to

2:38

horror, true crime, and other scary genres

2:40

share? And are those people

2:42

onto something? Could watching horror movies be

2:44

good for our mental health? Can

2:46

scary entertainment improve our well-being

2:48

and leave us better equipped to handle real-life

2:51

challenges? Welcome to Speaking

2:53

of Psychology, the flagship podcast

2:56

at the American Psychological Association that

2:58

examines the links between psychological science

3:01

and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

3:04

My

3:06

guest today is Dr. Colton

3:08

Scrivner,

3:09

a behavioral scientist at the

3:11

Recreational Fear Lab at Urhus

3:13

University in Denmark and a research project

3:16

manager at Arizona State University.

3:19

He studies the psychological underpinnings

3:21

of our fascination with the darker side of life,

3:24

including horror, true crime, and

3:26

all types of scary play. He's

3:28

also interested in how morbid curiosity

3:31

relates to personality and mental health. Dr.

3:34

Scrivner has published research on morbid curiosity

3:36

and scary play in scientific journals,

3:39

including Psychological Science and Nature

3:41

Scientific Reports, and has been interviewed by

3:44

media outlets such as the New York Times,

3:46

The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and

3:48

NPR. He's working on a book about

3:50

the science morbid curiosity to be

3:52

published next year. Dr. Scrivner,

3:55

thank you for joining me today.

3:56

I can. Thank you for having me on.

3:58

So how do you define morbid curiosity? curiosity.

4:01

You've developed the scale to

4:05

like

4:34

the things we read on the news, or hear about

4:37

from others.

4:38

Have you found that most people are at least

4:41

a little morbidly curious? How wide

4:43

is the range?

4:45

Yeah, I think morbid curiosity

4:47

is sometimes talked about

4:49

as if it's this fringe

4:52

trait or fringe thing that only

4:54

some people have, but in all

4:56

the research I've done, if you

4:58

give people, for example, the morbid curiosity scale,

5:02

you find that morbid curiosity is pretty normally

5:04

distributed, meaning that most people have

5:06

a pretty moderate amount of morbid curiosity. Some

5:09

people have a lot and some people have a little bit. And

5:12

this has been true not just in the US, but in

5:14

other countries as well, including Canada,

5:17

Brazil, Denmark, and several other

5:19

countries that have

5:21

taken this test.

5:23

Let's talk about horror specifically.

5:27

For people who don't like watching horror movies,

5:29

and that does not include me, I like

5:31

a good scary man. It can

5:33

be hard to understand why so many other people

5:36

love them. What have you found in your research? Why

5:38

do people enjoy watching horror films?

5:42

So the traditional answer from psychology

5:44

about why people have enjoyed watching

5:46

horror films has been that

5:49

it's simply because they're adrenaline junkies. And

5:52

one of the first things I looked into is whether or

5:54

not this assumption was true because there

5:57

were kind of a few studies in the 1980s that looked at

5:59

this kind of when the slasher genre became

6:02

popular, people got interested in this question.

6:04

You know, the psychological tools that

6:06

were available, especially in personality science, weren't

6:09

as robust in the 80s and one is varied

6:11

and widely distributed in the 80s as they are

6:13

now. And

6:15

so what I found is that, yes, there are some people

6:18

who enjoy horror because they are

6:20

high in something called sensation seeking. You know,

6:22

they like the feelings of strong sensations. These

6:25

are the same kind of people that would go bungee jumping

6:27

or skydiving or any number

6:29

of things like that that kind of give you an adrenaline boost.

6:32

However, it seems

6:34

to be actually only a small portion of

6:36

the horror fan base. So

6:39

one of, for example, one of the studies we conducted at

6:42

Haunted Attraction during Halloween found

6:44

that even at this high intense

6:48

situation of scary play, like a haunted house, only

6:51

a small number of people are adrenaline junkies or

6:53

sensation seekers. And the remainder of them

6:56

actually are pretty afraid of horror

6:58

and actually feel genuinely scared when they

7:00

go through the haunted house. And so of course we asked, well,

7:02

why are they there if they're genuinely afraid

7:04

and don't necessarily love the adrenaline

7:07

rush for the adrenaline rush's

7:09

sake. And what we found were that

7:11

a lot of people feel as if they learned

7:13

something about themselves and sort of develop

7:16

as a person through these experiences. And

7:18

so you hear about this in

7:21

real tragedies, a lot of this kind of post-traumatic

7:23

growth or I'm glad I went through this

7:25

so that I, because I learned something and I grew as

7:28

a person and it seems like

7:31

different kinds of scary play such as even just

7:33

watching a horror movie or if you're a small child

7:35

like playing hide and seek or playing scary

7:37

imaginative games, these

7:40

can help you kind of feel out

7:42

the sort of limits of your fear and what you're able

7:44

to handle. And they kind of, in many cases,

7:47

can give you sort of self-confidence that you can overcome things

7:49

that it feels scary.

7:51

But is there a point where fear

7:53

is no longer healthy or do

7:55

most people who like to watch horror movies

7:57

know when it might be causing them more stress than it is?

7:59

enjoyment.

8:01

It's tricky, I think, to know. I mean,

8:03

that's probably true of most things in life,

8:05

right? Too much of a good thing is

8:08

always a bad thing, right? And certainly

8:10

the same is true of scary play or fear. I

8:13

do think people have a good intuition

8:16

about when enough

8:18

is enough, right? Like when they're too scared and they

8:20

no longer have a good grip on, like,

8:23

you know, that the best kind of scary play, you

8:25

have kind of one foot in reality and one foot

8:28

in this imaginary world where you're sort of letting

8:30

things scare you. And

8:32

when we go through experiences like haunted houses

8:35

or horror movies or we read

8:37

a scary book, we kind of toe that line,

8:39

right? And we're partly at the whims of the narrator

8:42

or of the creator of the game. And

8:44

when things get too scary and we get pushed too much

8:46

into that imaginary world, we perform

8:49

certain actions that help draw us back

8:51

in. So, for example, in some of

8:53

those studies I've done, we found that people

8:55

will actually suppress their fear if they get too scared.

8:58

So, they'll cover their eyes. They'll imagine that it's

9:00

not real. They'll sort of avert

9:03

their attention to something else or cover

9:05

their ears. They'll do things to kind of dull the sensations.

9:08

And if they're not scared enough, they'll do things to actually

9:10

heighten the sensations. They'll

9:12

immerse themselves a bit more. They'll, you

9:15

know, look at the scare actors in a haunted house or

9:17

they will let themselves scream when they're

9:19

feeling afraid. And so people do kind of regulate

9:21

their arousal and regulate their immersion to hit

9:23

this kind of sweet spot when

9:26

they're watching horror movies and going through haunted houses

9:28

and even listening to true crime podcasts.

9:31

So, are you a horror movie

9:33

fan yourself?

9:34

I am. I'm probably not as

9:37

big of a fanatic as people assume I am. I mean, I do

9:39

love horror movies. I would

9:41

consider myself definitely a horror

9:43

fan. But I kind

9:45

of fell into this line of research accidentally.

9:49

It wasn't that I was a horror fan and decided

9:51

I needed to study that. It was more just I

9:53

was a horror fan and I was interested in these

9:56

paradoxical things that humans do.

9:58

And one of those things is that I'm not a horror fan. that we scare ourselves

10:01

for fun.

10:01

Do you have a favorite horror movie yourself?

10:04

And are there horror movies that you would consider

10:06

more therapeutic than others?

10:09

Ooh, more therapeutic. I mean, to the

10:11

extent that a scary

10:13

story can help you sort of work through things

10:15

and conquer your fears, I think that depends on the

10:17

person. Because some people have

10:20

a higher threshold for fear, and some people have

10:22

a lower threshold for fear. So there probably isn't

10:24

a good sort of single movie

10:26

out there or a single game out there for that.

10:30

As far as my favorite, I mean, I really

10:34

love The Haunting of Hill

10:36

House, which is actually, I guess, a mini-series, not a

10:38

movie. But it's a really great example of sort

10:40

of long-form scary story

10:42

and long-form storytelling

10:44

and horror. The Autopsy of

10:47

Jane Doe, it's another really great one. After

10:50

I watched that, I realized that it incorporated

10:53

a lot of elements from my work on Morbid

10:55

Curiosity that kind

10:57

of had these different facets that I'd been studying

10:59

kind of all smashed into one movie.

11:03

Probably those two would be my favorite.

11:06

Well, let's talk about some other scary

11:08

genres like true crime podcasts or

11:11

TV shows, like you just mentioned. What

11:13

about these programs and podcasts

11:16

that are about serial killers? Do people enjoy

11:19

those for the same reasons? Or is there

11:21

something else going on psychologically?

11:24

I think that they can enjoy them for the same reasons.

11:28

True crime tends to be a little bit

11:30

less in your face with

11:32

the violence and gore and horror movies tend

11:34

to lean into that a little bit more. And

11:37

so horror movies lend themselves to adrenaline rushes

11:40

a bit more easily if that's what you're after. However,

11:43

a lot of people who watch

11:45

or read or listen to true crime also get

11:48

very scared from it, oftentimes after the fact when

11:50

they're at home alone later or when

11:53

they're thinking about it later. But I

11:55

think people do derive a lot of the same pleasures

11:58

out of it, that is this kind of... pleasure

12:00

of learning about something, right? I mean, learning

12:02

is intrinsically rewarding. I think there

12:05

are quite a few studies that have shown that across a

12:07

variety of different circumstances.

12:09

And I think learning about threats is especially

12:11

rewarding because, you know, your

12:14

brain sort of feels like it's getting a good deal because

12:16

you're safe, yet you're learning about something that typically

12:18

would be very costly to learn about. So if

12:21

you're listening to a true crime podcast

12:23

or watching a, you know, a docuseries about

12:25

a serial killer, your brain's

12:28

sort of cataloging all of these things about

12:31

what kind of clues did the police miss or what kind

12:33

of clues did their friends and family miss. And

12:35

you're sort of creating this rolodex of behaviors

12:37

and attitudes and traits

12:40

that serial killers might have. And

12:43

that can feel very rewarding.

12:45

Every day, we're in a silent battle with

12:47

our devices, devices that are slowing

12:50

and stealthily draining us. Our

12:52

biology is changing to meet the

12:54

demands of the information age. But

12:56

why? And what can we do about it?

12:59

If you're interested in finding the answers

13:02

to these questions and more, you

13:04

have to listen to the Body Electric podcast

13:07

on NPR. I

13:09

know that I, like many of us, spend

13:11

too much time on my phone or scrolling

13:13

on my tablet when I could be doing other

13:15

things that could make me healthy and happy.

13:18

Body Electric is an interactive six-part

13:21

series that investigates how

13:23

our relationship with technology is

13:25

affecting our health. From

13:28

nearsightedness to mass tychogenic

13:30

illnesses to type 2 diabetes

13:32

rates doubling in young people, Body

13:35

Electric is partnering with Columbia Medical

13:37

School to find out why and how

13:39

these changes are happening and what we

13:41

can do about them. Body

13:44

Electric offers tips for parents, debunks

13:46

popular myths, and provides solutions

13:49

you can take part in. With

13:51

the mounting pressures of today's society,

13:53

Body Electric strives to help lighten

13:55

your load mentally and physically.

13:58

Listen now to Body Electric. electric on 10

14:01

radio hour from NPR wherever

14:04

you get your podcasts. So

14:06

I want to talk for a little bit about your morbid curiosity

14:09

test which is available on the web for anybody

14:11

who wants to know where they fall on

14:13

the continuum. And just

14:16

to out myself here,

14:18

I came in at 3.96 out of a 5, which is a little bit higher

14:22

than the average, which I think is 3.41. I

14:26

found it interesting that you included so

14:28

many questions about things that are really gory

14:30

like whether you'd want to watch a head transplant

14:33

if such a thing were possible or attend

14:35

a public execution in the middle ages

14:37

or watch an autopsy. And

14:40

it seems to me that there's a really big difference between

14:42

seeing something gross in a movie

14:44

or a TV show and seeing it

14:46

in real life. Is there a strong

14:49

connection between the two, horror

14:51

and gore? Because I have to say, it seems

14:53

to me that it's pretty unhealthy

14:56

to want to watch these gory

14:58

things. So why do you link the two? Well,

15:01

I think he could say that about probably

15:03

a lot of different things that depending

15:06

on your motivations for watching it, right? So

15:08

if I, let's say I enjoy

15:10

boxing or MMA, millions

15:12

and millions of people enjoy that

15:14

and spend a lot of money doing it. Now,

15:17

if you're watching it because you enjoy watching people get

15:19

hurt, the intention there is

15:21

maybe what's unhealthy rather than

15:23

watching it for entertainment for other reasons. And

15:25

I think the same thing could be said of sort

15:28

of gory horror movies or

15:30

sort of more disgust based horror

15:33

movies. Some of the things I've

15:35

been looking into with perspective, like

15:37

why do people enjoy the

15:39

gory aspects or at least why are those interesting

15:42

to us, right? Why is that sometimes we find

15:44

things interesting, but we don't necessarily enjoy

15:46

them. And

15:48

I think with gore, what

15:50

it can be is that at

15:53

least when it comes to my morbid curiosity scale, it

15:55

seems to be that it's more about learning sort of the limitations

15:57

of the body and learning about the

16:01

consequences of interacting with something dangerous.

16:04

And so you can imagine that if you're watching a horror movie

16:06

and the protagonist comes across

16:10

a dead body, I mean the dead body has, you know, maybe

16:13

a small cut on his neck. That doesn't

16:15

give you a lot of information about the killer, right? It doesn't

16:18

instill a lot of fear in you because

16:20

anybody could cut another person's neck. It

16:22

doesn't require a lot of strength or stealth or anything

16:24

like that. But if the

16:27

protagonist is walking along and they come across a body

16:29

that's, you know, missing

16:31

both of its arms and has its

16:33

head smashed in, that then

16:36

causes you to imagine something much more ferocious

16:38

and terrifying and awful. And

16:40

so, again, according to some

16:42

of the studies that I've done and others have done, gruesome

16:48

injuries seem to index

16:51

formidability really well. And so if someone can cause

16:53

more damage to you, they're

16:55

typically more dangerous, larger, scarier, and

16:58

more of a threat. And so I think that horror

17:01

stories often use gore as a

17:04

kind of index of how terrifying and threatening

17:07

the monster actually is. And so it's kind of a foreshadowing

17:10

sometimes or a, if

17:12

you've already seen the monster, it might just be a clear

17:15

example of how dangerous the

17:17

thing you're dealing with is. And so in that way, I think it

17:19

actually ties into this idea that you're

17:21

interested in dangerous potential dangers

17:23

or threats, right? Because the gore indexes

17:26

how threatening or how dangerous the

17:29

monster might be.

17:30

So what does it mean if somebody scores a five

17:33

on your test? Is that a sign of possible

17:36

psychopathy?

17:38

No, I don't think so. You

17:41

know, it's not a, I should say, you

17:43

know, it's not a clinical test, right? It's not a, it's not meant

17:45

to diagnose you with anything. There

17:48

are plenty of people who score fives

17:51

that are perfectly healthy and there are plenty of people who score

17:53

ones who are probably not perfectly healthy. And

17:57

so I don't think that, at least in the studies

17:59

that I've done, morbid curiosity does not

18:01

seem to indicate

18:03

any kind of pathological

18:07

trait, right? Like just because you're high or low in

18:09

morbid curiosity does not seem to correlate strongly

18:11

with

18:12

any kind of pathological traits.

18:15

Then how do you suggest other researchers use

18:17

the scale if not for that?

18:19

Well, I think it can tell us a lot about why

18:21

humans do the weird things they do. I think morbid

18:23

curiosity probably explains a lot of our

18:25

entertainment choices. I think it

18:27

explains, potentially could

18:29

explain a lot of themes and things

18:31

like religion. You know, if you go through a lot of religions

18:34

and mythologies, there's a lot of violence and deaths

18:36

and scary things that go on. And

18:39

it's kind of a curious thing that

18:42

in stories where you would imagine people want to escape

18:45

reality and have this purely

18:48

pleasant experience. And

18:51

yet there are no stories that I can

18:53

think of, whether they're written or oral

18:55

or audio visual,

18:57

where

18:58

it's just a happy story, right? There's

19:01

always some kind of tragedy and often

19:03

some kind of threat that goes on, right? And

19:05

that kind of mirrors, I think, the human experience

19:07

that, you know, life is not this just pure,

19:10

easy, joyful thing. There

19:12

are things that we have to overcome. There are

19:14

challenges. There are threats.

19:17

And certainly that has been true historically,

19:19

more so than it even is

19:21

now. And so I think stories,

19:23

you know, do a good job of showing how

19:26

people can overcome these kinds of scary

19:28

things. And so the morbid curiosity scale is a great way to

19:30

capture people's kind of inherent

19:32

interest in that. And

19:34

because it seems to be a widely

19:36

distributed trait, I think that, you

19:39

know, there's a lot of

19:42

room to better understand what it could

19:44

lead to and what it's related to. What

19:47

other personality traits or potentially pathological

19:50

traits or potentially beneficial

19:52

traits or beneficial things that could be related

19:54

to.

19:56

Let's talk for a minute about kids

19:58

and fear. You've written... that

20:00

in general, it's good for kids

20:02

to experience scary play. Why

20:05

is that and what's the balance between things

20:07

that are healthy scary and things that are going

20:09

to give children nightmares for weeks or

20:12

months? Well,

20:15

you know,

20:17

one of the key hallmarks of juvenile

20:19

mammals broadly is play, right?

20:22

And in most cases,

20:24

juvenile mammals engage in different kinds

20:27

of rough and tumble or even what you might call

20:29

scary play. They chase each other and they hide from

20:31

each other. They explore new terrain

20:33

that they're unfamiliar with. They,

20:36

you know, lose their, they

20:38

engage in vestibular play where they sort of lose their

20:40

sense of direction

20:43

or they're going too fast and spinning and they can't

20:46

walk straight. For example, kids love to spin around and then

20:48

try to walk, right? Yeah. Why is that

20:50

fun? Well, it kind of throws you out of your element

20:52

and it teaches you how to quickly

20:54

regain composure in the face of something

20:57

that's uncertain, how to overcome

21:00

things that seem scary. So if you're out playing

21:02

and you're climbing a tree and it feels very scary,

21:05

but your friends, maybe you're egging you on to keep going higher,

21:08

or maybe you just want to go higher so you can

21:10

see what's up there. These kinds

21:12

of play teach

21:14

kids how to manage their

21:17

emotions because, you know, if you go through

21:19

your entire life, always

21:21

avoiding any kind of a negative emotion, you're

21:23

eventually going to have a negative

21:25

emotion occur, right? Like something

21:28

bad will eventually happen. And

21:30

if you're, if you've never experienced fear before

21:32

or anxiety before in a safe

21:35

setting,

21:37

you're going to feel really unprepared for it and you're

21:39

going to be really surprised and shocked to not know how to

21:41

handle those kinds of feelings. And so, you

21:43

know, these kind of scary play

21:45

or adventurous play or

21:47

risky or thrilling play, there's

21:50

quite a bit of evidence that it's good for kids and can teach

21:52

them emotion regulation,

21:54

self competence, and just

21:56

kind of help them grow as, you know, young learners

21:58

that the kids have. kids are.

22:01

Now there's a stereotype that horror

22:03

fans must be cold-hearted and lack

22:06

empathy, but you've done some research

22:08

that's contradicted that. Can you talk

22:10

about it? What did you find?

22:12

Yeah, this is another one of those things that

22:14

came out of a handful of studies in

22:16

the 1980s in psychology journals

22:19

showing that while horror fans are just

22:21

these adrenaline junkies with no empathy

22:23

and, you know,

22:25

being a horror fan myself and knowing lots of horror

22:28

fans and having gone to various conventions

22:30

and haunted houses and things, it

22:33

certainly didn't ring true with my intuition and

22:35

with my experience, right, which is not

22:37

a good place to build scientific data, but it is a good place

22:40

to build hypotheses. And

22:44

so I decided to look into this a

22:46

little more, and I've conducted some studies recently

22:48

looking at, like you mentioned, cold-heartedness,

22:50

which is kind of, you can think of it as the

22:54

opposite of compassion, right, just have no care

22:56

for another person's well-being. And

22:59

what I found is that people who are morbidly curious

23:02

and people who enjoy horror movies tend to

23:04

actually be lower in cold-heartedness than

23:06

those who don't enjoy them. So

23:08

that is, they have greater compassion.

23:12

And with respect to empathy, which is a slightly

23:14

different measure, but it's similar and complementary

23:17

in some ways, I just

23:19

have a paper right now that's soon

23:21

to be published in Journal of Media Psychology,

23:24

and it's kind of a multi-study paper

23:26

showing that horror fans actually don't have

23:28

any different levels of empathy, whether it's affective

23:30

or cognitive,

23:33

than anyone else who doesn't

23:35

enjoy horror. And so

23:37

part of the reason this might deviate from past

23:40

studies is

23:42

that in those studies in the 80s, they would often, you know,

23:44

the stimuli would be, for example, just

23:47

a murder scene from a horror movie. So you

23:49

just show someone a two to three minute

23:51

clip of the killer killing someone and ask

23:54

the participant how much they enjoyed it. Well,

23:57

if you take that as a measure of how much you enjoy horror movies, you

24:00

probably are going to find that people who are low in empathy

24:02

enjoy it more, right? It would be like if

24:04

I showed someone just a breakup scene

24:06

from a rom-com and I asked them, how much

24:09

did you enjoy this? And I take that answer

24:11

to be how much people enjoy rom-coms. It's probably

24:14

not going to tell me much about how much people enjoy rom-coms

24:16

or certainly it's not going to tell me much about the fans

24:19

of romantic comedies. But it might tell

24:21

me something about sadists, right? It's going to tell me something

24:23

about people who enjoy watching others in pain. And

24:26

so I think part of what happened was that the

24:28

stimuli were just a little bit – they weren't

24:31

operationalized very well, you know, because people

24:33

had this assumption that you must enjoy

24:35

horror movies for the violence specifically

24:38

and for the harm to others. And so they

24:40

took that. They took the stimuli that

24:42

matched that and it sort of confirmed

24:44

their own bias in some ways. But

24:47

it turns out, you know, if you show people full length movies

24:50

or if you take different measures like

24:52

how many horror movies they've seen, you

24:55

get different answers on whether or not they are

24:57

very empathetic.

24:59

Are there other personality traits

25:01

or characteristics that more – more

25:03

curious people tend to share like have

25:05

you looked at the big five, for example? Yeah,

25:08

it's actually not

25:10

that strongly correlated with the big five which is another

25:12

reason I think it's important measure to kind

25:14

of look at in the future because the big five does capture

25:17

a wide range of variants

25:19

and in a lot of different life circumstances

25:22

and other

25:24

individual differences. And

25:27

it varies a bit from population to population and different

25:29

ages. It varies a bit. But in general,

25:33

it's somewhat associated with higher openness

25:35

from time to time. So for example, people who enjoy horror

25:37

movies tend to be a little bit higher in openness, sometimes

25:40

also higher in neuroticism. So

25:43

they're a bit more anxious, maybe experience negative

25:45

feelings a bit more. One

25:49

of the traits that is

25:51

commonly associated with is rebelliousness

25:53

which is maybe not surprising because it also tends to

25:55

be younger

25:57

people who enjoy horror movies and younger

26:00

people tend to be more rebellious, so there's probably some

26:03

collinearity going on there. Some

26:06

other trades, you would think that it would be associated

26:08

with low disgust, but actually morbid curiosity

26:11

is not that strongly correlated with

26:13

low disgust. And

26:16

it could be because, again, disgust is one of

26:18

those traits where it's difficult to operationalize.

26:20

You know, there's disgust from bodily

26:23

injuries, which is something that morbidly curious people would

26:25

certainly be low in. But then there's disgust

26:27

from other kinds of things that have nothing to do with threats,

26:31

and those are much less associated with how

26:33

morbidly curious you are.

26:35

Is there a connection between morbid curiosity

26:37

and our dream life? Like, do people

26:39

who are morbidly curious tend to have more

26:42

nightmares or scary dreams than other

26:44

people?

26:46

I would love to conduct that study,

26:48

so if anyone listening would love to do it. I

26:50

would love to know. I've had this idea that

26:52

maybe, and this is, you know,

26:55

hypothesis speculation, but I've

26:57

written about it a little bit, this idea that

27:00

nightmares might be sort of the original form

27:02

of morbid curiosity, right? And

27:07

there's a great program of study by this,

27:09

I believe it's Finnish philosopher

27:12

and cognitive neuroscientist, his last

27:14

name is Rivanswo. I think his name is Antti

27:16

Rivanswo. And he's come up with this

27:19

idea that, you know,

27:21

if you think of dreaming, you have

27:23

to imagine like, well, why did that evolve, right? Why

27:25

do humans have, and potentially other animals,

27:28

have this ability to dream? Because,

27:30

you know, there's some speculation that, well, maybe

27:32

it's just random firing and you're, you

27:34

know, with the neurons in your brain. But if you

27:36

think about it, I mean, dreams are sort

27:39

of directed in some way, you know, they're

27:41

weird, but they do have some kind of story

27:44

to them. They do have, you know, the visuals

27:46

are often vivid. They

27:48

might be a bit fantasy oriented, but they

27:50

are, they do seem real, right?

27:53

And so that suggests some kind of order and some kind

27:55

of directedness to it. And

27:58

so his idea is that, well, Maybe

28:00

dreaming is a way to rehearse things that happen

28:02

in the real world while you're, you know, you spend

28:05

eight hours a night, you know, ideally

28:07

a third of your life sleeping,

28:09

right? And that's a lot of time lost when

28:11

you could be gathering resources or finding

28:14

mates or, you

28:16

know, doing things that help you in the waking world. And

28:19

so his idea was that, well, maybe dreaming is a way to kind

28:21

of capitalize on this, this downtime,

28:23

and it's a way to simulate potential experiences.

28:26

And if so, then it would be really, really adaptive

28:29

to be able to simulate threats. And again,

28:31

for the same reason that it might be useful to

28:34

engage in scary play, it could be useful

28:36

to simulate these kinds of threats in your

28:38

dreams and then practice or rehearse

28:41

your responses to them. There's

28:44

some evidence that, for example, during COVID,

28:46

the early months of COVID-19, people

28:50

were having more nightmares, certainly

28:52

more pandemic related dreams. So they were kind

28:54

of dreaming about this new threat, right?

28:57

They were kind of dreaming about potential problems

28:59

that they might be facing. And so it's

29:01

possible that, you know,

29:04

dreaming or nightmares are kind of a

29:06

very early form of morbid curiosity

29:09

in humans and potentially in other animals.

29:12

Speaking of the pandemic related movies

29:14

that we've seen over the last few years, for

29:16

some people, they feel that they're too

29:18

soon or too close to home. Why is

29:21

it that some people find them therapeutic,

29:23

while others are not ready to relive

29:25

it in the form of entertainment? Yeah,

29:30

that's a tough question to answer. Again,

29:33

one of those areas that is so ready

29:36

for people to dive in. Unfortunately, I only

29:38

have so much bandwidth. So I've only

29:41

I've conducted a few studies on this. But

29:45

as far as why some people find

29:48

it useful or therapeutic and others don't,

29:50

I think that's a huge question that should be answered. Because

29:52

if we could figure that out, I mean, we might

29:54

open up new avenues for

29:56

therapy for things for anxiety or for difficult

29:59

life circumstances or people. PTSD, there's

30:02

pretty good now, I think, empirical evidence

30:04

even that some people do use

30:07

fictional

30:09

scary events or scary play

30:11

to help them deal with real

30:14

scary events. And

30:16

it's not clear to me or I think

30:18

anyone else yet why

30:20

this works for some people or in some circumstances

30:23

and maybe not for others or in other

30:25

circumstances. I think that's probably,

30:27

in my opinion, the area

30:29

of research around morbid curiosity that's most

30:31

ripe, most ready for research and

30:34

has the potential to impact people's lives the most.

30:37

So you mentioned that you are a horror

30:39

fan or are you a Halloween aficionado

30:42

as well?

30:43

I am a Halloween aficionado. In fact,

30:47

the town that I live in, it's

30:49

kind of a tourist town

30:51

and it has lots of events throughout

30:54

the year, but the biggest event of the year is their Halloween

30:56

parade or their Halloween event. And

30:59

it's actually a zombie crawl and I'm the organizer

31:01

of it. So I organized this huge

31:05

weekend event. This is in Denmark?

31:07

No, this is in the Ozarks. This is in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

31:11

Oh, okay. And it's called

31:13

the Eureka Springs Zombie Crawl and it's a

31:16

day-long event where people come

31:18

and there's spooky music and spooky

31:21

vendors and dancing

31:23

and everybody is dressed up as zombies of some kind.

31:27

And right around dusk, we have a big, huge, thousands

31:30

of people engaged in this zombie crawl where they crawl

31:32

through the streets and people have their apocalyptic

31:34

cars driving through the streets. And

31:37

it's kind of this way to embrace

31:40

these scary things and play with them

31:43

in a safe way. It's

31:45

a kid-friendly event. And I

31:47

get a lot of questions like, will my kid be

31:49

scared? And I mean, the real answer to that is

31:52

I don't know, right? But I can

31:54

say that a lot of kids do come

31:56

and it helps when children see the

31:58

monster transforming. You watch them putting on

32:01

makeup. It helps them understand that

32:03

this is just play, right? It's like a dog wagging

32:05

its tail to another dog. It's kind of a signal that

32:08

we're just engaging in play. And

32:10

so that does help children, I think, kind of overcome

32:13

their immediate first response to this

32:16

person walking around with flesh falling off with their face.

32:18

You know, it's a way for them to

32:21

understand that not

32:23

everything is always as it seems.

32:25

So any big questions that you

32:28

still want to answer research-wise?

32:31

Oh, so many. I

32:33

mean, you know, when I first started, I

32:36

graduated with my PhD just in 2022. And

32:40

when I first started doing work on morbid curiosity during

32:43

my PhD, nobody was doing

32:45

that. I mean, nobody was publishing on

32:47

it. There was no operational

32:49

definition of it. I mean, it was like this untouched

32:52

thing in science, which was weird

32:54

to me because it was something that every

32:56

person I talked to understood.

32:59

When I told them I was studying that, they understood

33:01

some sense of what that meant. And they had their own

33:03

examples of this in their life where their

33:06

friends that were morbidly curious, but they weren't. I

33:08

mean, everybody had this sense of this

33:10

being something that existed in the world. And

33:13

yet, at least psychological science had not really touched

33:16

it much.

33:19

Now that I'm a few years out of that

33:21

and I've been publishing on it for four or five years,

33:25

I get emails weekly of

33:28

students who are doing their master's thesis on

33:30

it now, who are other people who I'm collaborating

33:32

with. And so I think in the next five

33:35

to 10 years, there's going to be a huge boon

33:38

in research on this because everybody's kind of doing that research

33:40

right now. I think, in part, because

33:42

the pandemic, for example, I think woke

33:45

a lot of people up to this idea that real

33:48

disasters can happen not just to anyone, but

33:50

to me, right? This scary, apocalyptic,

33:53

almost like things can happen not just

33:55

in the movies, but in the real world. And

33:58

I think it's woken people up to this idea that. you

34:00

know, maybe being curious about these kinds of things and being

34:02

interested in them is Not

34:05

necessarily such a bad thing. I

34:07

think as far as you know, the most pertinent questions

34:10

are the most interesting questions I mean, I think certainly

34:12

the one that I had mentioned earlier

34:14

in our chat about

34:16

Who

34:18

who seems to benefit from this and and

34:20

why and in under what circumstances I think that

34:22

has the most potential for Therapeutic

34:25

context and the most potential

34:27

to impact people's lives That

34:30

would probably be the area that I think you

34:32

know, I would hope that a lot of

34:34

you know Clinicians and people

34:37

like that would would take seriously

34:39

and do some studies on

34:41

Well, dr. Scrivner. I want to thank you for joining

34:43

me today. It was really interesting chatting with you.

34:46

Thanks. Yeah. Thank you You

34:48

can find previous episodes of speaking of psychology

34:51

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Psychology is produced by the

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American Psychological Association I'm

35:13

Tim Mills

35:28

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