Speaker 1: Is it possible that one of the reasons why certain
Speaker 1: women are attracted to bad boys is because they score
Speaker 1: high themselves in morbid curiosity?
Speaker 2: I would say that that's never going to be the
Speaker 2: sole factor, but probably in every case that is a
Speaker 2: factor of why.
Speaker 1: Wow. Today we have doctor Colton Scrivener on the show.
Speaker 1: Doctor Scrivener is a leading expert on the science of horror,
Speaker 1: true crime, and morbid curiosity. Boy, was this a fun chat.
Speaker 1: I must admit I score pretty high in all forms
Speaker 1: of curiosity, including morbid curiosity, so I had so many
Speaker 1: questions for him about his groundbreaking research. Doctor Scrivener defines
Speaker 1: morbid curiosity as an interest in or curiosity about unpleasant things,
Speaker 1: especially death. In this episode, we take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into the various studies that have been conducted on this
Speaker 1: topic so far. Did you know that the average person
Speaker 1: possesses at least some degree of morbid curiosity? However, some
Speaker 1: people are much more interested in horror movies, horror stories,
Speaker 1: and true crime documentaries. What are these people like? The
Speaker 1: results may surprise you. As doctor Scrivener puts it. In
Speaker 1: the title of one of his papers, there exists quote
Speaker 1: bleeding Heart horror fans, maybe you will identify as one
Speaker 1: regardless of whether you score high in morbid curiosity. I
Speaker 1: think you'll find this episode fascinating as I did, so
Speaker 1: let's get into it. I bring you doctor Colton Scrivener.
Speaker 1: Colton Scrivener, so nice to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you talk to you for a while
Speaker 1: about your very unique and groundbreaking research within the field
Speaker 1: of psychology, I want to start off just by asking
Speaker 1: if you could just introduce yourself to my audience a
Speaker 1: little bit in your own path research path, and you know,
Speaker 1: when you was what were you interested in? What was
Speaker 1: your own curiosity as a child? Like start there and
Speaker 1: then just like path, tell me everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think one of the most common questions
Speaker 2: I get is, you know, are you a horror fan
Speaker 2: or have you liked horror since you were a kid,
Speaker 2: because the topics I study, right, I was. I didn't
Speaker 2: dream of growing up to be a psychologist who studies
Speaker 2: horror by any stretch of the imagination. But I did
Speaker 2: like scary things as a kid, and I enjoyed playing
Speaker 2: scary games and watching scary movies. I never really put
Speaker 2: much thought into it. I think a lot of people don't.
Speaker 2: And when I got to college, I have a very
Speaker 2: sort of interdisciplinary background. So I studied biology and cultural
Speaker 2: anthropology in college, and I was very interested in stress
Speaker 2: and why and how people got stressed out. Robert Sapolski
Speaker 2: was a huge influence on me as a as an undergraduate,
Speaker 2: and I was, you know, really I loved his sort
Speaker 2: of unique approach to studying stress. And then I went
Speaker 2: on and I did a master's in forensic science, and
Speaker 2: then my PhD is in behavior biology, and so I
Speaker 2: kind of span the spectrum from sort of cultural anthropology
Speaker 2: through psychology and sort of more biology or evolution approaches
Speaker 2: to human behavior. And in graduate school, I you know,
Speaker 2: I was interested in a lot of things. I was
Speaker 2: still interested in stress. In fact, I was in a
Speaker 2: hormone lab that mostly studied stress and in humans, and
Speaker 2: I got interested in why people are interested in watching
Speaker 2: or being a part of violent events, of events that
Speaker 2: are stressful for most people, so things like UFC or
Speaker 2: boxing or you know, why did the Romans build the
Speaker 2: Colisseum and why was that successful? Because everywhere I looked,
Speaker 2: I kept seeing examples of violent entertainment popping up across
Speaker 2: cultures across history, and so I was really intrigued by
Speaker 2: this because usually we would say that violence is a
Speaker 2: moral and it should never happen except for in very
Speaker 2: special cases, in which case it's entertainment. And so I
Speaker 2: started looking into that, and then I had a side
Speaker 2: interest in why people were scaring themselves for fun for
Speaker 2: some of the same reasons. And over time those kind
Speaker 2: of just morphed into this conglomerate of why people enjoy
Speaker 2: things that are sometimes dangerous or threatening or scary.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think genetically within you predicted could
Speaker 1: have predicted this? Are you high in sensation seeking and
Speaker 1: we're going to get to all your correlates something. What
Speaker 1: do you think I'm starting with you personally?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, yeah, I'm actually not that high in sensation seeking.
Speaker 2: I've spent a long time since I've taken one of
Speaker 2: the sensation seeking scales, but I score above average, but nothing,
Speaker 2: nothing too far in the right tail. But what's interesting
Speaker 2: is actually a lot of morbidly curious people don't score
Speaker 2: incredibly high in sensation seeking. They do tend to be
Speaker 2: kind of in that average to above slightly above average range.
Speaker 2: But yeah, what what would have predicted that? I think?
Speaker 2: I mean, I have pretty I'm pretty high in openness
Speaker 2: and curiosity, and you know, so things that are frightening
Speaker 2: or maybe a bit taboo also interest me. And then that,
Speaker 2: combined with a little bit of sensation seeking, I think
Speaker 2: probably is a good recipe for someone to do what
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: Very cool. Well, let's start with one of the landmark papers.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the landmark paper, not one of the
Speaker 1: Let's start with the landmark nineteen eighty six. Zuckerman and
Speaker 1: a little Marvin Zuckerman, who is a legend in the
Speaker 1: field of psychology and the study of sensation seeking. And
Speaker 1: no offense, I don't know, Patrick Little is sorry from
Speaker 1: maybe he's grand students. No offense, Patrick Little.
Speaker 2: If you call out their paper with Zuckerman, I mean,
Speaker 2: you're going to be the second bench.
Speaker 1: And you know, you know what I'm saying. You know,
Speaker 1: I like Patrick. I don't know. But anyway, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: all due respect to Patrick Carle, they wrote this paper
Speaker 1: Personality and Curiosity about Morbid and Sexual Events. That was
Speaker 1: one paper, and they in the same year they wrote
Speaker 1: a paper called Curiosity about Morbid Events uh, the CAAM
Speaker 1: scale Enjoyment and Watching Violence and Death. These are two
Speaker 1: papers that came out in the same year. So they
Speaker 1: created the scale and then they also focusing on violence,
Speaker 1: and then they I think the other paper must have
Speaker 1: come later. I'm just saying I think it, yeah, even
Speaker 1: though it was published in the same year. I assume
Speaker 1: the way they conducted the research, they created the scale,
Speaker 1: then they branched out to the sexual demand to look
Speaker 1: at correlations between interest in violence and interest in poor
Speaker 1: and pornography. So let's start off with the seminal paper
Speaker 1: and six that created the scale. Tell me about the
Speaker 1: game scale.
Speaker 2: That was obviously the first thing that I came across
Speaker 2: when I started looking into this, right I you know,
Speaker 2: kind of as you do as a scientist, you get
Speaker 2: this idea and you get really interested in it, and
Speaker 2: you're the first thing you have to do is go, Okay, wait,
Speaker 2: has anyone else had this idea? And if they have,
Speaker 2: have they published on it? Right in my case, there
Speaker 2: wasn't much research on morbid curiosity. There was this sort
Speaker 2: of you know, like you said, ground like groundbreaking or
Speaker 2: pioneering paper on it, and I obviously devoured the paper
Speaker 2: because I was very interested in what they came up with,
Speaker 2: and it's a great paper. It unfortunately hasn't been the
Speaker 2: scale hasn't been used that much since then. So you know,
Speaker 2: when you create you know this very well. You know,
Speaker 2: when you create a scientific scale, you kind of do
Speaker 2: a lot of validation studies and you run it on
Speaker 2: different populations if you can use it to test different
Speaker 2: questions that are sort of adjacent to that. And for
Speaker 2: some reason, you know, people didn't really pick up the
Speaker 2: scale afterwards, and so I, you know, I was going
Speaker 2: to use it, but as I started looking into it,
Speaker 2: it seemed a bit narrow to me, like it only
Speaker 2: tapped into maybe one side of the dangerous things that
Speaker 2: people are curious about. So this one focused especially you know,
Speaker 2: the violence side of it focused on violence, right, and
Speaker 2: it was really about and with scales, it really matters
Speaker 2: how you word things too. You know, there's a difference
Speaker 2: in saying I am interested in violence and I am
Speaker 2: interested in watching violence. Those are maybe different things, right,
Speaker 2: and they're going to predict different things. You know, how
Speaker 2: you respond to that might predict different things. And so
Speaker 2: you know, I thought, you know the fact that that
Speaker 2: nobody had really picked up this scale and done a
Speaker 2: bunch of studies with it, and that I had my
Speaker 2: own sort of maybe issues with conceptually what it was
Speaker 2: tapping into. I decided to go ahead and make my
Speaker 2: own scale because it was, you know, at the time,
Speaker 2: it was forty years old as well, and so research
Speaker 2: has advanced quite a bit since then, and so I
Speaker 2: just seemed like it was time to maybe do a
Speaker 2: new scale for morbid curiosity.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to get to the all the new stuff,
Speaker 1: and we're going to that's going to be the main
Speaker 1: focus of the rest of the interview. But I'm stuck
Speaker 1: in this nineteen eighty six peop because I actually really
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, tell me about what do you about it?
Speaker 1: Well? I liked it because they link it to increase
Speaker 1: in peripheral catechola.
Speaker 2: Means in this second paper, is that the second Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually like the second paper better than the first paper.
Speaker 1: I found the first paper a little boring, to be honest,
Speaker 1: but I really like the second paper. It's very very
Speaker 1: interesting to me, this positive correlation between interest in in
Speaker 1: violence interest in like pornography, for instance, because nowadays there's
Speaker 1: a huge proliferation in violent pornography. So the combination of
Speaker 1: the two, right, and that's very controversial, that's very contro
Speaker 1: right like, but but at the same time it's getting
Speaker 1: millions and millions of views, these thing So we're not
Speaker 1: talking about like we allowed, we allowed to be honest
Speaker 1: about that. There is a seems to be a desire
Speaker 1: for it, that's that's very very large in the population
Speaker 1: for consuming you know, fantasy about it. And then and
Speaker 1: obviously at the same time, we want to really condemn
Speaker 1: it in reality, you know, if it's non consensual, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So how do we hold both of these things at
Speaker 1: the same time. As a segue into your work, which
Speaker 1: the spirit of your work really right there, you say
Speaker 1: in the beginning of your whole paper, your your seminal,
Speaker 1: your seminal two thousand and one paper, your seminal two
Speaker 1: thousand and one paper, you open up and say, we're
Speaker 1: we're morbidly curious as a species. Yeah, So do you
Speaker 1: see how I'm winking these things together? Like, let's let's
Speaker 1: be let's let's have a really open, honest conversation about
Speaker 1: like the appeal of a lot of these things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then talk about the morality of it later. Let's
Speaker 1: first talk about the human nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's something that gets missed. And
Speaker 2: you know this too and psych research in general, because
Speaker 2: we're talking about people, we want to go straight to
Speaker 2: morality first and like should we study this or not studied?
Speaker 2: And I think I'm personally the opinion that we should
Speaker 2: know what we're dealing with first and then we can
Speaker 2: decide what we want to do with it. But I
Speaker 2: think it's important to know, you know, what's influencing our
Speaker 2: behavior and what's influencing our decisions, and then we can
Speaker 2: decide if we want to you know, allow that or
Speaker 2: change that or modified in some way.
Speaker 1: Correct, And I definitely do want to have the morality discussion,
Speaker 1: but let's let's review all the facts first. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So walk me through this two thousand and one paper,
Speaker 1: which just seems like a really nice sequel to the
Speaker 1: original eighty six studies and in huge extension, you know,
Speaker 1: because you know, they really were groundbreaking correlating things that
Speaker 1: a lot of researchers have never correlated with each other
Speaker 1: and then linking it to a specific biological system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I really like about that second paper. So
Speaker 1: now enter Coulton, doctor Colton Scribner tell me about your
Speaker 1: two thousand and one paper, and why how you your methodology?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, so's tales and twenty one, not twalsan and one.
Speaker 2: I would have been I would have been pretty young
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one. One.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's okay, of course, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: A much more impressive if I did that in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well yeah, no, you absolutely twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: It's important to note this you did it during the
Speaker 1: COVID era. Yeah, and you had some really cool studies
Speaker 1: around the same time linking it to COVID related things.
Speaker 1: You have two papers in particular, and so we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, okay, go go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so through this twenty twenty one paper. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: know in twenty twenty. I did a lot of the
Speaker 2: studies for this twenty twenty one paper between twenty twenty
Speaker 2: and twenty twenty one, so, as you know, right during
Speaker 2: COVID it was basically I, like I mentioned, I had
Speaker 2: some issues conceptually with the idea that morbid curiosity was
Speaker 2: only about liking violence. That seemed a little too narrow
Speaker 2: to me. And so you know, the first thing I
Speaker 2: did is I put together a bunch of essentially statements
Speaker 2: about that that I thought tapped into seemed like more
Speaker 2: bid curiosity and interest in threats that seemed much more
Speaker 2: tangible to me. Right, there's you know, humans have this
Speaker 2: not just a negativity bias where things that are negative
Speaker 2: or bad tend to, you know, come to the four
Speaker 2: for us and gather our attention more strongly. But things
Speaker 2: in particular that are threatening tend to do that even
Speaker 2: more so than things that are just broadly negative. And
Speaker 2: so to me it seemed like morbid curiosity might be
Speaker 2: rooted in that it's really about things that are threatening
Speaker 2: and paying attention to those and learning about those things.
Speaker 2: And so that's kind of how I started off conceptually
Speaker 2: with the with the topic. And then I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: what are some things that are conceptually threatening to humans?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And violence certainly is one of those, but so are
Speaker 2: understanding the intentions of dangerous people, not just the act
Speaker 2: of violence, but actually the intentions of the people who
Speaker 2: are doing it. And another thing are injuries, whether that's
Speaker 2: an accident or it's caused by something external. That knowing
Speaker 2: how to deal with injuries is certainly one And even
Speaker 2: though it sounds weird, the paranormal Obviously I couldn't leave
Speaker 2: out because for everyone who you know wouldever say that
Speaker 2: they're morbidly curious, most of them are going to say
Speaker 2: they love a good ghost story, right, And so there's
Speaker 2: something about that that seemed like it was tapping into
Speaker 2: more be curiosity as well. And so I put together
Speaker 2: this long list of items. Did you know, factor analysis
Speaker 2: rand them on a bunch of people. Did factor analysis
Speaker 2: kind of saw how these items clustered together and how
Speaker 2: they related to one another. And what I found was
Speaker 2: that there seemed to be, at least with the items
Speaker 2: that I had, four sort of clustering or four groups
Speaker 2: of things that loaded onto this one factor. And those
Speaker 2: four clusterings were an interest in violence, an interest in
Speaker 2: the minds of dangerous people, an interest in supernatural or
Speaker 2: paranormal phenomenon, and an interest in bodily injuries or body violations,
Speaker 2: and all of those things kind of mapped onto this
Speaker 2: one trait, which I called more curiosity. The next thing
Speaker 2: you do after that is you run a validation. You
Speaker 2: confirm the factor analysis that those are the groups. And
Speaker 2: so I did that, and then I ran a bunch
Speaker 2: of studies showing how these traits linked to other personality traits,
Speaker 2: how they linked to behaviors, how they linked to different interests,
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what I've been doing the past
Speaker 2: couple of years.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. I want to walk our listeners through the
Speaker 1: finer details of your findings. So first with the factor
Speaker 1: analysis and the different the four factors you found. Let's
Speaker 1: make this concrete. So I'm gonna give an example item
Speaker 1: from each of the four types for four factors. So
Speaker 1: this first one is an example of violence. If I
Speaker 1: lived in medieval Europe, I would be interested in attending
Speaker 1: a public execution. Okay, here's an example of body violation.
Speaker 1: If a head transplant was possible, I would want to
Speaker 1: watch the procedure. The third factor, motives of dangerous people.
Speaker 1: Here's an example. I am curious about crime and enjoy
Speaker 1: reading detailed news accounts about murders and other violent crimes.
Speaker 1: And then paranormal danger. Here's an example from paranormal danger.
Speaker 1: I think the supernatural is an interesting topic. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: something I find really that is interesting. It struck me
Speaker 1: about the body of violation when I had a bit
Speaker 1: of an aha moment. You know, I've gone really being
Speaker 1: a morbidly curious human such as myself. I've studied a
Speaker 1: lot of these serial killers and their early childhood development,
Speaker 1: trying to look for the signs that to try to
Speaker 1: understand it. And the thing, the only thing that stands
Speaker 1: out about Jeffrey Dahmer and his early childhood, the only
Speaker 1: thing is his intense curiosity of the human anatomy and
Speaker 1: what people would look like on the inside. That's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Its most animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And he even said I think during his
Speaker 2: confession that it was one of the bodies that he
Speaker 2: buried under I think it was a family member's house.
Speaker 2: I can't remember the exact details, maybe you know, but anyways,
Speaker 2: he buried this individual under the house, and when he
Speaker 2: was asked about it, he went back and actually checked
Speaker 2: on the body after he had buried it, and he
Speaker 2: was asked, you know, why did you do that? And
Speaker 2: he said, morbid curiosity, And he kind of used the phrase,
Speaker 2: you know, in a non academic sense, but in a
Speaker 2: colloquial sort of understanding of I went back because I
Speaker 2: was more curious, and I think, you know, at another
Speaker 2: point he said, uh, something I'm paraphrasing, but you know,
Speaker 2: all these people watch these horror movies. The only and
Speaker 2: I you know, the difference with me is I do
Speaker 2: it in real life.
Speaker 1: That was gonna that's what I was gonna say. I
Speaker 1: didn't know he had that quote. I didn't know he
Speaker 1: had that quote. I thought I was I had a
Speaker 1: great insight, but he just admitted it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's right, And that's that
Speaker 2: is a key difference though between I think, you know,
Speaker 2: this normal typical morbid curiosity and you know morbid curiosity
Speaker 2: when it's fueled by psychopathy and the lack of empathy
Speaker 2: and all those other traits that that form that.
Speaker 1: Right, I think that's a greater nuance actually than his quote.
Speaker 1: It's not like just the only difference. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like people.
Speaker 2: Like I just do it in real life. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: just it's not.
Speaker 1: He's he's still not getting it, you know what? Do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? I do saying that just
Speaker 1: shows what severe lack of empathy he has. But he
Speaker 1: doesn't get it because he doesn't know what it's like
Speaker 1: to have the chip that most humans have, you know.
Speaker 1: So you know, so I know that I could nerd
Speaker 1: out with you on this at a very very deep level.
Speaker 1: So let's just jump let's just jump it to the
Speaker 1: deep end. Sure. Yeah, so, yes, a lot of people
Speaker 1: do have a murder caiossity. There are individual differences. You
Speaker 1: have found that these four factors are correlated with each other,
Speaker 1: with the average inner correlation about point three eight or so,
Speaker 1: so it's moderate. But these can break apart in various ways.
Speaker 1: You know, It's possible Jeffrey Dahmer was maybe not as
Speaker 1: high in some others, you know, supernatural. I don't know,
Speaker 1: as maybe he's he really stood out on the second
Speaker 1: one or maybe the first one as well, the violence.
Speaker 1: But but if you look at the correlations of this
Speaker 1: trait that that do vary in the general population. One
Speaker 1: thing I want to point out is that the research
Speaker 1: that has replicated on this has shown quite clearly that
Speaker 1: there is really no correlation between this scale and empathy
Speaker 1: and compassion. Yeah, one one way or the other. Now,
Speaker 1: that would be truly fascinating if there was a positive correlation.
Speaker 2: There is in some cases actually with scales of empathy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, yeah, we can talk about empathy if you want,
Speaker 2: or we can keep on this whateverhere. Do you want
Speaker 2: to take this?
Speaker 1: Well, because of the jeffre Dahmer thing and why I
Speaker 1: don't think he got it. I don't think he got it.
Speaker 1: I would like to double click on that. Yes, I
Speaker 1: would double empathy confessionally, because I do think that most people.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to distinguish an interest in
Speaker 1: morbid morbid curiosity from serial killers. Yeah, I want to really,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly someone who me who scores very high
Speaker 1: in more and compassion.
Speaker 2: Right right, you know, I want to one path, you're
Speaker 2: a dark impath. We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I don't know if I don't know if
Speaker 1: I would identify as a dark end maybe because dark
Speaker 1: end pass that's corel with the dark try and the
Speaker 1: dark t Yeah. Yeah, And I don't really think I
Speaker 1: score high in the dark triad. I think I just
Speaker 1: scorre high in morbid curiosity. I think I scre hiding
Speaker 1: morbid curiosity and the light triad.
Speaker 2: That would actually be a bit unusual. We should talk
Speaker 2: about We'll talk about that. I'm sure that I would
Speaker 2: love to chat about that. Yeah, okay, So so empathy
Speaker 2: and compassion that some of the more recent studies I've
Speaker 2: done have been on that, because you know, in the
Speaker 2: eighties there was kind of this a bit of a
Speaker 2: panic about horror movies because horror movies were now being
Speaker 2: put on vhs and coming into the home, and there
Speaker 2: was this huge panic about, like, we're having all of
Speaker 2: these awful, violent movies in the home. And of course,
Speaker 2: scientists tend to reflect some of those concerns that people have,
Speaker 2: and so there were studies in the eighties about empathy
Speaker 2: and horror movies, and you know, if you want, you
Speaker 2: we can talk about those afterwards and some issues I
Speaker 2: have with them. But basically, there hadn't been many studies
Speaker 2: on or any really on morbid curiosity and empathy or compassion.
Speaker 2: And so one of the recent studies I did looked
Speaker 2: at whether or not people who are morbidly curious, who
Speaker 2: are horror fans, do they have lower higher levels of
Speaker 2: cognitive empathy or affective empathy, so the ability to kind
Speaker 2: of take someone's perspective or the ability to sort of
Speaker 2: feel what other people feel, and do they have higher
Speaker 2: lower levels of compassion? And for the compassion measure I used.
Speaker 2: Are you're familiar with the the PPI, right, the Psychopathic
Speaker 2: Personality Inventory? I think it's Lillienfeld's.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, although I would have some qualms that some
Speaker 1: of those facets really are indicators of psychopathy, such as rebelliousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so rebelliousness. Yeah, I kind of agree with you,
Speaker 2: but he has he has a measure on their one
Speaker 2: of the facet. I only used one facet. I just
Speaker 2: used the cold heartedness facet.
Speaker 1: Oh got it. Well that's a good one. Get that one.
Speaker 1: I like, yeah, that one related to psychopathy.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And that one really taps into like, you know,
Speaker 2: you're if you if you're high in cold heartedness to
Speaker 2: just not care about other people or you just have
Speaker 2: no care for them.
Speaker 1: You found a small negative correlation between morbid curiosity.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, so that's what I was saying. There's actually,
Speaker 2: you know it's there's there for compassion and for cognitive empathy.
Speaker 2: Actually there's a slight positive correlation. I think for some
Speaker 2: of the facets. I can't remember exactly which ones. I
Speaker 2: think it was a perspective taking and online simulation or
Speaker 2: something like that. There was a small, small positive It
Speaker 2: would need to be replicated to see if it was
Speaker 2: truly interesting. But yeah, basically, across the board, no matter
Speaker 2: how I looked at it, whether I asked people you know,
Speaker 2: rate yourself how much of a horror fan are you?
Speaker 2: Or if I ask them how many of these top
Speaker 2: fifty horror movies have you seen? And I counted them up?
Speaker 2: Or you know, No matter how I measured it, I
Speaker 2: kept finding that there was basically no correlation between empathy
Speaker 2: and compassion and being morbidly curious of being a horror fan.
Speaker 2: And if there was a correlation it was small and
Speaker 2: positive with higher levels of empathy or compassion.
Speaker 1: So given that finding, why when I said I I
Speaker 1: score high in light try it as well? Is more
Speaker 1: big curiosity be like, oh, well that would kind of
Speaker 1: go against the grain, as opposed to based on what
Speaker 1: you just said, it would be like, oh that makes
Speaker 1: sense considering it's a neutral sort of relation direct. I'm
Speaker 1: curious why you made that comment when I said what.
Speaker 2: I said, because and all the other studies I've done
Speaker 2: as well, morbidly curious people are score a little bit
Speaker 2: higher in the dark triad. In machicanism, no in all
Speaker 2: three usually is if you get a big enough sample,
Speaker 2: some of them go away. I think I think like
Speaker 2: narcissism kind of dwindles down to be mostly non significant.
Speaker 2: It's like very small if it's positive, and I think
Speaker 2: psychopathy and machi vellianism though stay positive, and all the
Speaker 2: ones I've done. What's interesting is that, for example, when
Speaker 2: I've used the PPI it measures, I can't recall all
Speaker 2: the facets, but it's got six or seven different factors
Speaker 2: associated with it, and morbidly curious people score higher, and
Speaker 2: all of those facets accept cold heartedness, so they score
Speaker 2: high and all these other things about related to psychopathy,
Speaker 2: but with cold heartedness they actually score lower and consistently low.
Speaker 2: Or it's not high. It's a small correlation, but it
Speaker 2: is a consistent negative correlation with cold heartedness. That's actually
Speaker 2: what got me into the empathy research in the first places.
Speaker 2: I was really intrigued by this finding that you know,
Speaker 2: these people are essentially dark triad somewhat dark triad people,
Speaker 2: but they score low, really low, lower than average on
Speaker 2: this one trait that people tend to associate with psychopathists,
Speaker 2: cold heart indust trait.
Speaker 1: What do you think is going on there?
Speaker 2: Man? I wish I knew, because that's fascinating, right, I mean.
Speaker 1: That's I am so fascinated by that finding right now.
Speaker 2: And I thought, I go back to that paper at
Speaker 2: least so after I published that's in that twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one paper. That first time I found that, I went
Speaker 2: back to that paper at least four times and reran
Speaker 2: the data because I was like, I know that I
Speaker 2: just I reverse coded something and did it wrong. Like
Speaker 2: I went back and just neurotically checked it. And I'm
Speaker 2: a very non neurotic person, very low in neuroticism, and
Speaker 2: that was the one thing that just like plagued me.
Speaker 2: I would go back and check it because it didn't
Speaker 2: make any sense. You know, maybe we can we can
Speaker 2: chat about this towards the end. I actually think we
Speaker 2: have psychopathy. I think subclinical psychopathy is pretty misunderstood. Uh
Speaker 2: and it does not track straight into clinical psychopathy like
Speaker 2: we conceptualize it.
Speaker 1: But I bet we can figure this puzzle out together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel I feel like you bring both of our
Speaker 1: minds together and our background.
Speaker 2: I know, and I'm telling you. I I just that
Speaker 2: that finding like both intrigued me and haunted me because
Speaker 2: I was like, there's no way this is right.
Speaker 1: So if it turns out that at the at the
Speaker 1: highest level of the hierarchy, well the highest level, you
Speaker 1: can have a general factor, but right under that if
Speaker 1: you have a two factor model of the of the scale,
Speaker 1: it says the cold hardness subscill typically does not hold
Speaker 1: onto either factor.
Speaker 2: Oh of the PPI. Yeah it yes, yeah, So there
Speaker 2: are a lot of issues with the PPI where like
Speaker 2: researchers when they use the PPI to study psychopathy, they
Speaker 2: will just drop the cold hardness, which is kind of
Speaker 2: a problem because to me, that actually taps into psychopic
Speaker 2: clinical psychopathy.
Speaker 1: That's exactly why I think the mystery of this puzzle
Speaker 1: is connected that that fact that that cold hardness is
Speaker 1: kind of an odd man out on these other factors.
Speaker 1: So one factor is fearless dominance, self centered in pulsivity.
Speaker 1: M hm, oh, those are the two factors. Fearless, yeah,
Speaker 1: and self centered inpulsivity. It's the I agree with you
Speaker 1: that it feels like cold hardness is really is really psychopathy.
Speaker 2: Well's certainly anti social personality disorder, right, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of the defining feature of you know, there's not really
Speaker 2: like a you don't get diagnosed as a psychopath, get
Speaker 2: diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, and cold hardedness is kind
Speaker 2: of the the core of that. To my knowledge. No,
Speaker 2: I'm not a clinical psychologist. But my understanding is that's
Speaker 2: kind of the core of it. But you know that
Speaker 2: would mean to me again that that subclinical psychopathy. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's there's clinical which you know, you get that
Speaker 2: you get, which is a bit different. But clinical psychopathy,
Speaker 2: I think is a bit misunderstood, and I think people
Speaker 2: use it as kind of a proxy for clinical psychology
Speaker 2: clinical psychopathy, when it might in fact be something a
Speaker 2: bit different. The origins of subclinical psychopathy, I think are
Speaker 2: probably different, The biological substrates are probably different than clinical
Speaker 2: psychopathy for that reason, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is you're really hitting on something that
Speaker 1: I think is important, and you know, we're still trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of what it means. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about this study that that is very recent called Bleeding
Speaker 1: Heart Horror fans enjoyment of horror media is not related
Speaker 1: to lower empathy or compassion. So they found enjoyment of
Speaker 1: horror movies was unrelated to affective empathy, which we call Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just that's what most people think of when
Speaker 1: they think empathy, right, they think that you feel the
Speaker 1: emotions of other, yes, negatively associated with codeheartedness. There it
Speaker 1: is again, There it is again, replicated and positively associated
Speaker 1: with cognitive empathy.
Speaker 2: Right, So like perspective taking or which which kind of
Speaker 2: makes sense for a horror fan. Right, if you're you know,
Speaker 2: if you are watching a scary movie, what makes that
Speaker 2: movie scary?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: The thing that makes it scary is that you are
Speaker 2: taking the perspective of the protagonist and imagining yourself and
Speaker 2: their shoes and being afraid sort of their shoes. So
Speaker 2: if you can't take their perspective or you're not good
Speaker 2: at it, you're not going to enjoy scary movies or
Speaker 2: other kinds of scary play, right, because you can't actually
Speaker 2: take the perspective in order to enjoy it. So that
Speaker 2: that finding actually makes sense to me that you would
Speaker 2: be a bit higher in perspective taking.
Speaker 1: Do you know if serial killers enjoy watching horror movies?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I do monsters, And do real life monsters enjoy watching.
Speaker 2: Horror monsters enjoy monsters? Yeah? Yeah, So dah Dahmer had
Speaker 2: a weird obsession with a very obscure horror movie, so
Speaker 2: the Exorcist three, which was not that's what you remember.
Speaker 2: He would like make his victims watch it, and he
Speaker 2: loved it and will watch it over and over again.
Speaker 2: But that was more of like a specific obsession. Man,
Speaker 2: Like he didn't have you know, Halloween posters up on
Speaker 2: his wall. He just was like really obsessed with this
Speaker 2: one movie.
Speaker 1: He did that to get in character, he said, yeah, yeah, ye,
Speaker 1: he had to do that to get into an altered
Speaker 1: state of consciousness in order to do what he had
Speaker 1: to do, or else he would have guilt. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had a lot of other things going on
Speaker 2: than just his morbid curiosity. He had a lot more.
Speaker 2: He had a lot more going on than just that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we really need to make that point
Speaker 1: very clear in this episode today. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's how right now, Like I'm working on
Speaker 2: a book and the last chapter just starts with that
Speaker 2: story and just tries to use that to like flip
Speaker 2: the script a little bit.
Speaker 1: So there's this this picture that we're painting here that
Speaker 1: that people can score high in morbid curiosity and it
Speaker 1: it just seems to be related more to behavioral activation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, well here's this was interesting. It seems like both
Speaker 1: and behavioral avoidance. Like I think neurotic people neuroticism, you know,
Speaker 1: neuroticism is going to predict the extent to which you're
Speaker 1: morbidly curious so that you can try to learn about
Speaker 1: the world and avoid danger and threats in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I one of the findings that I
Speaker 2: usually find it kind of depends on the sample, but
Speaker 2: typically there is a small positive correlation between measures of
Speaker 2: anxiety and measures of morbid curiosity. Neuroticism is a bit
Speaker 2: more mixed, because neuroticism, I think, is a little it's
Speaker 2: a little bit broader and like conceptually and what it captures.
Speaker 2: But anxiety does so trade anxiety and state anxiety both
Speaker 2: to some extent track with morbid curiosity. It's small, it's small,
Speaker 2: but it's positive and consistent. I find it over and
Speaker 2: over again, and you find it in related studies, you know,
Speaker 2: like things about adjacent topics that sort of are corroborating
Speaker 2: evidence for that for the same reasons. You say, Right,
Speaker 2: if you're anxious, what are you, Well, you're more vigilant
Speaker 2: towards threat in your environment. If you're morbidly curious, what
Speaker 2: are you, Well, you're kind of interested in learning about
Speaker 2: threats in your environment. Right, So those two kind of
Speaker 2: promote each other. Which comes up which which creates this
Speaker 2: really funny situation where you have you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people have a perception of let's say, like a
Speaker 2: horror fan or a morbidly curious person, of being this
Speaker 2: like sort of psychopath who's not afraid of anything, And
Speaker 2: in reality, a lot of morbidly curious people are a
Speaker 2: bit anxious and nots not psychopathic at least, not cold hearted,
Speaker 2: not low in empathy. Right, so that you get these
Speaker 2: this weird situation where they really defy kind of the
Speaker 2: stereotype that a lot of people have about morbidly curious people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have they conducted the study yet on the morbid
Speaker 1: curiosity scale and interest in BDSM?
Speaker 2: No, But I imagine those would be positively correlated. I
Speaker 2: would be shocked if they weren't. I would the same
Speaker 2: for the same reason, right, for the same reason.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, that's right, that's right. And and the
Speaker 1: studies some interesting studies I've seen. And the reason why
Speaker 1: I bring this up is because I've seen that a
Speaker 1: lot of very high percentage of people interest in b
Speaker 1: S m DE score high neuroticism m H.
Speaker 2: And that Yeah, I mean that's essentially what you're doing, right,
Speaker 2: You're kind of role playing a dangerous situation and in
Speaker 2: many cases, which is I mean, just nail on the
Speaker 2: head exactly what morbid curiosity is for.
Speaker 1: So interesting, This is also interesting. I want to keep
Speaker 1: going through these papers. There there's a really good body
Speaker 1: of research on this topic. First of all, I want
Speaker 1: to say congratulations to you, you know, really going into
Speaker 1: this field, studying a topic that is not well studied,
Speaker 1: and really charting a path on this which has now
Speaker 1: produced a number of really high quality studies on it.
Speaker 1: So really congratulations, thank you. Let's let's let's go through.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a really recent paper which is going
Speaker 1: to relate to a sole episode I'm doing later on
Speaker 1: New Nice Guys. Finished Last is an episode I'm recording
Speaker 1: later for my podcast. But but this paper, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: definitely talk about this paper, Behavioral attraction predicts morbidly curious
Speaker 1: women's mating interest in men with dark personalities. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a mouthful, that whole title. That was.
Speaker 2: A change in the revisions to make it clear what
Speaker 2: the paper was about. It initially had a shorter title,
Speaker 2: I think, but there was a change during the revisions
Speaker 2: where we tried to make the title more specific to
Speaker 2: the finding.
Speaker 1: I mean, couldn't you say why women like bad boys?
Speaker 1: I mean, why do you have to be like beha attraction?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, initially it was yeah, something more like that.
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: this study. So why is it possible that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why certain women are attracted to bad boys
Speaker 1: is because they score high themselves in morbid curiosity?
Speaker 2: I would say that that's never going to be the
Speaker 2: sole factor, but probably in every case that is a
Speaker 2: factor of why Wow yeah ye yeah, same thing with
Speaker 2: serial killers. Right? Are serial killers morbidly curious? Yeah? Probably
Speaker 2: most of them or all of them would score above average.
Speaker 2: But is that why they're a serial killer?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Right? And we've been, we've been, we've we've been wanting
Speaker 1: to make that point clear from the beginning, over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, And I think I think it's actually
Speaker 2: a bit you know, with with interest in the bad
Speaker 2: boy interested in this case, it was like dark triad men, right.
Speaker 2: I think that more bi curiosity probably plays a much
Speaker 2: stronger role in that than it would be a serial killer. Right,
Speaker 2: like the and as far as the behavioral the behavior
Speaker 2: of it, right, the behavior of going out and short
Speaker 2: term meeting with dark triad men probably more be curiosity.
Speaker 2: You know, I would say influences that more than being
Speaker 2: a serial killer, because there's just so many other factors
Speaker 2: that are involved with, you know, pushing you over the
Speaker 2: edge of killing someone versus pushing you over the edge
Speaker 2: of going on a couple of dates with a guy
Speaker 2: who seemed like a jerk.
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. But but I'm double clicking on is the
Speaker 1: attraction to them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, let's let's.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's put the serial killer stuff to the
Speaker 1: side for a moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just focus on
Speaker 1: the attraction to bad boys. You can be a bad
Speaker 1: boy not be a serial killer. So yes, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about just you know, just dark people who have manipulative
Speaker 1: you know, men who are liars, cheats, their manipulative and narcissistic.
Speaker 1: Why would that be attractive. So one of the reasons
Speaker 1: this research shows is more big curiosity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which you know, especially in especially in modern sort
Speaker 2: of dating situations, it's easier I think, to short term
Speaker 2: date someone and then ghost them or not have them
Speaker 2: be in your life in twenty twenty four than it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen twenty four, Right, it's much easier to
Speaker 2: to go in a few dates with someone and then
Speaker 2: sort of remove them from your life more safely, which
Speaker 2: means that what you're doing is you're lowering the cost
Speaker 2: associated with interacting with someone like the dark Triad man
Speaker 2: right now. You know, I think almost all of the
Speaker 2: literature on dark tread and mating shows that dark Triad
Speaker 2: men are a bit more desirable in general for short
Speaker 2: term than they are for long term. Generally, women actually
Speaker 2: do prefer a lot more yeah, within within dark triad
Speaker 2: but then you know, within like who would you prefer
Speaker 2: for a mate, it's a bit more mixed. Like women
Speaker 2: tend to prefer non dark Triad men for long term mates,
Speaker 2: which makes a lot of sense, and then for short
Speaker 2: term it's a bit the findings that I've seen are
Speaker 2: a bit more mixed, where like some prefer dark Triad man,
Speaker 2: some prefer non dark Triad men. And the question is
Speaker 2: why would you ever prefer a dark Triad man for
Speaker 2: short term dating? And I think that's what we were
Speaker 2: trying to answer with this, And I think one possibility,
Speaker 2: especially in modern situations, is that it's really easy for
Speaker 2: you to kind of learn about their deception and learn
Speaker 2: about the tactics they use, and learn about the ways
Speaker 2: that they might fool you in a long term relationship
Speaker 2: from the short term relationship, and then you can have
Speaker 2: this like behavioral sort of repertoire that you can look
Speaker 2: out for when you're looking for a long term mate.
Speaker 1: So you say it again, why why would they? Why
Speaker 1: would they ever? Why would anyone ever be interested in
Speaker 1: meeting with the dark individual?
Speaker 2: So well, first, how about so there was I think
Speaker 2: a nuance in this, in the finding from this paper
Speaker 2: that maybe would help make sense of this too. There is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so there are two types of or sort of two
Speaker 2: things that influence attraction. One of those is sort of
Speaker 2: an effect. It's kind of like with empathy. There's an
Speaker 2: effective attraction and there's a behavioral attraction. So what we
Speaker 2: found in this paper was that women, morbidly curious women
Speaker 2: or otherwise were not really more effectively attracted to dark
Speaker 2: tried men. They didn't feel warm towards them, you know,
Speaker 2: cozy towards them. But morbidly curious women were behaviorally attracted
Speaker 2: to dark triedment. They were very interested in them, They
Speaker 2: were interested in learning more about them, And how do
Speaker 2: you learn more about someone well, you go on a
Speaker 2: couple of dates with them, and you can learn about
Speaker 2: someone pretty well. Right, And why would you want to
Speaker 2: learn about a dark triad man. Well, one reason that
Speaker 2: you might want to do that is that it will
Speaker 2: help you spot them in the future, especially when you're
Speaker 2: looking for long term mates, because the whole point of
Speaker 2: a dark triad man's mating strategy is that they are
Speaker 2: being deceptive. They're not going to let you know that
Speaker 2: they're a dark triad man. So the only way that
Speaker 2: you can find out sort of their tricks is to
Speaker 2: actually play the game a little bit, right, to play
Speaker 2: the game to to kind of go through the motions,
Speaker 2: learn how they're being manipulative, and then you kind of
Speaker 2: can look out for that, you can spot that. And
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that all of this is conscious, right,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that a woman is going into a short
Speaker 2: term mating situation knowing that that's why she's doing this,
Speaker 2: or even doing it intentionally for that reason. But I
Speaker 2: do think that that's a motivating factor, even if it's
Speaker 2: operating below the sort of conscious level of awareness.
Speaker 1: So where does lust fit in is that within the
Speaker 1: god scientists are so nerdy behavioral. I mean, how unsexy
Speaker 1: are those? Right? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Doctor idea?
Speaker 1: It's a hey, every attraction versus off active attraction? Where
Speaker 1: does it? Where? Where is it where you're just getting
Speaker 1: really turned on by someone? What is where? What bucket
Speaker 1: does that belong in?
Speaker 2: You know, it's probably, it's probably it's it's got to
Speaker 2: be some like combination of both, right, like you've got
Speaker 2: to feel a little warm towards him. But also, I mean,
Speaker 2: the behavioral attraction I think is probably closer to lust
Speaker 2: than affective attractions.
Speaker 1: You guys didn't look at I mean, you didn't look
Speaker 1: at the extent to which women are more sexually aroused
Speaker 1: by dark triad men. Right, you don't know.
Speaker 2: But has that paper? I feel like that's a paper that.
Speaker 1: Surely has surely done that.
Speaker 2: Surely surely that's that sounds like a study that's been done. Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: we didn't look at that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, if it's been done, it's done it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that, It's within his purview perfectly.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, like, yeah, like what bucket that fits into? Well?
Speaker 2: I think you know, when you talk about arousal, you're
Speaker 2: talking about too You know with uh, if you watch
Speaker 2: a scary movie, your body gets aroused, right like you're
Speaker 2: you're what you're experiencing something dangerous in a safe setting,
Speaker 2: You're going to get aroused in a very sim way
Speaker 2: as you would if you were experiencing in a dangerous setting.
Speaker 2: The difference is you kind of have a cognitive toolkit
Speaker 2: to tell you I can pull myself out of this
Speaker 2: if I need to. I can get out of this
Speaker 2: if I need to. I'm not in true danger. And
Speaker 2: there could be something similar going on with the you know,
Speaker 2: dating a dark triad man, especially again in twenty twenty fours. Yes,
Speaker 2: are you at higher risk than if you weren't dating them?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You are. But is the risk tolerable for the amount
Speaker 2: of information and the type of information you might learn? Maybe? Right,
Speaker 2: especially if it's if it's influenced by both interest and
Speaker 2: sort of this lust motivational sets right, If it's influenced
Speaker 2: by both of those, it's going to push you towards
Speaker 2: a behavioral committing the behavior as opposed to avoiding it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good point. You've really got me thinking about a
Speaker 1: lot of things, like, for instance, what is lust anyway?
Speaker 1: What is lust? You know there are studies showing that
Speaker 1: if you walk on a really wobbly bridge and you
Speaker 1: think you're going to die and your heart is racing, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you see a female at the end of that bridge,
Speaker 1: you'll attribute that heart racing to being attracted to the female.
Speaker 2: Yeah, forget, like you rate her more attractive when you
Speaker 2: walk on the bridge than if you met her in
Speaker 2: them all.
Speaker 1: And that's a classic psychological study. So it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder the extent to which sometimes some of these women
Speaker 1: are confusing lust for being.
Speaker 2: Like thrilled, I'm almost scared. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Actually
Speaker 2: I hadn't made that connection, but that, you know, especially
Speaker 2: with the bridge, that classic bridge study, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: exactly what they were looking at.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I'm just like making connections between different areas
Speaker 1: of research, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, if you ever want to do a study
Speaker 2: in a bar, let me know, that's the perfect one.
Speaker 1: I would love to do that study. But I think
Speaker 1: we had to really be mindful of IRB and not
Speaker 1: actually scaring people and you know all them.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, well that's you know a lot of
Speaker 2: my research I do at haunted houses for that very reason, right,
Speaker 2: I can't scare people to the extent that you can
Speaker 2: out in.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that. Let's let's now talk about haunted houses,
Speaker 1: because I I've been meaning to talk to you about
Speaker 1: that as well. Sure, and I and I really, I
Speaker 1: really think this this episode is going to be so
Speaker 1: interesting to so many people. I think that we're just
Speaker 1: having such an honest, exportive conversation about humans in a
Speaker 1: way that I just think that so many people are
Speaker 1: going to be so interested in this. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about haunted houses. I watched a really interesting documentary the
Speaker 1: other day about these extreme horror houses. It was the
Speaker 1: first time that they came on my radar. I was
Speaker 1: not aware they existed, and I was not aware there
Speaker 1: were a large, large, large, large number of women who
Speaker 1: are like sign me up. You know. I was struck
Speaker 1: by the gender difference as well in this. In this, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a really creepy guy, you know in this in
Speaker 1: this uh Netflix documentary. I'm banking on the name of this.
Speaker 1: It was supposedly the most well known extreme horror house
Speaker 1: manor maybe that's exactly what it was. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: it was. This really really creepy guy, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, oh my Gosh.
Speaker 2: He's also like a wedding singer. Did they show that
Speaker 2: in the documentary? Oh my god, He's like he like
Speaker 2: sings at weddings too, which just makes it even creepier
Speaker 2: for some reason.
Speaker 1: Gosh, the things he did to these people which they
Speaker 1: consented to. Yeah, we're really extreme. Yeah, it was hard
Speaker 1: for me a lot, even even me who I like
Speaker 1: Carr movies. But but I guess this was because this
Speaker 1: was real.
Speaker 2: This is real footage, and you can tell that he
Speaker 2: derives pleasure out of doing that. He's you know, he's sadistic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he derives a lot of pleasure out of doing that,
Speaker 2: which is which is different from just enjoying like jump
Speaker 2: scaring your friends, right, Like if you I think this
Speaker 2: guy seems like he like wants to torture people and
Speaker 2: can't legally do it, so he does this.
Speaker 1: I think that's what it is. I think that's yeah.
Speaker 1: But then there's the other side. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: other side. Sure, a lot of these individuals and there
Speaker 1: were some men who went through it. It was so
Speaker 1: like adrenaline, you know, yeah, and there was a feeling
Speaker 1: for them. I think maybe not so different than people
Speaker 1: who do extreme sports. Sure that they overcame something. There
Speaker 1: was a sense of I got a sense that they
Speaker 1: felt a sense of mastery. Oh yeah, go through going
Speaker 1: through it. So is that another element we should bring
Speaker 1: into this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that's the only reason anyone
Speaker 2: goes to mccamie manner. I don't think they go there
Speaker 2: for any other reason, right than that feeling.
Speaker 1: They're being tortured. Yeah, voluntarily consentually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, with and I can't remember in mcamei manner,
Speaker 2: I mean most of so there. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: like haunted houses that you go to during Halloween, and
Speaker 2: then there's like on the far right tail that these
Speaker 2: extreme haunts. There was a famous one in LA I
Speaker 2: think it was called Blackout. I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: still around. And then there's like mccamie manor where they
Speaker 2: you basically consent to them to do whatever they want.
Speaker 2: Most of those have like a safe word or something
Speaker 2: you can use to still get out of it. I
Speaker 2: don't know if McCamey Manner does or not. I don't
Speaker 2: know's I've seen that documentary.
Speaker 1: At least according to the documentary, he plays very fast
Speaker 1: and loose with that he does yeah, he decides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and I really need to go.
Speaker 1: And that's the problem to me.
Speaker 2: No, no to me too, especially for like a scary
Speaker 2: play situation. The whole point of the play is that
Speaker 2: you can end it when you're done right. Otherwise that's
Speaker 2: no longer play. That's something else.
Speaker 1: It's something else. I mean, that's like straight up psychopath
Speaker 1: level shit there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's It's been a year or two since
Speaker 2: I've seen the documentary, but I remember even being shocked
Speaker 2: at that. I was thinking, and I was shocked too
Speaker 2: at the you know, there's a waiting list for people
Speaker 2: to get into.
Speaker 1: Time place, so relating to our prior topic, not only
Speaker 1: a waiting list to get into it, he's got a
Speaker 1: winning list of girl of women who want to be
Speaker 1: his girlfriends.
Speaker 2: He does. Yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I mean the documentary showed these beautiful young women,
Speaker 1: beautiful young women just clamoring and fighting for his attention.
Speaker 2: Huh. Maybe this is a different documentary than I've seen.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they really the documentary you saw didn't
Speaker 1: showcase his exes.
Speaker 2: No, but there have been no, but there have been
Speaker 2: a couple of documentaries about mechini manners, so I probably
Speaker 2: watched an older one. But yeah, I guess I believe
Speaker 2: it in a weird way, like I can kind of
Speaker 2: see that, right, I mean, serial killers get the same thing,
Speaker 2: even if they're not that attractive. I mean, like Ted
Speaker 2: Bundy's kind of the classic charming, handsome serial killer. But
Speaker 2: there are a lot of less attractive Like even Jeffrey Dahmer,
Speaker 2: who was who was gay, would get women writing him
Speaker 2: love letters in prison.
Speaker 1: What is going on? Why? And then you have all
Speaker 1: these nice guys that feel like I haven't.
Speaker 2: Even been to I'm not even a fell in, and
Speaker 2: I can't get anyone. Yeah, I think, you know, as
Speaker 2: confusing as the women writing, and in the case of
Speaker 2: here killers is really as a subset of women as well.
Speaker 1: But that's good in the.
Speaker 2: Case of I think at the same time that it's
Speaker 2: really confusing and weird. It kind of makes sense from
Speaker 2: this orbid curiosity framework, because what do you have if
Speaker 2: you have a serial killer who's in prison for life,
Speaker 2: let's say, or awaiting you know, execution, you have like
Speaker 2: arguably one of the most dangerous individuals you could ever
Speaker 2: personally meet, right, and you have them in a place
Speaker 2: where they can never harm you. That's like a perfect
Speaker 2: recipe for engaging in morbidly curious behavior, right, and in
Speaker 2: the case I mean that again, wanting to like marry them,
Speaker 2: That's maybe some other factors going into that, but I
Speaker 2: think like wanting to learn about them, being behaviorally interested
Speaker 2: in them, maybe writing them letters, getting to know them.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is the that is the safest way
Speaker 2: to learn to learn from the horse's mouth what it's
Speaker 2: what a serial killer is like. Right, there's no film,
Speaker 2: there's no middleman there, there's not a documentary crew. It's
Speaker 2: just you writing the letter to the serial killer and
Speaker 2: him writing back. And so I think you just have
Speaker 2: this rare scenario where you have an incredibly dangerous individual
Speaker 2: who you can interact with, who can't hurt you in
Speaker 2: any kind of way.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of this, a lot of this
Speaker 1: ties to Noel Carol's theories about the paradox of horror.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you have in your studies read his work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially early in my studies. That it's you know,
Speaker 2: early in grad school I was reading his stuff. What
Speaker 2: are you thinking?
Speaker 1: Though? In grad school I would go to Paul Boom's
Speaker 1: lab meetings and we would discuss why horror is so popular,
Speaker 1: so big shout out to my one of my mentors,
Speaker 1: Paul Boom, But it just seems related. It is like,
Speaker 1: why are people so fascinated by horror? Well, the learning,
Speaker 1: the learning that it can bring us, you know, and
Speaker 1: being able to reduce fear and anxiety about the world
Speaker 1: through knowledge and yeah, and making sense trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of things that don't make sense about people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think you don't only learn about the
Speaker 2: dangerous things, but you also learn about your own reactions
Speaker 2: to those dangerous things, right, Like you're learning about if
Speaker 2: I'm watching a scary movie, let's say your true crime
Speaker 2: documentary or something, I'm learning about dangerous people, but I'm
Speaker 2: also learning about my own sort of responses to that
Speaker 2: and what it feels like to feel anxious and feel afraid.
Speaker 2: And you know, for better or worse than our modern world,
Speaker 2: most people don't have a Most people, like living in
Speaker 2: the US, don't have a lot of daily situations where
Speaker 2: they should feel incredibly anxious or incredibly afraid, right, And
Speaker 2: so we're not very familiar with those feelings and we
Speaker 2: kind of push them away, which is not always bad,
Speaker 2: but it does mean that when they come up, they
Speaker 2: inevitably come up, Right, We're not very good at dealing
Speaker 2: with them because we haven't experienced them and played with
Speaker 2: them and learned how to regulate those things. You have
Speaker 2: to experience bad emotions to learn how to regulate bad
Speaker 2: emotions or negative.
Speaker 1: That's a really great point. So another aspect of it
Speaker 1: is is is to increase resiliency and I think so skills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that's consistent with this study why frightening imaginary worlds? Yeah,
Speaker 1: morbid curiosity in the learning potential of horror. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a paper. That's a paper I would direct people to.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can in the show notes add some of
Speaker 1: these studies actually that might be really valuable to our listeners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think you know that. That was a
Speaker 2: that was a commentary to a paper about why people
Speaker 2: enjoy imaginary worlds in general? Right, great, really great paper,
Speaker 2: fascinating paper about it was a BBS paper why do
Speaker 2: people enjoy imaginary worlds? And they put together this whole
Speaker 2: theoretical model about it. And you know, one of the
Speaker 2: questions that I had when I read that paper was well,
Speaker 2: why are there always Yes, I think it is about
Speaker 2: openness and exploring new places. But why do these new
Speaker 2: why do these new fictional places almost inevitably have a
Speaker 2: bad guy? Almost always they have an evil, awful, terrible
Speaker 2: person living there doing terrible things to the good people
Speaker 2: who live there. And so that's what that commentary was about,
Speaker 2: saying that, like, yes to all of this about why
Speaker 2: we love imaginary world, but one missing piece might be
Speaker 2: that we also love them because we can safely interact
Speaker 2: and learn about, interact with and learn about villains, dangerous people,
Speaker 2: people who are gonna cheat us or or harm us
Speaker 2: or or otherwise bad for our existence.
Speaker 1: Makes a lot of sense. It's funny your face was
Speaker 1: frozen there for a second with this look of expression
Speaker 1: with your eyes wide open.
Speaker 2: Like why I like a fear face?
Speaker 1: Right again again, I would to take a screen capture.
Speaker 1: I think that'll be a good picture picture. Well, this
Speaker 1: links The way mine mind works is my mind I'm
Speaker 1: like an encyclopedia knowledge of the field of psychology. So
Speaker 1: I just go back and you know, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: part of my autism. But I'm able to always kind
Speaker 1: of just think of how this relates that that that
Speaker 1: that so at this also relates to our understanding. You
Speaker 1: know Roy Baumeister's work on why is the bad so
Speaker 1: much more attention robbing them the good? There's this particular
Speaker 1: paper that ties it all together called Choosing the Negative,
Speaker 1: a behavioral Demonstration of morbid curiosity. So they found that
Speaker 1: social negative images were chosen more often than other negative categories.
Speaker 1: People delibered, quote, people deliberately subject themselves to negative images.
Speaker 1: And that's what you found in your twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: study for study study four.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So that paper, that's a great paper, and
Speaker 2: it was the first I would say that was the
Speaker 2: first modern paper on morbid curiosity. Was that Choosing the
Speaker 2: behavioral Choosing the Negative? That was probably the first. I
Speaker 2: think it was like a twenty seventeen or eighteen paper.
Speaker 2: So that paper used Are you familiar with eye apps?
Speaker 2: The International Effective Picture System, I think is what that
Speaker 2: stands for. It's a collection of images that have been
Speaker 2: pre rated for valence and arousal and different emotions basically,
Speaker 2: and so there's you know, ones that are negative or positive,
Speaker 2: or high arousal low or else. Well in what that
Speaker 2: paper and a lot of psychology studies use i apps.
Speaker 2: I actually have a huge problem with IAPS. I think
Speaker 2: it's I think it's like one of the most ecologically
Speaker 2: invalid things you could use. But it does its job
Speaker 2: in that it's a very standardized set of images that
Speaker 2: you can use to reliably, you know, see differences between images.
Speaker 2: To that paper, Yeah, use the i APPS image set
Speaker 2: of prereated images for like social negative images or positive
Speaker 2: social images or negative non social or positive non social
Speaker 2: or neutral. Yeah. Basically found that people prefer when given
Speaker 2: the choice to look at a negative image, and in
Speaker 2: particular a negative social image, which makes a lot of
Speaker 2: sense because we have sort of this negativity or threat bias,
Speaker 2: and we also have a social bias where we pay
Speaker 2: attention to social information. So if you get people just
Speaker 2: the choice to look at these two images, they're going
Speaker 2: to choose the one that's negative because it's potentially more
Speaker 2: important information and the one that's social because it's potentially
Speaker 2: more important information.
Speaker 1: But there's something really deep going on here about the
Speaker 1: wiring of the human brain, which is suggested by this
Speaker 1: twenty twenty study by Susanne ooster Wich.
Speaker 2: At All.
Speaker 1: Finding that choosing intensely negative stimulating gages similar brain regions
Speaker 1: as those that support extrinsic incentives and regular curiosity, such
Speaker 1: as the astratum inferior frontal gyrus, anterior insulin, and anterior
Speaker 1: sing with cortex. So could it be that we're like
Speaker 1: wired as humans to find negative information more rewarding than
Speaker 1: positive information. That's my question for you.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, rewarding, I mean rewarding from like
Speaker 2: the from a from a like neurobiological perspective. Rewarding. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would say so. I would. I would say that Susanna,
Speaker 2: she showed that in that in that paper. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I would say that that seems consistent with anything that
Speaker 2: I've ever found or you know, my pay I mean,
Speaker 2: that's I think that's the proximate explanation for why we
Speaker 2: do it. So approximate explanation is that it's more rewarding
Speaker 2: from a neurochemical.
Speaker 1: Perspective than from an evolutionary psychology perspective, as these researchers
Speaker 1: argue in the paper Interested in serial killers more bid
Speaker 1: curiosity in college students. It's a lot about protective vigilance,
Speaker 1: and that could be a big you could imagine on
Speaker 1: the savannah, you know, if you have the one serial
Speaker 1: killer in the tray and the kind of plan, you know,
Speaker 1: like you want to find that one, you know what I'm.
Speaker 2: Saying, Yeah, and I actually need to bring up to Savannah. Actually,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of my thinking in when I
Speaker 2: when I as I was, as i've as I've done
Speaker 2: my research over the years, a lot of my thinking
Speaker 2: ties back to animals because I did behavioral biology degree
Speaker 2: and my advisor was a we studied monkeys, right, So
Speaker 2: I was kind of just always in this like, well,
Speaker 2: what do other animals do? Mindset? So are other animals
Speaker 2: morbidly curious? Was one of the questions that I asked
Speaker 2: myself as I was doing this research. And I think
Speaker 2: the answer is yes, they have fewer opportunities to exercise that,
Speaker 2: but when given the opportunity, they do seem to be
Speaker 2: morbidly curious. So like on the Savannah, for example, Thompson's
Speaker 2: gazelle's will observe their natural predators as opposed to just
Speaker 2: running from them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, like if you've got or let's take like lines
Speaker 2: and zebras for example, because you can probably find photos
Speaker 2: of this online. If you have a group of zebras
Speaker 2: who are grazing and a lion is often the distance
Speaker 2: you might imagine like, oh, well, if a zebra sees
Speaker 2: that lion, all the zebras are going to run away,
Speaker 2: because why would they not. That's what zebras do when
Speaker 2: they see a lion. But that's actually not what zebras
Speaker 2: do when they see a line. It's not what a
Speaker 2: gazelle does when they see a cheetah. What they do,
Speaker 2: depending on how far away the predator is and how
Speaker 2: big of a group they're in and some other factors,
Speaker 2: is they actually observe the predator. It's called it's got
Speaker 2: its own name, it's called predator inspection. And presumably they're
Speaker 2: observing the predator because they're trying to learn about the predator.
Speaker 2: What does it look like like, what is it? What
Speaker 2: are its movements like? Does it look like it's hunting,
Speaker 2: does it look like it's relaxing. They're vigilant towards the predator. Right.
Speaker 2: I think humans do the same thing. The only differences
Speaker 2: and it's a big difference. But the only difference is
Speaker 2: we can create completely safe scenarios with stories where we
Speaker 2: can engage in predator inspection, right, So that means that
Speaker 2: we can exercise our morbid curiosity almost infinitely, whereas you know,
Speaker 2: for a gazelle. The cheata has got to be, you know,
Speaker 2: at least thirty yards away. It gets closer, it gets
Speaker 2: a little too dangerous, it's got to run, you know.
Speaker 2: They can't go back to the They can't go back
Speaker 2: to gazelle town and tell stories about cheetahs. They have
Speaker 2: to just observe firsthand what the cheetah looks like and
Speaker 2: learn about it that way. Humans can create a million
Speaker 2: different documentaries and books and movies and TV shows and
Speaker 2: other kinds of stories about dangerous situations or dangerous and
Speaker 2: predators or individuals and learn about them that way, and
Speaker 2: not only that, but learn about them in situations that
Speaker 2: have never exist or have an existed yet, but are
Speaker 2: likely to exist. This is exactly why we like apocalyptic movies.
Speaker 2: Right The apocalypse has not happened yet. Many small apocalypses
Speaker 2: have happened around the world to different groups, but you know,
Speaker 2: one big one hasn't happened. But what can we do. Well,
Speaker 2: we can tell a story about what might happen, and
Speaker 2: we can learn about that, and we can maybe learn
Speaker 2: how to prevent that. We can learn how to take
Speaker 2: steps to prevent that. We can learn about or imagine
Speaker 2: ourselves in that situation and ask ourselves what would we
Speaker 2: do in that situation?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: That's like most of what more bi curiosity is is
Speaker 2: what do they do? And what would we do?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Wow, this is all really coming together so nicely
Speaker 1: and in a way where we're really starting to understand
Speaker 1: the systems involved here and how being interested in and
Speaker 1: fascinated by these things is really a separate system than
Speaker 1: being the perpetrator correcting, correct, I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: a read actually running through this whole episode. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: kind of just tying it all together, I think it's
Speaker 1: a good kind of place to end for people, so
Speaker 1: they can kind of see the arc of this episode
Speaker 1: and how we synthesized a good number of studies. There's
Speaker 1: more we could talk about, of course, like conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and COVID fascination. Look that I read all the studies,
Speaker 1: you know, in preparation for this, and I'm I think
Speaker 1: it's such a cool body of literature that really explains
Speaker 1: a lot about humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and something that's been missing, right, something psychology
Speaker 2: kind of just overlooked in some ways for so long.
Speaker 1: Agreed, agreed, and and and it tells us a lot
Speaker 1: about humans as well as certain humans, you know, and
Speaker 1: and why certain humans are not fascinated by that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's I would say, you know, because I love horror movies.
Speaker 1: I would say on dating apps, it's hard for you
Speaker 1: to find women who love horror movies and who are
Speaker 1: also compassionate, loving women, which is my type as well,
Speaker 1: you know, so being able to find that combinations like
Speaker 1: a unicorn from So, if you're listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: and you like horror movies and you're a good person,
Speaker 1: hit me up on Instagram. But all, you know, all
Speaker 1: joking aside. Colton is so so nice to have this
Speaker 1: chat with you, and I'm glad I could try to
Speaker 1: spotlight on your very seminal work in the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. It's been one of the more I mean,
Speaker 2: I've done lots of podcasts. This has been probably one
Speaker 2: of the most interesting conversations.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, So glad to hear that. Definitely, I hope sure
Speaker 1: it was nerdy. We're the most dirty.
Speaker 2: Definitely the nerdiest