Are YOU morbidly curious? Take the quiz that reveals what your obsession with Squid Game and true crime podcasts REALLY means
- Horror expert Coltan Scrivner PhD has devised a quiz about morbid curiosity
- Questions include if you'd attend a public execution or watch a head transplant
- However experts have said being interested in morbidity could help anxiety
- Coltan told FEMAIL: 'Horror can serve as a sort of surrogate for your anxiety'
- Psychotherapist Andre Radmall said it is a 'healthy way to manage fear'
- Said: 'Morbid curiosity may help us to work through our darkest fears'
If you've found yourself hooked on the latest gorey Netflix hit Squid Game, or you're an avid fan of the current raft of true crime podcasts and documentaries, it could mean you have a high level of 'morbid curiosity'.
Morbid curiosity refers to a 'motivation to learn about threatening situations', either through witnessing them, or as a simulation, such as a book, film, or podcast.
Now Coltan Scrivner, a researcher at The University of Chicago in the Department of Comparative Human Development and a Fellow at the Institute for Mind and Biology, has devised a quiz to reveal your level of morbid curiosity.
Questions include whether you'd be interested in attending a public execution, watching a head transplant or learning more about the minds of serial killers.
While an interest in grisly topics might seem prurient, Coltan told Femail that it could actually prove to be a positive way to manage fear, saying: 'Horror can serve as a sort of surrogate for your anxiety.
'It pulls you into the story and attaches your anxiety to the threat in the story - the monster, killer, or whatever it might be. Now you can identify the source of anxiety, which gives you a sense of control.'
Experts have revealed how being morbidly curious can actually help you cope with anxiety, as a quiz about the topic was shared online (pictured, a scene from Squid Game)
He explained: 'You can imagine morbid curiosity as the fuel for scary play, which simply refers to imaginative play that induces fear.
'Children do this in the form of games like tag or hide-and-seek, while adults tend to engage in scary play through horror movies, true crime podcasts, and haunted houses.
'Participating in scary play could feel cathartic in some ways. However, it's less about "releasing" tension than is commonly thought.
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'In my research, I've found that people who are feeling anxious can actually get some relief from horror entertainment, whether that's a book, podcast, movie, or haunted house.
'Horror entertainment gives the anxiety a purpose. For many people who struggle with anxiety, one of the worst feelings is feeling anxious and not knowing why.
'Without having something to which you can attribute your anxiety, it's difficult to overcome it.'
Questions within the quiz include whether you'd be interested in attending a public execution, watching a head transplant or learning more about the minds of serial killers (pictured, Moors murderer Ian Brady)
Coltan continued: 'You also have ways to regulate the intensity of the source now.
'If you're watching a horror movie, you can dial the intensity down by turning down the sound, watching with the lights on, covering your eyes, or even looking up the jump scares to be prepared for them.
'When the movie ends, your parasympathetic nervous system, which controls rest and relaxation, kicks into gear.
'If the fear was intense enough, you may even get some endorphin release that produces a feel-good effect, similar to a runner's high.
'All of this combined could help you re-route your feelings of anxiety, take control of it, and ease out of it.
'Most people try to avoid feeling anxious or fearful in their everyday life - and for good reason.
'But, we are bound to feel these negative emotions at some point in our lives, and ignoring the feelings completely can leave us unprepared for dealing with them.
'The kinds of controlled scary play allow people to build cognitive and emotional skills for dealing with fear and anxiety in a safe setting.
'In many ways, engaging in scary play works like exposure therapy, and morbid curiosity is like the therapist who motivates you to keep going.'
Meanwhile psychotherapist Andre Radmall said: 'Being morbidly curious could be a healthy attempt to manage fear, particularly fear of death.
'There has been a big increase in people focusing on their own mortality during the pandemic.
'Young people have encountered death in those close to them at an unprecedented level.
'Morbid curiosity may operate as a way to face fears. Reading about true crime or watching horror films are a way to address inner fears in a way that is managed by the process of storytelling.'
Andre, who penned the self-help book Get Unstuck, continued: 'It is interesting that young women make up 80 per cent of true crime podcast listeners. It may be that what is being read or seen is only in a book or on a screen makes it more manageable while still enabling the person to express their fears.
'This is why jump scare horror movies are so popular.'
He continued: 'We are swamped by fearful statistics and news on a daily basis, all of which is out of our control.
'So morbid curiosity may help us to work through our darkest fears in a way that is being managed for us by whoever produced the material we are looking at.
'More research is needed, but there are some indications that those who embrace their morbid curiosity may actually be more resilient to the shocks and disruptions of things like global pandemics.'
He added: 'Anecdotally I have noticed as a coach and therapist that the avoidance of issues like death, illness and mortality can in and of itself create high levels of anxiety and even be implicated in negative ways of self- regulation, like addictions.'
Last month, research commissioned by Foxtel found women are turning to the 'grisly and gruesome' in a 'bid to relax' (pictured, a scene from Silence of the Lambs)
Meanwhile BACP registered counsellor Jennifer Park agreed, adding: 'The sensation of getting through the film and book etc means a person has survived something they often thought unsurvivable and this may lessen anxiety by showing an outcome, anxiety is predicated on not knowing an outcome and therefore worrying.
'Also, horrific news events, for example cause, fascination as we know they exist but they don't show up in our commonplace life so it shows certainty (opposite of anxiety) where before we couldn't imagine it.'
Last month, research commissioned by Foxtel found women are turning to the 'grisly and gruesome' in a 'bid to relax'.
Serial killer and cult documentaries were proven to be the most popular with women in the results.
Men, by contrast, are more likely to opt for documentaries on science and medicine, sports and sporting icons.
In the research, 45 per cent of women listed true crime documentaries as their favourite, whereas only 26 per cent of men said the same.
The study into viewing figures and preferences for documentaries was conducted by YouGov.
Fans of apocalyptic movies like Contagion and 28 Days Later were more resilient and better prepared to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, study claims
Movies that portray the end of the world or post-apocalyptic scenarios – known as 'prepper' films – have helped viewers deal with the coronavirus pandemic, a study claimed last year.
Psychologists found that people who have been watching movies depicting social chaos and the collapse of global order are better prepared for the virus.
Fans of 'prepper' genres, including alien-invasion, apocalyptic, and zombie films, exhibited higher levels of resilience and preparedness in experiments.
Those people who had been watching horror films in the last few months also showed greater psychological resilience to the viral pandemic.
The researchers said an exposure to frightening fiction allows audiences to practice coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.
Viewers 'learn vicariously' and are 'unintentionally rehearing the scenarios' when watching films like Contagion and 28 Days Later, and TV shows like The Walking Dead.
Cillian Murphy in a scene from 28 Days Later, a zombie apocalypse movie from 2002. Fans of pandemic and other types of disaster films can practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations
'Our ability to imaginatively inhabit virtual worlds – worlds of our own making, as well as those conveyed by movies and books – is a gift from natural selection,' study author Mathias Clasen, a psychologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, told the Guardian.
'[It's] a bit of biological machinery that evolved because it gave our ancestors an edge in the struggle for survival.
'If you’ve watched a lot of what we call prepper movies, you will have vicariously lived through massive social upheavals, states of martial law, people responding in both pro-social and dangerously selfish ways to a sudden catastrophic event.
'Compared to somebody who has never simulated the end of the world, you’ll be in a better place because you have that vicarious experience.'
The question of why people seek out gruesome and disastrous situations for entertainment has long occupied the minds of philosophers and scientists, the research team say.
It's previously been speculated that such behaviour may be a form of catharsis or that the arousal generated by frightening stimuli is 'inherently pleasurable'.
But these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather important and possibly vital information.
Exploring dangerous situations in imagined worlds is also a far safer alternative to exploring these situations in the real world, and biologically they help prep our emergency and 'fight or flight' responses.
Specifically, films about pandemics give viewers 'low-cost access to information that is difficult or dangerous to come across in the real world'.
Customers take some of the last paper towels in a Costco store in New Jersey, US, during the pandemic. Pandemic films address possible eventualities of a viral pandemic and whether it 'triggers cooperative or selfish behaviour in others'
Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon in the 2011 film Contagion. Sights of empty shelves during the coronavirus pandemic appeared to recall scenes from the film
They address matters such as whether the spread of a virus triggers cooperative or selfish behaviour in others – such as the stockpiling of toilet paper and other essentials – or whether institutions will continue to provide services as usual.
Should a pandemic ever occur, this information could be quite valuable, as it could lead to better preparedness and psychological resilience, the researchers hypothesised.
The team used the 2011 film Contagion, which stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Matt Damon and Jude Law and depicts the spread of a virus transmitted by respiratory droplets, as an example.
Contagion rose from the 270th most-watched Warner Bros film to the second most-watched Warner Bros film three months into the Covid-19 outbreak.
It quickly became one of the most streamed movies in America, presumably due to the fact that it provides 'a realistic example of what happens during a viral pandemic', the team say.
Gwyneth Paltrow starring in 2011 movie Contagion, in which doctors and medical researchers scramble to track a highly contagious, lethal virus as it moves from Hong Kong to the US
In their study, the psychologists questioned 310 people on whether they considered themselves fans of movies and TV shows of 10 genres.
The 10 types of movies and TV shows were horror, zombie, psychological thriller, supernatural, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, science fiction, alien-invasion, crime, comedy and romance.
Only the prepper and horror genre variables were of interest in the analysis and the other genre variables were used to mask the intent of the study.
The team also took a measure of psychological resilience – 'the ability to have subjectively positive experiences during a difficult time' – and mental and physical preparedness during the pandemic, assessed through questionnaires.
As predicted, fans of prepper genres were more prepared for the pandemic and experienced fewer negative disruptions in their life during the pandemic.
Participants who had never seen a pandemic film felt significantly less prepared for the pandemic than those who had seen several or many, while horror fandom was associated with lower psychological distress.
Participants who had never seen a pandemic film felt less prepared for the pandemic than those who had seen several or many pandemic films. Average level of preparedness indicated by the black spot
'Our findings add support to the idea that fiction can be a useful simulation of both specific scenarios, in the case of pandemic films, and generally fearful scenarios, in the case of horror films,' the team report in their study, which is under review at the Social Psychology and Personality Science journal.
Analysis also revealed that morbidly curious individuals experienced greater positive resilience during the pandemic.
Morbid curiosity is typically described as an interest or curiosity about unpleasant things related to death, and was associated with positive resilience and interest in pandemic films, they found.
Morbidly curious individuals were more interested in morbid information about coronavirus and more interested in watching pandemic and virus films and TV shows.
Correlation between trait morbid curiosity and interest in watching a movie or TV show from movie and TV genres during the coronavirus pandemic compared to usual
They also reported more interest than non-morbidly curious individuals in learning specifically about the morbid aspects of the virus, such as seeing photos of what coronavirus does to the body.
The link between morbid curiosity and media preferences are explored further by Coltan Scrivner, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and co-author, in a separate web post.
Scrivner found a greater correlation between morbid curiosity and interest in watching a movie or TV show from the pandemic virus genre in the last few months, compared with other genres such as romance and action.
