A Neurological Basis for Morbid Curiosity

Dopamine and the two paths to morbid curiosity

The Two Paths to Morbid Curiosity

I haven’t really written about this anywhere, but I suspect there are two somewhat distinct motivational pathways to morbid curiosity.

The first pathway is more sensation-based. For some people, strong sensations themselves are intrinsically rewarding. In psychological research, these people would score high in sensation-seeking scales. They’re likely to be a bit riskier or more impulsive than the average person in their pursuit of novel and extreme experiences.

With its ability to stir fear, anxiety, and awe, the macabre offers a reliable jolt of powerful emotions. It can serve as an attractor for those hungry for raw stimulation.

The second pathway is, I think, a more interesting one. It’s a more information-driven pathway. Here, the appeal lies not in the rush but in the insight. Dark or unsettling experiences offer novel information, provoke curiosity, and engage the mind with “what if” scenarios. Because we want to avoid any truly bad things happening to us, information about terrible events can be a seductive way to explore danger from a distance.

Historically, psychological research has focused mostly on the first pathway. For example, psychologists argued for decades that the reason people enjoyed horror movies was because they enjoy the rush it provides. They relish in that surge of adrenaline that floods your body when Leatherface revs his chain saw.

I was one of the first scholars to really push for the second pathway, at least in psychology. I was skeptical of the sensation-seeking explanation, at least as a complete accounting of why people were sometimes drawn to dark material. Many people who like horror don’t really seem to be the “adrenaline junkie” type. Skydiving doesn’t interest them and they don’t really enjoy rollercoasters.

The accepted psychological narrative seemed incorrect to me. I believed that something else was driving many people’s fascination with the macabre.

I’ve published a few studies showing that there’s a lot more to morbid curiosity than an adrenaline rush. Perhaps the most convincing one was a 2022 study at Dystopia Haunted House. If there’s one horror-themed location we’d expect to find a mass of adrenaline junkies, it’s a haunted attraction.

While we did find adrenaline junkies at Dystopia, they were far from the majority. A large share of visitors were what we came to call “white knucklers.” These were people who were genuinely frightened during the experience but who nonetheless enjoyed it overall. They weren’t there for the bodily thrill; they were there for what the experience taught them about themselves. For them, the value came from the cognitive challenge, not the rush.

We also identified a third type of horror fan that we weren’t necessarily expecting: the “dark coper.” These were people who combined both elements: they enjoyed the jolt of adrenaline, but they also found the experience meaningful and even therapeutic, helping them cope with difficult emotions like anxiety or depression.

Another way to think about this was that adrenaline junkies took the first path to morbid curiosity, white knucklers took the second, and dark copers took both.

At the time, we didn’t speculate much about the underlying neurobiology behind these differences. But recently, after revisiting Colin DeYoung’s 2013 paper on dopamine and personality, I began to see how these behavioral patterns might be influenced by dopaminergic systems in the brain.