Love gore and horror, the dark and scary? There’s a scientific reason why.
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
4.1 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
True crime, horror movies, even haunted houses — psychologist Coltan Scrivner says they all tap into a survival instinct. He explains how morbid curiosity evolved to help humans face threats and why those drawn to darkness might be more compassionate than we think.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, October 31st, 2025. |
| 0:15.0 | Why do we slow down to look at car crashes or get hooked on true crime podcasts? It's not just morbid fascination, it's science. |
| 0:23.6 | Arizona State University-based psychologist Colton Scribner |
| 0:28.6 | has spent years studying why humans are drawn to the dark and disturbing |
| 0:32.6 | and how that instinct might actually help us survive. |
| 0:35.6 | His new book, Morbidly Curious, |
| 0:38.3 | as scientist explains why we can't look away, |
| 0:41.8 | is on bookshelves now. |
| 0:43.3 | Colton, thanks for joining me. |
| 0:44.3 | Yeah, thank you for having me on. |
| 0:46.3 | I want to start by asking you about your motivations for this book. |
| 0:50.3 | What was the spark? |
| 0:51.8 | Was it personal, academic, cultural that drew you to study morbid curiosity? |
| 0:58.3 | Has that motivation evolved over the course of your research? I think it was a little bit of |
| 1:04.0 | each thing you mentioned. I mean, I myself am a horror fan, would consider myself morbidly curious |
| 1:09.5 | in ways that many people are. |
| 1:11.3 | I enjoy true crime and fascinated by, you know, the scary things that are happening in the world. |
| 1:17.1 | I would say primarily, at least originally, it was academic. |
| 1:20.3 | You know, when I first started studying this, there was really no research on it. |
| 1:24.1 | And because there was no research on it, there were really no books and certainly no popular science books that were accessible to people who were interested in this |
| 1:31.5 | topic. And so, yeah, that was my main motivation was to get the information out there to people |
| 1:37.6 | who are interested. In your book, you argue that morbid curiosity is more than a quirky preference. |
... |
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