Roadkill. Car crashes. Sickening news stories. Talking about death. Even doomscrolling endlessly. Many of us find that it’s the most unappealing sights and topics that pique our interest the most. It’s a phenomenon called “morbid curiosity,” and even though it’s perfectly natural, it’s a source of shame for a lot of people. It’s easy to feel like there’s something wrong with you for not being able to resist reading about a murder or craning your neck to look at roadkill. Psychologists say otherwise. Morbid curiosity has been studied for decades Morbid curiosity has long been understood as an evolutionary mechanism. But our grasp of its function, and where it comes from, has evolved over time. In 1986, one of the first published papers on morbid curiosity introduced a scale known as CAME: Curiosity About Morbid Events. Early research like this study focused on the kinds of people who were interested in death and things that can lead to death, rather than the why. It was viewed as a trait of people who sought thrills and stimulation. Later theories began to link morbid curiosity to our will to survive. Some researchers posited that morbid activities—say, watching a violent horror film—were a way to “practice” the act of being mortal while still being safe. In other words, it’s a rehearsal or a test-run that prepares us for more life-threatening situations. Later still, psychology began to understand that morbid curiosity could be related to our ancestors’ need for threat detection. A dead animal could indicate that there’s a predator nearby, for example, so it would make sense that we’d be drawn to look at it and not away for our own safety. Scientists were interested in how this mechanism could override our natural sense of disgust. But there were gaps in all of these theories that couldn’t explain all the different forms morbid curiosity can take. New paper makes key distinctions about our morbid fascinations A paper in the Psychological Review builds on previous research through an evolutionary lens. David S. March argues that morbid curiosity isn’t just about thrill-seeking, fear management, or even survival. It’s a combination of many of these things; a concept he calls “resolving ambiguity.” Simply put, when something is related to death or danger, we want to know more about it. It could mean that a predator is nearby, but it could also be an opportunity: a dead animal, to use the example again, could also have been a food source for earlier humans. It’s a theory that helps unify all the ones that came before, and it helps explain why our morbid curiosity takes many forms. It’s not just roadkill and horror movies; it’s also doomscrolling and true crime. It’s natural, and evolutionary, for us to be interested in anything that might contain survival-relevant information. One study referenced in Psychology Today found that true crime listeners, for example, were adept at paying attention to and remembering tricks potential victims used to escape or spot a threat before they got hurt. That’s the kind of survival relevant information we can glean by not shying away from things that would otherwise trigger disgust or fear. March’s new theory has yet to be put to the test. It’s a new theoretical model rather than a revealing new dataset. But it changes the way we think about our own morbid curiosities and, hopefully, helps reduce any feelings of shame we might experience. Being drawn to murders and roadkill and the worst news stories imaginable doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s just your brain seeking to make sense of all the information available, reduce ambiguity, and find any and all information that might later help you survive. The post Fascinating new research finally explains humans’ ‘morbid curiosity’ appeared first on Upworthy.