Morbid curiosity: what it is, characteristics and its psychological elements

We are walking down the street and we find a corpse. What do we do? Aside from the obvious, which is getting scared by seeing it and calling the police, we may do one of the following two things: cover our eyes, trying not to see it anymore, or approach and see it with all the luxury of detail.

No, being curious about a corpse is not exactly a very normal thing but it is not a symptom of psychopathy or anything like that. Human beings are curious by nature and there are many people who are very interested in things that are grotesque, murky and macabre.

Morbid curiosity is that feeling of not wanting to look at something that seems horrifying to us but, even so, not being able to avoid continuing to look at it. It is a strange, ironic sensation that manifests itself in different degrees depending on the person. Today we are going to see what are the key aspects behind that peculiar sensation.

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What is morbid curiosity?

Have you heard of Ricardo López? Of the many people who go by this name, the most infamous is undoubtedly the Uruguayan-American who in In 1996 he wanted to go down in history trying to end the life of his greatest idol, the Icelandic singer Björk.

López is not only known for having tried to commit such a homicide, but for how he recorded his descent into madness through 18 hours of recording recorded with his camera, a gift he gave himself when he turned 21.

These recordings are video diaries where he exposes his thoughts, his love-hate for Björk and, also, his complexes for being overweight due to his Klinefelter syndrome. In most of the recordings, Ricardo López appears half-naked, with an evident level of neglect on a floor that with each recording was more full of dirt. They are also these video diaries where he records how he made the sulfuric acid bomb that he would send to his idol. His latest recording, titled “The Last Day-Ricardo López” by himself, ends with him opening his mouth and shooting himself.

These macabre recordings, evidence of the mental problems of a fan who tried to change the life of the Icelandic singer by taking her away, are difficult to view. Not because they cannot be found on the Internet, in fact, all of López's videos are on YouTube. What they are difficult to see is that it takes a lot of stomach to see how Ricardo López shows us how his life and his mind become increasingly murky, grotesque and disturbing.

But the truth is that the YouTube channel is full of videos about the case, and it even has a specialized channel where everything is exposed, including the lifeless body of the 21-year-old. There is a video-documentary of almost 2 hours with more than 200,000 views, made with the most important videos of López.

And let's not talk about the huge number of youtubers specialized in serial killers and notorious murderers who talk about the case. If there are so many videos, it is because there is demand for the subject. People are interested in a subject that arouses a lot of morbid curiosity.

We have all felt this emotion on more than one occasion. Morbid curiosity is that feeling of not wanting to look, but still not being able to stop.. He is seeing something that seems threatening and disgusting, that our nature tells us that it is wrong to pay attention to it so much, that it is even dangerous, but still we continue.

We feel a macabre attraction towards something horrifying, the same attraction that those interested in the case of Ricardo López and Björk feel.

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The psychological elements of morbid curiosity

This emotion has been known for a long time. Plato himself recorded this 2000 years ago when he told the story of a man named Leoncio. One day, Leoncio was walking near his city walls when he glimpsed a pile of corpses with his executioner beside him.

Leoncio he felt the fervent desire to look at those lifeless bodies, but at the same time he felt the genuine feeling that it was wrong to look at them. But his desire conquered his aversion and Leoncio couldn't help but approach the corpses, exclaiming:

"There! Miserable! Contemplate your fullness before the beautiful spectacle! "

Even from a modern perspective, Leoncio's actions do not surprise us. At the end of the day, if the same thing happened to us, it is quite likely that we would not be able to avoid looking at them, even a little bit.

Naturally, there are people who surely could not look at anything, while others could not. they would take it off because, like all human traits, morbid curiosity also has differences individual.

What is it that makes people more likely to look at creepy things than others? This was the question asked by researcher Coltan Scrivner, who has carried out several investigations to determine which are the key aspects behind a person manifesting a higher degree of morbid curiosity than other Based on his research, Scrivner tells us about up to three main key aspects:

1. Rebellious nonconformity

According to Scrivner's research, socially rebellious people score high on something called rebellious nonconformity, that is, the tendency not to obey social norms. Social rebels care little for the traditional way of life and prefer a certain unpredictability in their lives.

Many people, when they are told that something is forbidden or done wrong, feel a special attraction for doing it, something that would be the case of those who present high rebellious nonconformity. Most things that arouse morbid curiosity are often discouraged and penalized by cultural norms.

In western settings, such as Europe and North America, it is considered a violation of social norms to show interest or curiosity about topics such as serial killers, violence, rape or paranormal activities, even though we can find them in the media communication. Showing interest in all this in a Western country is a strong predictor of morbid curiosity.

Naturally, this depends on each cultural context, since In a culture where these questions are not such a taboo subject, social rebels will be less likely to show morbid curiosity towards those same questions..

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2. Disgust that reminds us of our animal origins

Another of the key aspects that Scrivner mentions when talking about morbid curiosity is what he called "animal reminder disgust", translatable to something like disgust that reminds us of our origins animals. This is a dimension of generic disgust that is activated by seeing corpses and things that remind us of death.

It is believed that this type of disgust appears to protect us from what could be dangerous for our health, such as a contaminated body fluid or what has killed the corpse that we are seeing.

In researching him, Scrivner found that people with high morbid curiosity tend to feel less disgust towards those things that remind us of our animal origin. That is, morbidly curious people are less likely to express fear in various aspects of life than are related to death and feel less upset in situations in which integrity can be compromised bodily.

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3. Overt social curiosity

Drawing from the work of Todd Kashdan, in whose research he shows that generic curiosity can be categorized into five dimensions, this researcher and his colleagues have identified social curiosity as a key aspect behind the curiosity.

Social curiosity can be divided into two types: open and covert. While overt or overt social curiosity refers to an interest in the behavior of others, non-overt curiosity is associated with an interest in gossiping and gossip.

Coltan Scrivner relates this to one of the dimensions that he has identified in his work on morbid curiosity: that of concern for the minds of dangerous people. The main aspect of this dimension would be to show curiosity towards the motives and behaviors of dangerous people that has pushed them to commit a vile and bloody act. According to him, people who score high on overt social curiosity are more likely to be morbidly curious.

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The morbid curiosity test

By way of conclusion, with his work Scrivner argues that, Although the three key aspects that we have explained do not explain all the variance on human morbid curiosity, they do significantly influence its appearance and degree with which it manifests.

Based on his work and in a summarized way, people who do not pay too much attention to social norms, who are not afraid of death, who do not get upset when they see a damaged or dead body and who, in addition, are curious about the criminal behavior of certain people, have all the ballots to have a high curiosity morbid.

You may also be a very morbidly curious person... Who knows? Surely you will already have your suspicions about whether or not you are based on how curious you were when you saw a dead animal or if you like documentaries about murky things but, also, if you want to check it, Coltan Scrivner himself has devised a test to evaluate the morbid curiosity available in his his website.