Morbid Curiosity with Coltan Scrivner | Live From America’s Most Haunted Hotel
Why are we drawn to what scares us? Jackie Sahm and Blake Loepp talk morbid curiosity with Dr. Coltan Scrivner at America’s Most Haunted Hotel, the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in this spooky season episode of The Science of Personality.
Dr. Coltan Scrivner is a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, a horror entertainment producer and consultant to Hollywood horror productions, and the author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away, the book that put morbid curiosity on the map.
Take the Morbid Curiosity Test
Buy Coltan’s Book Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away
Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome to America’s Most Haunted Hotel + meet Dr. Coltan Scrivner
08:58 What is morbid curiosity?
11:08 Building the Morbid Curiosity Scale: the four types
19:30 Take Coltan’s Morbid Curiosity Test: what the scale predicts
27:19 The paranormal subscale: agent detection, not belief in ghosts
29:00 Why some people can’t stand horror: disgust sensitivity and anxiety
32:03 Horror as “homebrew exposure therapy”: how scary stories calm anxiety
43:03 The evolution of morbid curiosity: predator inspection
48:00 Does morbid curiosity change with age?
51:21 Dark minds, soft hearts: are horror and true crime fans less empathetic?
1:00:12 Lightning round: scariest movies, Darwin, and life in Eureka Springs
1:09:08 Bigfoot, ghosts (real or imagined?)
1:12:40 Why we’re drawn to dangerous people, and promote them into leadership
1:25:56 What makes the Crescent Hotel America’s most haunted hotel
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Cheers, everybody.