Let’s just try leaning into your morbid curiosity

Film critics Gene Siskel and Johnny Oleksinski have called fans of slasher films like Friday the 13th and Saw "very sick people" and "depraved lunatics who should not be allowed near animals or most other living things".

- Coltan Scrivner

Public outcry around the video game Mortal Kombat in the early 1990s was so extreme that it led to a special US Senate hearing on the topic. Similarly, the recent rise of true crime entertainment has some people wondering if we are becoming desensitised to the horror and seriousness of the events themselves.

Macabre forms of entertainment capture the imagination of millions of people. But is this fascination a sign of coldheartedness and moral depravity? Should we be concerned about our morbid curiosity?

Rather than being a sign of moral deficiency, our attraction to the darker side of life appears to be deeply rooted in adaptive mechanisms that helped our ancestors survive and thrive.

Morbid curiosity refers to our curiosity about threats, which makes clear evolutionary sense. In a dangerous world, those who ignore signals of danger don't last long. Our ancestors who investigated the sounds of predators, learned from others' misfortunes, and understood the consequences of violence were more likely to survive and pass on their genes.

Today, our brains still harbour those ancient vigilance systems. Morbid curiosity motivates us to explore threatening scenarios safely, gathering information about potential dangers without actually experiencing them. When we watch a horror movie or read about a crime, we're essentially running simulations, practising our cognitive and emotional responses to dangerous situations we hope never to encounter in real life.