Deciphering morbid curiosity: Psychological mechanisms underlying the voluntary viewing of negative images

Abstract

The hedonism principle assumes that people pursue pleasure and positive experiences; however, we often observe that people voluntarily seek negative experiences in various daily settings—sometimes interpreted as the manifestation of “morbid curiosity.” This study attempted to test three hypotheses on novelty/curiosity, metacognitive miscalibration, and emotional arousal, explaining people’s voluntary viewing of negative images. The participants chose whether to view an image that was positively or negatively valenced. The results revealed that the rate of choosing to see positive and negative images decreased when the participants had already seen the images previously. This result supports the novelty/curiosity hypothesis. However, contrary to the metacognitive miscalibration and the emotional arousal hypothesis, participants overestimated their negative feelings prior to viewing the negative images; individual differences in sensation-seeking did not predict people’s choice of viewing negative images, and emotional arousal did not have an inverted-U relationship with choice behavior. These findings indicate a potential mechanism underlying people’s behavior to voluntarily seek negative information; nevertheless, participants’ voluntary choice of negative images did not seem to be explained by these factors.