The success of horror films, popularity of true crime, and prevalence of violence in the news implies that morbid curiosity is a common psychological trait. However, research on morbid curiosity is largely absent from the psychological literature. In this paper, I present a psychometric tool for assessing morbid curiosity, defined as a motivation to seek out information about dangerous phenomena, and use it to investigate the psychological nature of morbid curiosity. In studies 1 and 2 (n_total = 1370), the Morbid Curiosity Scale was developed and its relationship to personality was assessed. Morbidly curious individuals were rebellious, socially curious, and low in animal reminder disgust. Study 3 (n = 317) demonstrated that trait morbid curiosity is stable over 4–6 weeks and that morbidly curious individuals prefer movies where threat is a central theme. In Study 4 (n = 137), participants were presented with a choice between morbid information and non-morbid information (image and text). Morbid curiosity predicted over half the variance (r² = 0.53) in decisions to further investigate morbid information. These four studies provide evidence that morbid curiosity is a normally occurring psychological trait that can be assessed using the new 24-item Morbid Curiosity Scale.

恐怖片的成功、真实犯罪的流行以及新闻中暴力的盛行意味着病态的好奇心是一种常见的心理特征。然而，心理学文献中基本上没有关于病态好奇心的研究。在本文中，我提出了一种评估病态好奇心的心理测量工具，定义为寻找危险现象信息的动机，并用它来调查病态好奇心的心理本质。在研究 1 和 2（n_总计 = 1370）中，制定了病态好奇心量表并评估了其与人格的关系。病态好奇的人是叛逆的，对社会充满好奇，对动物提醒的厌恶程度很低。研究 3 ( n = 317) 证明了病态好奇心的特质在 4-6 周内是稳定的，并且病态好奇的人更喜欢以威胁为中心主题的电影。在研究 4 ( n  = 137) 中，参与者可以在病态信息和非病态信息（图像和文本）之间进行选择。病态好奇心预测了 进一步调查病态信息的决策中超过一半的方差 ( r ² = 0.53)。这四项研究提供的证据表明，病态好奇心是一种正常发生的心理特征，可以使用新的 24 项病态好奇心量表进行评估。