Publications

Books

  • Book cover of 'Morbidly Curious' by Coltan Scrivner, PhD, featuring a beige background with bold, red-dripping title font and the subtitle 'A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away.' Includes Penguin Books logo.

    Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away

    Penguin Books

Academic Papers & Book Chapters

  • Behavioral attraction predicts morbidly curious women's mating interest in men with dark personalities

    2024 — Personality and individual Differences

  • Surfing Uncertainty with Screams: Predictive Processing, Error Dynamics and Horror Films

    2024 — Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

  • Bleeding-heart horror fans: Enjoyment of horror media is not related to lower empathy or compassion

    2024 — Journal of Media Psychology

  • The Neutralization Theory of Hatred

    2024 — The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions

  • Curiosity — A Behavioral Biology Perspective

    2024 — The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions

  • Social emotions are governed by a common grammar of social valuation: Theoretical foundations and applications to human personality and the criminal justice system

    2024 — The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions

  • Curious about threats: Morbid curiosity and interest in conspiracy theories in US adults

    2024 — British Journal of Psychology

  • Explaining the Diversity and Variability of Fictions: An Evolutionary Framework

    2024 — Preprint

  • Cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress in vulnerable and grandiose narcissists: An exploratory study

    2023 — Frontiers in Psychology

  • The psychological benefits of scary play in three types of horror fans

    2022 — Journal of Media Psychology

  • Why frightening imaginary worlds? Morbid Curiosity and the Learning Potential of Horror

    2022 — Commentary: Behavioral and Brain Sciences

  • The psychology of morbid curiosity: Development and initial validation of the morbid curiosity scale

    2021 — Personality and Individual Differences

  • Scaring away anxiety: Therapeutic avenues for horror fiction to enhance treatment for anxiety symptoms

    2021 — Preprint

  • Pandemic Practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic

    2021 — Personality and Individual Differences

  • Introducing Point-of-Interest as an alternative to Area-of-Interest for fixation duration analysis

    2021— PLOS ONE

  • An infectious curiosity: Morbid curiosity and media preferences during a pandemic

    2021 — Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture

  • Playing With Fear: A Field Study in Recreational Horror

    2020 — Psychological Science

  • Gruesomeness conveys formidability: Perpetrators of gratuitously grisly acts are conceptualized as larger, stronger, and more likely to win

    2020 — Aggressive Behavior

  • Toward a General Theory of Human Individual Differences: Can Evolutionary Psychology Meet the Challenge?

    2020 — Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences

  • Violence reduces attention to faces and draws attention to points of contact

    2019 — Scientific Reports

  • Creativity Patterns in the Production of Scientific Theories and Literary Fiction

    2018 — KNOW: A journal on the Formation of Knowledge

  • Morningness-eveningness and sociosexuality from a life history perspective

    2018 — The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences

Contact

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