Psychological process underlying morbid curiosity

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18H01102
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 10040:Experimental psychology-related
• Research Institution: Kochi University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: Murayama Kou 高知工科大学, 総合研究所, 客員教授 (10748726)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 繁桝 博昭 高知工科大学, 情報学群, 教授 (90447855)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 好奇心

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Why do people often spontaneously see negative stimuli such as horror movies? What is the psychological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon? We conducted a series of behavioral experiments (including experiments with virtual reality) to answer these questions. The results showed that people spontaneously view negative stimuli partly because they are relatively novel (novelty hypothesis) and people mispredict their negative emotional feelings (misprediction hypothesis). However, these mechanisms did not completely explain participants' behavior, leaving some open questions for future work on the topic.

Free Research Field

動機づけ

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

どうして私たちは怖いものをついみたくなってしまうのだろう。今回の研究では，（１）「怖いもの」というものが新鮮に感じられるから，（２）こうした怖いものの実際の怖さを過小評価してしまうから，人はつい怖いとわかっていてもみてしまうことが明らかになった。こうした怖いもの見たさの心理を知ることは，それ自体が基礎研究として価値があるだけでなく，たとえば「なぜ人はダメだとしりつつついドラッグをしてしまうのか」などといった現在の社会問題に対する一つの答えを与えてくれる。