Publications
Books
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Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away
Penguin Books
Academic Papers & Book Chapters
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Vulnerability and the computational logic of fear: Insights from the horror genre
2025 — Preprint
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Behavioral attraction predicts morbidly curious women's mating interest in men with dark personalities
2024 — Personality and individual Differences
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Surfing Uncertainty with Screams: Predictive Processing, Error Dynamics and Horror Films
2024 — Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
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Bleeding-heart horror fans: Enjoyment of horror media is not related to lower empathy or compassion
2024 — Journal of Media Psychology
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The Neutralization Theory of Hatred
2024 — The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions
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Curiosity — A Behavioral Biology Perspective
2024 — The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions
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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
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Curious about threats: Morbid curiosity and interest in conspiracy theories in US adults
2024 — British Journal of Psychology
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Explaining the Diversity and Variability of Fictions: An Evolutionary Framework
2024 — Preprint
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Cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress in vulnerable and grandiose narcissists: An exploratory study
2023 — Frontiers in Psychology
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The psychological benefits of scary play in three types of horror fans
2022 — Journal of Media Psychology
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Why frightening imaginary worlds? Morbid Curiosity and the Learning Potential of Horror
2022 — Commentary: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
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The psychology of morbid curiosity: Development and initial validation of the morbid curiosity scale
2021 — Personality and Individual Differences
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Scaring away anxiety: Therapeutic avenues for horror fiction to enhance treatment for anxiety symptoms
2021 — Preprint
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Pandemic Practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic
2021 — Personality and Individual Differences
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Introducing Point-of-Interest as an alternative to Area-of-Interest for fixation duration analysis
2021— PLOS ONE
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An infectious curiosity: Morbid curiosity and media preferences during a pandemic
2021 — Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
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Playing With Fear: A Field Study in Recreational Horror
2020 — Psychological Science
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Gruesomeness conveys formidability: Perpetrators of gratuitously grisly acts are conceptualized as larger, stronger, and more likely to win
2020 — Aggressive Behavior
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Toward a General Theory of Human Individual Differences: Can Evolutionary Psychology Meet the Challenge?
2020 — Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
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Violence reduces attention to faces and draws attention to points of contact
2019 — Scientific Reports
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Creativity Patterns in the Production of Scientific Theories and Literary Fiction
2018 — KNOW: A journal on the Formation of Knowledge
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Morningness-eveningness and sociosexuality from a life history perspective
2018 — The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences
Contact
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