psychologist Carney Landis drew lines on people's faces

and then photographed them in various scenarios

to study facial expressions. But he didn't use actors

and he didn't tell the participants to pretend to feel emotions instead

he subjected them to actual trauma he had them do things like

smell ammonia, look at pornographic images and even reach their hand in

buckets of wet slimy frogs. His most intense directive

involved ordering them to take a knife and while being photographed

cut off the head of a living rat

seriously

most initially refused to cut the head off, but eventually

two-thirds agreed to do as they were told

including a 13-year-old boy referred to the psychology department by a doctor

for high blood pressure thought to be caused by emotional instability

many believe his inclusion in Landis' experiment

was an accident

If replicated today Landis might be arrested

but what is psychologically arresting about these images

is that the unease and disgust and fear they show

Is real. It's disturbing

but fascinating

we are paradoxically drawn towards some pretty repulsive things

car accidents, car chases

the possibility of a crash of a fight

or a natural disaster; I mean not one that hurts anyone of course

but one that's exciting. Celebrity scandal

drama, disfiguration, true crime, war

and gore, the macarbe. Like the Kangling a trumpet

used during Himalayan Buddhist rituals that's made out of a human leg bone

we often feel guilty for being interested

in these types of things after all they are unpleasant

but yet we can't look away. Why?

well there is no single reason there are many of them

but they can be mould into a mnemonic

we like disturbing things because we like

to scream. They give us strength, catharsis

reality, exploration, acceptance and meaning

watching someone eat gross tasting jellybeans

or a ghost pepper or a spoonful of cinnamon or

suffer in more extreme ways, is a kinda strange thing to like to do

but its part of what keeps us alive

we are curious even if the outcome

could be bad

we often find uncertainty more unpleasant

than unpleasant certainty. At least if we look

we know. There's a neurological basis for exploring in the face of danger

we become more attentive and alert

when we are frightened, which makes sense. Neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and dopamine

are released when we are scared physically and mentally preparing us to

take on a threat or successfully escape from it

dopamine is famously part of the brains

reward system. Dopamine is released in response to pleasurable

things like sex and food but that doesn't mean

our brains find disturbing things pleasurable

it's more interesting than that, when dopamine systems

are inhibited in laboratory animals they will cease

to seek out food

and literally starve to death; because they no longer find food

fun...no. If food is placed

in their mouths they will consume it and express

signs that satisfaction. Evidence like this suggests that the brain contains

systems that motivate seeking, approaching and curiosity

for their own sake. This has implications in the study of

compulsive behavior just because you wanted to do something

doesn't mean you like it. The rush of chemicals into our brains and bodies when we are

scared

help us. When the threats are real. But if the threats

aren't real of if we are safely distant from them

and merely spectating. The same chemicals still

appear making us more attentive, more curious

and making it more difficult to look away. In the early nineteen hundred's

Eugène-Louis Doyen published incredible images of corpses he cut

into stackable slices. The images

are amazingly macarbe but yet utterly

fascinating and a wonderful reminder of what we are

literally made of. We often feel like we need an excuse

like Halloween or anatomy homework in order to look at things like that

without coming across as a total weirdo. I mean

come on if you look too interested in the macarbe it might look like you are

into, approve of or enjoy the gruesome

funny enough that guilt may very well fuel

our desire to look in first place sometimes

pressure to not do something can actually make people more likely

to do that thing

it's called the boomerang effect. There are many different ways for things to

boomerang; one is Streisand effect

when trying to suppress something unintentionally

makes it more widely distributed. In 2003

Barbra Streisand sued to suppress a photo

published online, as part of a California coastline preservation project

one of the photos, the one she was trying to get rid of, showed

her house. Within a month of the lawsuit going public

nearly half a million people had flooded the website and downloaded the

picture. Before the suit only six people

had downloaded the image two of which were her lawyers

in a similar fashion social pressures and tabboo's against viewing

disturbing things can make them more

interesting

rarer and so a more valuable commodity and also

free in that deliberately viewing them can demonstrate to ourselves and others

that we are free and can do what we want

disturbing things can also make us feel

stronger, because their repulsiveness

is a challenge. Glenn Sparks at Purdue University

has studied the way terrifying films affect us

after watching them viewers often feel strong

satisfied that they didn't chicken out that they made it through

they conquered something disturbing and were able to handle it

it's almost a form of practice; as Stephen King put it

we make up horrors to help us cope with real ones

on the more negative side following celebrity scandals or seeing

defeat on the faces of the rival team

can make you feel pretty good it's called

schadenfreude which means harm joy; getting pleasure

from others misfortunes. Social comparison theory

describes and predicts behavior like this although grades and

rankings cause anxiety we nonetheless possess

a drive to seek out evaluations of ourselves

in comparison to others, we especially enjoyed the evaluations

that put us on top. Now causing other people to be

less well of. Sort of makes sense under this lens

if its relative happiness you're concerned with trolling or harassing or griefing

other people sort of works, it doesn't make

you happier but compared to the people you're annoying

you are less annoyed

so yay... viewing scenes of

anger and vengeance and violence

that don't even involve us can nonetheless cause

our own anger and aggression to burn off, as though they're being

satisfied. It's called catharsis

a cleanser a purification. Creating images and movies and stories that play with our

emotions might be grasping at low

hanging fruit. A task beneath such logical creatures as ourselves

or it might be a powerful demonstration

of the fact that we have control or at least a leash

around how we feel. We condemn the actions

of serial killers but nonetheless often treat them

like rock stars. Web sites like redrumautographs and serialkillersink

sell autographs, souvenirs, trinkets and works of art

made by real serial killers

some call it murderabilia. On a spectrum of petty thrills and morose voyeurism

to complete overwhelming obsession and fear

Our relationship with the morbid is complicated

but it is under our control if we're aware

of our actions. One of the most constructive and socially important

uses of the morbid is the facilitation of meaning, acceptance

and empathy. In his book 'Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck'

Eric G. Wilson says that our attraction to the macabre is

on some level a desire to experience

someone else's suffering

morbid curiosity is often about the imagination

imagining what it would be like to be that other person what if that happened

to me? Could it happen to me?

empathetic feelings remind us that our time is limited

and that we are fragile and in doing so bring us

closer together. Sure enough the last movie I watched it made me want to go

out and hug the very first friend I could find

wasn't a happy feel-good comedy instead

it was Louis Theroux's somber 'Extreme Love Dementia'

viewing unpleasant things

doesn't always make them less unpleasant or any less real

but that's not always the point. Morbid curiosity is

also about acceptance remember

our brains are wired with motivations to explore

unpleasant things, because doing so can be preferable

to ignorance. Gawking at morbidity is often about asking why

there must be a reason, a meaning behind all of this

when tragedy strikes or horrors are revealed we listen to experts give opinions

neighbors describe the killer, we look for signs that were missed

and confirmation that others feel the same way we do

that people are helping or making sure justice

is served. Katelin Dodi the host of 'Ask a Mortician'

here on YouTube just wrote a phenomenal book

'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons

from the Crematory' in the book she says

accepting death doesn't mean that you won't be devastated when someone you love dies

it means you will be able to focus on your grief unburdened by bigger

existential questions like

why do people die? And why is this happening to me?

death isn't happening to you, death

is happen to us all. That's heavy stuff

but acceptance like that is one of the greatest things morbid

curiosity has to offer and don't worry

there's a funny side to all of this or at least

a funny side related to this

and how morbidity helps us make sense of the world

a study in Finland found that children were four times as likely to be scared

by their usual television programs if a parent

was in the room. It surprised researchers but one explanation lies

in the "uh oh mom flinched theory"

the idea is that to a young child almost everything is brand new

but parents are older they're wiser they know what's normal

and if they are scared of what's on TV

uh oh...how we feel and how we feel about how we feel

is to a large degree learned. There's a theory about the origin of humor

called the encryption theory of humor it suggests that one of the great roles humor

plays is in measuring whose inside and whose outside

whose similar and whose socially or ideologically

too different. Jokes test what researchers call

unstated common knowledge the teller and listener

both share so might we be

morbidly curious for the same reason we enjoy telling jokes

jokes assess underline shared

attitudes. Morbidity helps us asses shared

underlying attitudes of an existential

variety, morality and justice

whether it's used for empathetic or exploitative reasons

morbidity and laughter may share

a similar adaptive role. We are morbidly curious

because we like to scream but more strangely

the yuk...and the yuk yuk

overlap. And as always thanks for watching