Personality and curiosity about morbid and sexual events

The study was designed to examine the relationships of sensation seeking, extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism traits with an interest in presentations of violent or morbid and sexual events in the media and in live sports. Scales of curiosity about morbid and sexual events and self-ratings of attendance of horror and X-rated erotic movies were developed and given to 89 male and 213 female undergraduates along with the personality scales. Males scored higher than females on both types of curiosity and film attendance scales as well as on the SSS and P scale. The SSS and P scale correlated positively with curiosity scales and sensation seeking also correlated with film attendance of both types of films. A new hypothesis suggests that high sensation seekers are interested in stimuli that increase activity in central catecholamine systems. Past research has demonstrated that violent, fear-provoking and erotic films increase peripheral catecholamines.