Evolutionary psychology explains true crime fascination as a species survival response.

Criminal cases teach us how to identify and manage predatory threats.

Yet the theory fails to address why the most successful predators still thwart our efforts.

Werewolf is a multi-player “social deduction” game that pits an informed minority of predators (werewolves) against an uninformed majority (villagers). The purpose is to uncover hidden roles through dialogue, reasoning, and detection. The “good” team must identify and eliminate those who intend them harm, while the “bad” team aims to stay hidden so they can pick off the villagers. The werewolves’ best strategy involves deceptive bonding with villagers to deflect objective analysis.

And that’s how successful predators operate in real life: they blend in, befriend, and deceive so no one suspects what they intend.

Dr. Coltan Scrivner, an expert on the psychology of horror, discusses this game in his intriguing new book, Morbid Curiosity. He argues that interest in what’s scary and macabre is good for us because it helps us to identify threats and practice an effective response to them. He defines morbid curiosity as “that peculiar feeling of fascination that motivates us to face fear, disgust, and the unknown,” then supports his stance via the logic of evolutionary psychology. However, one part seems incomplete.

Scrivner says that bad hooks us more forcefully than good. “Negative events capture our attention faster, increase our arousal more, provoke stronger responses, and are remembered with ease compared to positive or neutral events.” And within bad stuff like true crime and gory horror scenarios, threat grabs the most attention. “Threat-related information is seen as........

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