Validity and reliability of Persian version of morbid curiosity scale in students

The success of horror films, the attention to violent crimes and the prevalence of violence in the news show that morbid curiosity is a common psychological trait. However, research on morbid curiosity is largely absent in the psychological research literature. one of the reasons being the lack of a suitable Scale for Iranian society. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the Persian version of the Morbid Curiosity Scale.

The research design was descriptive factor analysis and the statistical population of the study was all students of Zanjan University in the academic year 1401-1400, from which 500 people were selected by cluster sampling. For the study, Morbid Curiosity Scale was used.

The results showed that Cronbach's alpha for the subscales of the Minds of Dangerous People is 0.79, Body Violation is 0.81, Supernatural Danger is 0.79, and Interpersonal Violence is 0.80 and the total scale is 0.85. The results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis also confirmed the significant relationship between explicit variables and latent structures and showed that the four-factor structure has a good fit in the samples.

The morbid curiosity scale among students has good reliability and validity and the use of this scale in future research is reliable.

The findings of this research can be used in psychotherapy, psychological research, media psychology, and advertising psychology.