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- True crime shows offer a reassuring narrative formula, reinforce a sense of moral clarity, and remind us of our good luck. They allow us vicarious participation in the forbidden and educate us on Dark Triad personalities. Something has clearly reached popular phenomenon levels in our culture when Saturday Night Live decides to parody it.
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Feb 20, 2023 · Why Do We Watch True Crime Shows? True crime shows are more popular than ever, as we seek meaning to our lives. Posted February 20, 2023|Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster. Key points. True crime...
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Why are true crime shows so popular?
Why do people watch true crime?
Is true crime a popular podcast?
Why are people obsessed with true crime?
- Because Being Obsessed with True Crime Is Normal (To A Point).
- Because Evil Fascinates Us ...
- And We Want to Know What Makes Killers Kill.
- Because of The 24/7 News Cycle ...
- … and Because We Can’T Look Away from A “Trainwreck.”
- Because It Helps Us Feel Prepared.
- Because There Might Be An Evolutionary Benefit.
- Because We’Re Glad We’Re Not The victim.
- Because We’Re Glad We’Re Not The perpetrator.
- Because It Gives Us An Adrenaline Rush.
First things first: There’s nothing weird about being true crime obsessed. “It says that we're normal and we’re healthy,” Dr. Michael Mantell, former chief psychologist of the San Diego Police Department, told NPR in 2009. “I think our interest in crime serves a number of different healthy psychological purposes.” Of course, there are limits: “If a...
The true crime genre gives people a glimpse into the minds of people who have committed what forensic psychologist Dr. Paul G. Mattiuzzi calls “a most fundamental taboo and also, perhaps, a most fundamental human impulse”—murder. “In every case,” he writes, “there is an assessment to be made about the enormity of evil involved.” This fascination wi...
We want to figure out what drove these people to this extreme act, and what makes them tick, because we’d never actually commit murder. “We want some insight into the psychology of a killer, partly so we can learn how to protect our families and ourselves,” author Caitlin Rother toldHopes & Fears, “but also because we are simply fascinated by aberr...
Even if we’ve been fascinated by crime since the beginning of time, we likely have the media to thank for the uptick in the true crime fad. “Since the ‘50s, we have been bombarded … in the media with accounts of crime stories, and it probably came to real fruition in the ‘70s,” Mantell said. “Our fascination with crime is equaled by our fear of cri...
“Serial killers tantalize people much like traffic accidents, train wrecks, or natural disasters,” Scott Bonn, professor of criminology at Drew University and author of Why We Love Serial Killers, wrote at TIME. “The public’s fascination with them can be seen as a specific manifestation of its more general fixation on violence and calamity. In othe...
According to Megan Boorsma in Elon Law Review [PDF], studies of true crime have shown that people tend to focus on threats to their own wellbeing. Others have noted that women in particular seem to love true crime, and psychologists believe it’s because they’re getting tips about how to increase their chances of survival if they find themselves in ...
Dr. Marissa Harrison, associate professorof psychology at Penn State Harrisburg, told Hopes & Fears that she believes people are interested in true crime because we’ve evolved to pay attention to things that could harm us so that we can better avoid them. “You would pay attention to, and have interest in, the horrific, because in the ancestral envi...
Psychologists say one of the main reasons we’re obsessed with true crime is because it gives us an opportunity to feel relieved that we’re not the victim. Tamron Hall, host of ID's Deadline: Crime, identified that sense of reprieve at ID's IDCon in 2017. “I think all of you guys watch our shows and say, ‘But for the grace of God, this could happen ...
On the other hand, watching true crime also provides an opportunity to feel empathy, Mantell said: “It allows us to feel our compassion, not only a compassion for the victim, but sometimes compassions for the perpetrator.” "We all get angry at people, and many people say ‘I could kill them’ but almost no one does that, thankfully,” Packer said. “Bu...
“People ... receive a jolt of adrenaline as a reward for witnessing terrible deeds,” Bonn writes. “If you doubt the addictive power of adrenaline, think of the thrill-seeking child who will ride a roller coaster over and over until he or she becomes physically ill. The euphoric effect of true crime on human emotions is similar to that of roller coa...
Jun 5, 2021 · Americans' once-secret love of true crime podcasts, movies, TV and books is now out in the open. Here's some of what's driving our dark consumption habit.
Jul 9, 2021 · Why crime shows are so addicting. People who don’t have any interest in true-crime stories might think you’re a creep for enjoying them — but rest assured that your love of the macabre doesn ...
From podcasts to documentaries to long-running TV shows like “Dateline,” the true crime genre entertains and informs through gruesome and heart-wrenching stories. But the popularity of the genre begs the questions: Why is such a violent topic ingested by so many, and how is this enjoyment affecting psyches and our culture?
- sojc@uoregon.edu
Jul 9, 2021 · From ‘Tiger King’ to ‘The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel’ to ‘The Vow,’ true-crime documentaries are more popular than ever.
Discover the psychological and evolutionary reasons behind our fascination with true crime stories, from BBC Science Focus Magazine.
