The crime and detective genres in media, while being some of the most gruesome and graphic, prevail as unfailingly profitable to produce. True crime documentaries have not only lodged their way into a seemingly immovable position in the cultural zeitgeist, but are in actuality the most popular documentary subgenre. The demand for the true crime subgenre increased by 60% from May 2019-April 2020 to May 2020-April 2021.
This new demand during the COVID-19 pandemic was met with a new docuseries or documentary seemingly every couple of weeks, with some of the most popular being Tiger King or Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. One may wonder why people are drawn to such violent depictions, specifically those fixated on real people who suffered real atrocities. This goes hand in hand with the cultural shorthand term “morbid curiosity,” and this article explores the various psychological and evolutionary explanations behind it.
One evolutionary development is the notion of survival psychology, or on a rudimentary level, the state of mind humans enter upon the perception of a mental or physical threat. In the wild, prey often live in proximity to their predators since these predators are not always in an active hunting mode. This predator inspection helps the prey learn about what the predator’s habits are and what their motivations may be. The same mannerism has been found in humans over time, and in the case of murders and kidnappers, humans may be inclined to learn about said assailants in a safe manner like through a true crime documentary.
The concept of a “safe scare” is derived from the idea that humans often have the survival instinct to understand and control the world around them. The amygdala, or the sympathetic nervous system, is the region of the brain most connected to the fear response. The amygdala is what releases adrenaline and other endorphins, activating a “fight or flight” response.
The “fear-pleasure paradox” describes how watching true crime documentaries or the horror genre can activate this adrenaline rush as a safe rehearsal of threats without the actual threat. The ordeal-simulation hypothesis even argues that “simulations of high-intensity situations can improve chances of survival in real life.” This may occur through synchronized arousal levels when in a group to improve cohesion, or better recognition of warning signs in general.
In order to experience this “safe scare,” physiologically, humans need certain conditions. For one, you need a safety frame — the need to feel physically safe. Number two is that you need to feel a level of psychological detachment from the situation, like the realization that a horror movie is fake. The last factor is your confidence in managing danger, or your ability to control the situation.
Despite the fictitiousness of the crime, journalism professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Charlie Tuggle argues some of the appeal surrounding true crime is public opinion about the brokenness of the justice system. In some cases, the victim may not get their justice and the culprit occasionally runs free. Yet, law professor at UNC Chapel Hill, Patricia Bryan, provides that the appeal stems from the structure of true crime media, which typically concludes with the reveal of the killer. This provides a sense of catharsis and justice for the viewers.
It is however obvious that some individuals like to participate in “recreational fear” more than others and that may range based on their psychological and physiological traits. People who are thrill-seeking and experience-seeking could be more inclined to the type of endorphins dispensed whilst watching true crime documentaries. People who are more susceptible to boredom and have lower levels of inhibition, or the ability to thoroughly think through the consequences of their actions, could also prefer this genre. Furthermore, those who participate in recreational fear more frequently have been shown to have structurally different amygdalae in some neuroimaging studies.
The theory of constructed emotion, developed by Dr. Lisa Feldman-Barrett, postulates that the preference for true crime is based on previous experiences, which influence how the brain constructs the meaning of this type of dangerous stimuli. In this interpretation, fear responses are not universal, and instead are reliant on how the viewers conceptualize danger.
Nevertheless, it has become almost a trope that women as a cohort tend to enjoy true crime media more than men. This is backed by stats such as a 2023 Pew Research Center study that found women (44%) were twice as likely as men (23%) to listen to true crime podcasts. To go back to the idea of survival psychology, women disproportionately experience the crimes depicted in the crime genre, and therefore may unconsciously be more predisposed to trying to glean potential survival tactics.
Women can learn the warning signs of a jealous lover, or escape tips if they were to be kidnapped in real life. Women also show a preference for stories where the victim is a woman, for which a theory could be that the survival strategies employed by the woman in the story could be more relevant for the respective female audience.
Women may also empathize more for the female characters because they simply identify with and more easily imagine themselves in place of them. Due to the large portion of women who participate in the true crime scene, there is a community that provides a place for women who do or could resonate with the victims of these crimes. These communities can move beyond straightforward media consumption and into a tool for coping and connection.