Science explains why you're obsessed with all those Netflix documentaries:
Flip on the television, peruse a local bookstore, or browse a list of podcasts and you'll see it: true crime stories are having a moment right now. Whether it's popular podcasts like Serial or multi-part documentaries on Netflix like The Keepers and Making a Murderer, it seems like audiences just can't get enough murder and mayhem.Amanda Vicary is a social psychologist and professor at Illinois Wesleyan University who studies the social psychology behind crime and media use.
“I wanted to do a study about this,” says Vicary. “I wanted to find out, one, is it true that women really do like learning about crime? And if so, why?”, Vicary scoured Amazon reviews of books dealing with different types of violence. Vicary found that men were more likely to read and review books about war, while the true crime books were more reviewed by women.
“Compared to men, women liked reading about the psychological content of true crime stories,” Vicary said. “Stories where a killer was interviewed by an FBI profile, or that you're trying to get to the inner workings of a killer in some way.” Women, she found, were also more likely to read true crime books if the victim in the story was female.
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