Our Obsession with Crime Shows

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Why do we have an obsession with crime shows?

What is my obsession with crime shows?

• Who do I identify with?
• Is it about Justice?
• Do I have a detective within me?
• Is it a trauma response?

A PhD in crime thrillers

Can I explain my obsession with crime shows? I could possibly qualify as the winner for the “Watched the largest number of crime shows in a week” award.  I am almost proud of it.  It began with an average of 5 Enid Blyton or Nancy Drew books a week.  This evolved into an absolute obsessive love for Agatha Christie Grade 9 onwards and I pride myself, for owning nearly every single Agatha Christie book ever written.  Whether its books or TV shows I have scanned the digital world for any possible well rated Whodunnit, and binge watched the episodes.  I don’t think I am alone.  The world has an obsession with crime shows!

Only recently I decided to do some research into women and crime shows and discovered a lot of interviews and research about the subject.  Why are people interested in true crime documentaries, murder mysteries and serial killers?  What is this obsession with crime shows?  I thought I would explore this from a woman’s perspective.

Psychology behind our obsession with crime shows: Who do you identify with?

The first question that I asked myself who do I identify with?  The perpetrator or the victim?  To answer this, I examined my erstwhile avid viewership of famous serial killer documentaries.  I scoured the internet for survivor interviews, written accounts, dramatizations, serial killer profiles, you name it.  To examine the psychology behind my obsession with crime shows, I asked my therapist “do you think I identify with the perpetrator?”.  She said – “is that your fear?”. Truthfully, I have been grappling with anger issues for the past 30 years, so it was easier for me to peg the perpetrator.  What I found myself fascinated with, was actually human resilience and the will to fight.

Research says that crime shows brings forth a discourse between the Freudian Ego – the self, the Superego – the moral compass and the ID or the choices one makes to intertwine the two.  Does viewing crime allow us to express repressed desires and explores issues that otherwise societal taboos?  Then in that case we may assume that we have a dark hitherto unexplored side which begs expression.  Or …

Psychology behind our obsession with crime shows: Is it about Justice?

Then you must actually identify with the victim.  Studies conducted by (Light et al., 2009) involving the pre-frontal cortex explain the relationship between subtypes of empathy (ability to identify with the experience of another individual), in this case the victim.  The 3 subtypes are i) empathetic concern (negative emotion), ii)empathetic cheerfulness or the display of positive emotion when faced with others’ negative experience to catalyze positivity in them, and iii) empathetic happiness – feeling positive emotion when others are moving from negative to positive state.  In adults prolonged stress results in overall depressed states which in turn make it hard for them to experience empathetic concern. 

The Prefrontal Cortex

A key player in the human experience empathy is the prefrontal cortex.  It is involved in working memory, emotional processing and self-monitoring. We receive information from sensory and limbic systems to organize information, switch focus to the other persons issue sand then induce an emotional state like the others’ negative experience.  Your ability to self-regulate will then come into play to exude empathetic cheerfulness and experience contentment or empathetic happiness when you have helped the other person.

Empathy and obsession with crime shows

It would therefore be safe to say, that most people hook onto the emotional experience of the victim, develop empathetic concern in the hope of being able to negotiate emotional cheerfulness and happiness. Is this a complete explanation of the psychology behind our obsession with crime shows?

Psychological concepts like projection explain why you transpose your emotional experiences on the victim and reward yourself with empathetic happiness when a victim is saved in the nick of time.  The concept of Justice is nothing else but the positive emotions arising from saving an individual from an awful circumstance or experiencing the joy they would experience with the perpetrator is justly punished.

Psychology behind our obsession with crime shows: Do we have a detective within us?

The trials and tribulations of the victim and the detectives keep us engaged with the investigative part of the crime.  When we are watching a crime show guessing who did it or what was the modus operandi is a key part of watching the show.  The thrilling aspects of a good mystery can evoke cognitive engagement.  The more unpredictable the plot the greater the thrill.  It’s not surprising that puzzles, crosswords and mysteries are enticing for most of us. 

The surge of dopamine in the brain can activate the reward pathways of the brain and like any other form of addiction, any sensory experience that creates a surge is likely to make us replicate behavior that provides such a reward.  Is it a surprise that we are hooked onto crime shows?

Dopamine and Obsession with crime shows

Repeated stress however depresses the dopaminergic pathways, and a greater amount of dopamine is needed to create a pleasurable reward.  So, overconsumption of any such digital content can over a period of time, result in a flat feeling.  Dopamine response teaches us to replicate rewarding behavior and avert stimuli that causes stress.  (Baik, 2020) However, people who have experienced chronic stress in their lives often have similar responses to both rewarding and aversive stimuli.  They lose their ability to react to neutral events. 

Crime shows with their variety of sensory events, surprise, novelty, arousal, attention, and value activate they dopamine pathways and get us addicted. This could perhaps explain my obsession with crime shows.

Psychology behind our obsession with crime: Is it a trauma response?

I have personally struggled with PTSD most of my life and have often wondered if watching crime help be relive traumatic situations in a controlled environment.  There is enough research on PTSD and the overactive amygdala, hypothalamus and pituitary relationships.  The axis that controls our survival response.(Xie et al., 2023)

Is it emotional catharsis I seek in a seemingly controlled form of stress?  Could be.  When immersed in a show I have often found myself exclaiming “Why the hell would she go for a walk at night? Or why would you step outside toc check on an intruder?” – isn’t she asking for trouble?  Most psychologists say that women watch crime shows to prepare themselves to deal with adverse situation.  Mirror neurons simulate the emotions that the victim is experiencing, and they use shows to reassure themselves that xyz actions will save them from such an eventuality or when placed in the same position they would not make the same poor choices.

Obsession with crime shows is instinctive

In other words, my reaction to a crime show is largely visceral not intellectual.  To explain the psychology behind women’s obsession with crime shows, we need to look at our instinctual self. The survival response is a primitive response and even though more men are statistically likely to face violent crime than women, most of us feel helpless and feel the need to prepare to survive. 

Response to trauma is always a surge of adrenalin, followed by preparedness for fight, flight or freeze. The frontal cortex does not stand a chance.  Much as we may like to intellectualize our attraction to crime shows, it is likely as women or maybe even men, we have a very primal response to violence.  We first address our survival needs only and only then can our mind cope with the finer intellectual processes of identifying with the victim, experiencing the joy of justice and the thrill of being a detective.

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References

Baik, J. H. (2020). Stress and the dopaminergic reward system. In Experimental and Molecular Medicine (Vol. 52, Issue 12, pp. 1879–1890). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s12276-020-00532-4

Light, S. N., Coan, J. A., Zahn-Waxler, C., Frye, C., Goldsmith, H. H., & Davidson, R. J. (2009). Empathy is associated with dynamic change in prefrontal brain electrical activity during positive emotion in children. Child Development, 80(4), 1210–1231. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01326.x

Xie, H., Shih, C. H., Aldoohan, S. D., Wall, J. T., & Wang, X. (2023). Hypothalamus volume mediates the association between adverse childhood experience and PTSD development after adulthood trauma. Translational Psychiatry, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02576-2

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