Psychological Perspectives on True Crime Consumption

Abstract

Project name: Horror as creative emotion regulation – Can true crime consumption help boost adaptive coping with fear and stress? Years: 01.01.2023 to 31.05.2024 This research project investigates the psychology of interest in true crime – the narration of real-life crime stories in various media (books, podcasts, movies, TV, news). The main goal of the project is to provide a first, in-depth investigations of cognitive, affective, and social correlates of true crime consumption with a particular focus on motives, traits, and perceptions of true crime consumers as well as potential consequences of true crime consumption with regard to well-being and mental health. Additionally, this study is used as an overarching investigations of aspects influencing behavior and well-being in daily life, including measures of creativity, emotion regulation, the experience of meaningful coincidences, curiosity, also with regard to potential interindividual differences regarding gender, age, or socioeconomic background. a) Demographic data (gender, age, education, income, relationship status, living area, psychiatric/neurological diagnosis) b) true crime consumption and motivations (McDonald et al., 2021) c) Morbid curiosity (Scrivner, 2021) d) Big-5 personality (Rammstedt et al., 2013) e) Dark triad (Malesza et al., 2019) f) Depressive symptoms (Hautzinger & Bailer, 1993) g) Trait anxiety (Spielberger, 2001) h) Perceived stress (Klein et al., 2016) i) Resilience (Chmitorz et al., 2018) j) Aggression (Bryant & Smith, 2001) k) Meaningful coincidences (Bressan, 2002) l) Likelihood of victimization (Kerestly, 2021) m) Media preferences (Scrivner, 2021) n) Cognitive emotion regulation (Loch et al., 2011) o) Cognitive reappraisal capacity (Weber et al., 2014) p) Malevolent creativity (Perchtold-Stefan et al., 2021