You are unloading the dishwasher at 9pm while a stranger narrates the forensic details of a decades-old murder, and this is your idea of a relaxing Tuesday evening. You have recommended podcasts to your friends as if you were sharing a favourite restaurant. You have strong opinions about which true crime hosts are "too sensational" and which ones "really do the research." You are, by any reasonable measure, a true crime person.
This does not mean you are morbid. It does not mean you secretly want to commit a crime. What it does mean, according to several decades of psychology research, is that you are doing something quite sophisticated with your leisure time. You are using a controlled exposure to fear and moral complexity to process things your nervous system needs to process. And the specific way you engage with true crime reveals something genuine about who you are.
Scott Bonn, professor of criminology at Drew University and author of "Why We Love Serial Killers," argues that true crime "triggers the most basic and powerful emotion in all of us: fear." This is the primary driver. People use true crime as a way to face their fears without experiencing the actual danger or trauma associated with them.
Think about what roller coasters, haunted houses, and horror films have in common. They create the physiological experience of fear in a context where you are objectively safe. Your brain gets the adrenaline hit. Your body gets the rush of cortisol and endorphins that follow. And you learn, repeatedly, that you survived. That is not masochism. That is your threat-detection system getting exercise.
True crime does the same thing, with an additional layer. Unlike a horror film, true crime is real. The events actually happened. And that reality, according to University of North Carolina law professor Patricia Bryan, is precisely what makes it compelling. "It speaks to why people go into haunted houses or ride a roller coaster. There's something about facing danger when it's not real, it's not personal."
Social psychologist Amanda Vicary conducted landmark research on gender and true crime consumption, finding that women are significantly more likely than men to choose true crime media and that the preference is strongest for content focused on psychological aspects and survival stories. The Wine and Crime podcast, one of the genre's biggest shows, has an audience that is 85% women. About 73% of all true crime podcast listeners are women.
Vicary's hypothesis is not that women are more morbid. It is that they are more likely to be potential crime victims and therefore more motivated to engage with content that functions as preparation. Her research found women were specifically more drawn to stories where victims survived, where crimes were prevented, or where forensic details could function as practical knowledge.
"They're putting themselves in the same situation, but this time they have complete control, and it becomes healing instead of traumatizing." -- Nebraska researcher Kelli Boling on domestic violence survivors who listen to true crime podcasts
There is also a meaningful social dimension. True crime listening has become, for many women, a communal experience. Hosts like Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark of "My Favorite Murder" built a following of millions not just through content but through community, one that turned passive consumption into active connection.
A 2025 study from Boston University researcher Kathryn Coduto found that true crime followers can develop compulsive engagement patterns: using and posting on social media obsessively about specific cases, developing one-sided parasocial relationships with key figures, and experiencing persistent negative feelings surrounding the stories they follow.
A 2024 YouGov poll found that 60% of true crime consumers believe creators should get consent from victims and their families before producing content, and two-thirds are interested in content about murder and serial killers. The genre has a genuine ethical tension at its centre: the content that generates the most engagement often does so by sensationalising real suffering.
The healthiest relationship with true crime tends to involve awareness of that tension. The listeners who get the most from the genre, and cause the least harm by consuming it, tend to be the Analysts, Preparers, and Justice Seekers: people who maintain a critical relationship with the content and orient their engagement toward understanding rather than pure stimulation.
There is a version of this conversation that goes: "If you like true crime, something is wrong with you." This version is incorrect and also boring. True crime engagement is one of the most widespread human behaviours of the past decade. It correlates with higher rates of charitable giving (Edison Research found true crime podcast listeners are 3.6 times more likely to donate to relevant causes), higher civic engagement, and greater awareness of systemic failures in the justice system.
The psychology behind your true crime obsession is the same psychology behind your personality quiz habit. You are trying to understand something complex, from a safe distance, using narrative as the vehicle. That is not morbid. That is human.