Do “true crime” series really make people more likely to commit crimes?

Two studies debunk a widespread fear: true crime appears to have little impact on violent fantasies and, in some cases, it actually discourages them.

Some people fall asleep to white noise. Others to a TV series they’ve already watched three times. Others fall asleep to a voice narrating a murder, a kidnapping, or a body found in a ditch.“True crime” has now become part of everyday life: headphones in, dinner to prepare, real blood in the background.

For years, the same suspicion has hung over this genre. By constantly immersing ourselves in real-life stories of violence, something shifts. Perhaps moral boundaries are blurring. Perhaps certain ideas are taking root. Perhaps we’re even becoming better at imagining how to harm others.

Psychology has long studied violence in the media—especially in video games and movies. Some researchers have long argued that violent content can trigger aggressive thoughts and desensitize people to suffering. In this debate, however,“true crime” has remained somewhat on the sidelines, even though it is one of the most widely consumed genres. And yet it deals with assaults, serial murders, kidnappings, abuse, and hostage-takings. Things that actually happened.

In the United States, about half the public consumes “true crime” on television, in books, or via podcasts. This makes the concern seem less like mere armchair paranoia. A group of researchers led by Corinna M. Perchtold-Stefan of the University of Graz in Austria set out to determine whether this exposure to real-life violence could increase what is known as “malicious creativity.” The results were published in the Journal of Creative Behavior.

Malicious creativity is a fairly specific trait. It refers to the ability to generate ideas that are both original and harmful, with the intent to hurt someone, seek revenge, or inflict physical or psychological pain. It is not mere anger. Nor is it raw aggression. It is that extra step: devising an unexpected way to cause harm.

The hypothesis to be tested was twofold. On the one hand, “true crime” could offer a sort of repertoire, an implicit manual of destructive behaviors. On the other hand, those who seek out this genre might do so for entirely different reasons: to better understand the justice system, to come to terms with fear, or to learn to recognize danger.

To determine where the truth lay, the researchers designed two studies. In the first, they recruited 160 adults online. Each participant was asked to indicate how often they consumed “true crime” content. Participants then completed a questionnaire about their tendencies toward physical and verbal aggression. They also took a standard verbal creativity test—the one where you have to come up with as many unusual words or phrases as possible within a very limited time.

The most interesting—and also the most unpleasant—part came next. To measure malicious creativity, participants had to imagine themselves stuck in unfair social situations. A clumsy coworker who spills coffee on an expensive book. A neighbor who promises to pay you for a favor and then disappears. From there, the instructions were given: three minutes to come up with as many harmful and creative ideas as possible to get even.

These responses were then evaluated by independent reviewers along three criteria. They counted how many ideas for revenge had been generated, how harmful they were, and how original they were.

The overall result was much less dramatic than expected. There was no clear, general link between “true crime” consumption and malicious creativity. Only a weak and limited signal emerged: the genre’s most avid fans produced a slightly higher number of revenge ideas, but this held true only for people who already had a highly aggressive personality.

Then there’s a more subtle—and also more interesting—point. Generally, those with strong verbal creativity tend to show more originality in their malicious ideas. Here, that link seemed to break down. Among heavy consumers of true crime, general creativity did not translate into more original ways of harming others. It’s a minor detail, but it carries weight.

To see if these results held up in a different context, the team conducted a second study with 307 participants in a laboratory setting. This time, additional questionnaires were included, covering depressive mood and preferences for other genres, such as horror fiction and science fiction. The goal was to isolate the effect of true crime from a broader taste in entertainment.

The general creativity test was also modified. Instead of verbal creativity, the researchers focused on affective creativity—that is, the ability to quickly generate positive reinterpretations of stressful or threatening situations. In practice: successfully generating reassuring thoughts to calm oneself down, for example, when walking alone in a park after dark.

The malicious creativity task has also been expanded. Participants were asked to devise new acts of revenge in various scenarios, such as dealing with an unbearable roommate or a romantic rival. In addition to quantity, harmfulness, and originality, the evaluators classified the type of revenge: physical harm, property damage, social manipulation, and petty pranks.

Once again,“true crime” did not live up to what many feared. Consumption of this genre was weakly associated with a greater number of ideas, but these ideas were neither particularly harmful nor exceptionally original. When heavy consumers of“true crime” imagined revenge, they more often came up with forms of intimidation or social manipulation than physical destruction.

The most striking finding, however, concerned fictional horror. This preference was significantly more closely linked to the ability to generate highly harmful ideas. The explanation put forward by the researchers holds up. Fictional horror does not have to remain within the confines of the real world, physics, the law, or plausibility. It can afford to employ a much broader vocabulary of harm.“True crime,” however dark it may be, often revolves around patterns of concrete, repetitive, brutal violence in the most down-to-earth way possible.

In the second study, another element already observed in the first study reappeared. People with high affective creativity tended, in general, to come up with more original acts of revenge. But if that same person consumed a lot of“true crime”content, their malicious originality declined. Once again, the link was broken.

The authors propose several explanations. The first concerns empathy and moral sensitivity. Spending a lot of time immersed in true stories of murder and abuse could make the“aftermath” much more present: the loved ones, the trauma, the devastation, the consequences that linger for the living. With this weight on their minds, investing their imagination in inflicting harm can become painful, repulsive, and mentally taxing—even in the context of a simple test.

The second explanation comes from criminology. To put it simply: people adjust their behavior when they have a better sense of the risks, the controls, the presence of authorities, and the real possibility of being arrested. Heavy consumers of“true crime” content might develop a heightened sensitivity to the practical consequences of crimes. And this vigilance could stifle the impulse to imagine new, risky, and “brilliant” forms of aggression.

Then there’s the most tedious and important part—the one that prevents us from playing the role of prophets. Both studies are cross-sectional. They capture a single point in time, without tracking individuals over time. Therefore, they cannot state with certainty whether true crime actually changes anything in terms of creativity or whether certain pre-existing traits are what influence both media consumption and test results.

That is why researchers want to follow up with experimental and longitudinal studies capable of observing how these relationships evolve over the years. Among the avenues for future research is also how the public perceives the novelty of the crimes being recounted: this, too, could play a role in how the mind processes them.

For now, the picture remains relatively clear. “True crime” seems to do very little to turn someone into a more imaginative criminal. In some cases, it even seems to slightly diminish the appeal of the very idea of creative revenge. The fascination remains, of course. So does the compulsive consumption.