Amanda Vicary

Amanda Vicary

Amanda Vicary appears on this site as first author of the 2010 Social Psychological and Personality Science paper on why women are drawn to true crime.

Who they are

The work of Amanda Vicary reaches this site through the paper listed below. On this site the name is tied to Morbid Curiosity.

Key papers

Vicary, A. M., & Fraley, R. C. (2010). Captured by true crime: Why are women drawn to tales of rape, murder, and serial killers? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(1), 81-86. What it reports: Five studies. Readers' actual book choices showed women drawn more than men to true crime, and three further studies varied features of true crime stories to see which ones women found most engaging; the authors read the results through evolutionary views of aggression.

Key ideas

Morbid Curiosity: A motivation to seek out information about dangerous phenomena, measured as a stable and normally occurring trait.

Sources

  1. Vicary, A. M., & Fraley, R. C. (2010). Captured by true crime: Why are women drawn to tales of rape, murder, and serial killers? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(1), 81-86.