Br J Psychol [JOURNAL]
Sun
200 papers
Universal threads: Shared sociopolitical roots and consequences of extrasensory perception and pseudoscientific beliefs.
Petrović MB, Branković M, Damnjanović M … +3 more , Draginić K, Sullman M, Žeželj I
Br J Psychol · 2026 Jan · PMID 41559822 · Publisher ↗
While irrational beliefs cluster together, their content differs widely, from beliefs about collective memories shaping biological properties (pseudoscientific) to those about premonition (extrasensory). This difference...
While irrational beliefs cluster together, their content differs widely, from beliefs about collective memories shaping biological properties (pseudoscientific) to those about premonition (extrasensory). This difference might extend further-they might reflect a similar information processing style but be differently embedded in worldviews; for example, pseudoscientific beliefs are typically endorsed by conservatives. Across three studies (two preregistered) in two post-conflict countries (total N = 1042), followed by an internal meta-analysis, we investigated whether pseudoscientific and extrasensory perception beliefs (1) are related to a less analytical but more intuitive thinking style, prone to contradictions and fatalistic thinking, but (2) are differentially linked to a conservative, authoritarian and ethnocentric worldview, and (3) are differentially related to past use of non-evidence-based practices, extrasensory perception experiences and civic activism. As expected, both beliefs were similarly predicted by information processing style. However, they were also similarly predicted by authoritarian and, to a lesser extent, ethnocentric views. Moreover, both beliefs were tied to similar behavioural patterns. We argue that the relationship among a conservative worldview, irrational beliefs and socially relevant behaviours is important for understanding how public policies get politicized.
Borderline personality mediates the link between attachment insecurities and subjective working memory deficits: The role of pre-emptive and post-emptive strategies.
Ecer E, Gasiorowska A
Br J Psychol · 2026 Jan · PMID 41556299 · Publisher ↗
Individuals with attachment insecurities, particularly attachment anxiety, often report subjective working memory deficits (SWMD). However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understo...
Individuals with attachment insecurities, particularly attachment anxiety, often report subjective working memory deficits (SWMD). However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. In this project, we propose that borderline personality disorder (BPD) features help explain this link. We tested this model across three studies, including one preregistered study, conducted with Russian, Turkish, and Polish samples. In Study 1, both attachment anxiety and avoidance predicted SWMD, with the former effect being stronger than the latter. The indirect effects of attachment anxiety and avoidance on SWMD via BPD were significant, with the former effect being stronger as the latter. Study 2 introduced gaze anxiety as an additional mediator, revealing that attachment avoidance had stronger indirect effects via gaze anxiety, a potential pre-emptive strategy, while attachment anxiety's effect was stronger via BPD, a potential post-emptive pathway. In preregistered Study 3, reflective functioning mediated the associations between attachment insecurities and SWMD, contrary to our moderation hypothesis. Importantly, relationships between attachment anxiety and SWMD remained robust after controlling for personality traits and personality disorders. Results are consistent with the role of different regulatory strategies in explaining how attachment insecurities contribute to subjective cognitive difficulties.
Differential relationships of positive and negative parenting styles on primary school children's academic achievement: Learning anxiety and learning engagement matter.
Xu Y, Qi Y, Tao Y … +5 more , Jing X, Wang Y, Wang Y, Ning X, Yu X
Br J Psychol · 2026 Jan · PMID 41555707 · Publisher ↗
Parenting styles are widely recognized as influencing academic achievement; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain inadequately understood. Drawing on the dynamic systems theory and the family system...
Parenting styles are widely recognized as influencing academic achievement; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain inadequately understood. Drawing on the dynamic systems theory and the family systems theory, the present study recruited 481 children (222 boys, Mage = 9.90 ± 0.69 years old) to investigate the longitudinal associations between positive/negative parenting styles and academic achievement and to further explore how learning anxiety and learning engagement may mediate these relationships. Results indicated that (1) negative parenting, but not positive parenting, had a negative direct effect on academic achievement; (2) both positive and negative parenting predicted higher academic achievement through increased learning engagement, but not through learning anxiety; and (3) learning anxiety and learning engagement acted as sequential mediators in the link between positive parenting styles and academic achievement. Overall, these findings highlight how parenting approaches shape children's learning and academic results by influencing their emotional and motivational characteristics from a developmental perspective.
Comparability between AI and human cognition and its role in psychological research and AI ethics.
Hsiao JH
Br J Psychol · 2026 May · PMID 41549618 · Full text
With the advances in AI technology, comparison studies between humans and AI can not only enhance our understanding of information processing mechanisms underlying human cognition but also facilitate our understanding of...
With the advances in AI technology, comparison studies between humans and AI can not only enhance our understanding of information processing mechanisms underlying human cognition but also facilitate our understanding of AI systems' behaviour and interactions with humans. In particular, explainable AI (XAI) methods, including both computational and experimental methods, can be used to reveal the mechanisms underlying AI's behaviour and its interactions with humans. This information can be used (1) as computational models to study human behaviour, (2) for updating users' beliefs about AI during the interactions, and (3) for evaluation purposes to examine potential ethical issues associated with AI adoption. Different AI systems may require different XAI methods to accurately reveal their underlying mechanisms to facilitate the comparisons with humans. Thus, an important future research direction is to develop task-specific XAI methods through interdisciplinary approaches across psychology and AI to benefit both psychological research and the development of ethical AI.
Perinatal women dominantly protect-rather than submissively cede-resources when interacting with threatening-looking others.
Proietti V, Mastroianni I, Silvestri V … +3 more , Arioli M, Macchi Cassia V, Geniole SN
Br J Psychol · 2026 Jan · PMID 41543455 · Publisher ↗
When competing for resources, people appear particularly sensitive to social cues of threat, tending to submissively cede resources to more (vs. less) threatening-looking others. This tendency appears especially pronounc...
When competing for resources, people appear particularly sensitive to social cues of threat, tending to submissively cede resources to more (vs. less) threatening-looking others. This tendency appears especially pronounced among those that are physically weaker and thus more vulnerable to harm. One phase of adult life during which humans are particularly vulnerable is the perinatal period, the months leading up to and immediately after parturition (giving birth). Previous evidence and models of parental care and motivation suggest that individuals would be especially sensitive to threats during this phase. Accordingly, here we tested for the first time the preregistered prediction that perinatal (vs. non-perinatal) women would submissively cede more to threatening-looking others when competing over resources. Contrary to these predictions, results showed that women in this phase (n = 86, tested at ~29 weeks gestation and 1-month postpartum) were less sensitive to social threat than were non-perinatal women (n = 53), dominantly protecting rather than submissively ceding resources against threatening-looking male strangers. These findings suggest that pregnancy may affect social and economic decision-making by reducing (rather than increasing) submissiveness to threat, consistent with a 'maternal aggression' response documented in many non-human mammals.
Effects of emotional variability on social evaluations of faces: An advantage of low variability.
Peng J, Huang Y, Ji L
Br J Psychol · 2026 Jan · PMID 41498348 · Publisher ↗
When people see another person's face, they can quickly infer traits and make social evaluations from them, a process known as social perception of faces. Previous studies have investigated the effects of emotion on soci...
When people see another person's face, they can quickly infer traits and make social evaluations from them, a process known as social perception of faces. Previous studies have investigated the effects of emotion on social evaluations but have mainly focused on single expressions. The present study examined how intra-individual emotional variability across multiple faces affects judgements of warmth and competence. In Experiment 1, mixed-valence sets containing both happy and angry faces were used, and emotional variability was manipulated by varying the emotional distance of faces. Results showed that the positive warmth and competence words were perceived as more appropriate to describe faces with low variability compared with high variability (Exp1a). This low-variability advantage persisted after controlling for extreme expressions and generalized to additional warm and competent traits (Exp1b). Experiments 2a and 2b tested the variability effects across happy-only, angry-only, and mixed-valence sets. Positive sets received the highest ratings, mixed-valence sets intermediate, and negative sets the lowest on both dimensions. Importantly, a significant main effect of variability emerged only for competence ratings, with low-variability faces rated higher than high-variability faces. In summary, our study indicates that low emotional variability has an advantage in social evaluations over high emotional variability.
Testing the impact of fallacies and contrarian claims in climate change misinformation.
Lieu R, Hayes OR, Cook J
Br J Psychol · 2025 Dec · PMID 41462017 · Publisher ↗
Climate misinformation reduces public acceptance of climate change and undermines support for mitigation policies. This study explored the impact of different types of climate misinformation, examining through content-ba...
Climate misinformation reduces public acceptance of climate change and undermines support for mitigation policies. This study explored the impact of different types of climate misinformation, examining through content-based and logic-based frameworks. The content-based framework was based on a taxonomy of contrarian claims consisting of five categories-it's not real, it's not us, it's not bad, climate solutions won't work and scientists are not reliable. The logic-based framework examined six rhetorical techniques used in science denial arguments-misrepresentation, false equivalence, oversimplification, red herring, cherry picking and slothful induction. We experimentally tested 30 misinformation examples, crossing five content categories with six fallacies. Participants rated the perceived veracity of misinformation as well as the likelihood of interacting with it. We found no main effect of fallacy on perceived veracity or likelihood to interact but did find a main effect of content category, with the fourth category (climate solutions won't work) perceived as most veracious. We also found that content categories interacted with political ideology, replicating past research into the polarizing effect of climate misinformation. Specifically, the most polarizing categories of misinformation were those targeting climate solutions or attacking climate scientists. Our results highlight the need to prioritize combatting misinformation that targets solutions and scientists.
Economic inequality fosters unethical behaviour by promoting the perception of immoral and competitive normative climates.
Sun P, Li H, Zhao J … +1 more , Kou Y
Br J Psychol · 2025 Dec · PMID 41437321 · Publisher ↗
Economic inequality was found to be positively related to unethical behaviours, but the underlying psychological mechanisms have not been well studied. Through five studies, this research explored the psychological mecha...
Economic inequality was found to be positively related to unethical behaviours, but the underlying psychological mechanisms have not been well studied. Through five studies, this research explored the psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions between economic inequality and unethical behaviour. Study 1 (N = 165,622) provided primary evidence for the relationship between inequality and unethical behaviour based on large-scale publicly available databases. Using well-established questionnaires, Study 2 (N = 394) indicated that economic inequality positively predicted immoral and competitive normative climates, which positively predicted unethical behaviour. Study 3 (N = 160) and Study 4 (N = 188) provided causal evidence for the effect of economic inequality and repeatedly verified the mediating roles of immoral and competitive normative climates. Study 5 (N = 300) indicated that income level moderated the effect of economic inequality on unethical behaviour by moderating the mediating effect of immoral and competitive normative climates. In societies with high inequality, participants in low-income groups perceived stronger immoral and competitive normative climates, thereby engaging in more unethical behaviours. This research offers explanations for the prevalence of unethical behaviours in unequal societies, contributing to extend the emerging literature in social-ecological psychology that explores how macro-social-ecological factors impact micro-behaviours.
Trust learning in the repeated trust game: A meta-analytic study.
Duncan C, Sganzerla L, Kaltwasser L … +1 more , Dziobek I
Br J Psychol · 2025 Dec · PMID 41395848 · Publisher ↗
Trust involves making oneself vulnerable by relying on the expectation that others will reciprocate and act in a trustworthy manner, leading to mutual benefit. In behavioural economics and psychology, the Trust Game (TG)...
Trust involves making oneself vulnerable by relying on the expectation that others will reciprocate and act in a trustworthy manner, leading to mutual benefit. In behavioural economics and psychology, the Trust Game (TG) is a widely used paradigm to measure trust. The repeated TG is a modified version of the TG in which participants encounter the same partner(s) multiple times, allowing for reputation and trust learning. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to identify features of the repeated TG, participant characteristics, and manipulations of partner trustworthiness that affect trust learning. This is the first meta-analytic study to specifically assess trust learning in the repeated TG and included 404 effect sizes from over 8000 participants from 68 studies. Our findings indicate that the partners' behavioural trustworthiness, in the form of their reciprocation rate, is by far the most influential factor in participant trust learning (β = 3.0). Furthermore, the results reveal that manipulating prior information about partners can have an effect on the amount of learning, but only for manipulations of trustworthiness/morality. Notably, in ingroup-outgroup studies, participants learn from their partners' trustworthiness and it is not affected by their partners' group membership.
How AI can advance psychological science.
Yovel G
Br J Psychol · 2026 May · PMID 41363672 · Full text
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed scientific inquiry across disciplines, including the psychological sciences. In psychology, AI serves not only as an analytic tool but also as a computational model of the ver...
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed scientific inquiry across disciplines, including the psychological sciences. In psychology, AI serves not only as an analytic tool but also as a computational model of the very processes the field seeks to explain. In this commentary, I highlight several ways in which AI can advance fundamental questions in psychological science beyond traditional approaches, thanks to its unprecedented ability to generate high-level perceptual and cognitive human-like representations. These developments provide psychologists with powerful new tools that, if embraced, can significantly advance our understanding of the human mind and behaviour.
Added value of AI for psychology or added value of psychology for AI?
Brysbaert M
Br J Psychol · 2026 May · PMID 41347673 · Publisher ↗
In this commentary, I express my concern that the special issue focuses too much on the added value of AI for psychology, while psychological research also has much to offer, such as the operationalization of variables b...
In this commentary, I express my concern that the special issue focuses too much on the added value of AI for psychology, while psychological research also has much to offer, such as the operationalization of variables based on theory, validation tools and the statistical evaluation of information generated by AI systems.
A novel index to measure pre-planning in the Tower of London task: Test-retest reliability and known-group validity.
Schumacher LV, Rahm B, Kaller CP … +3 more , Schyle V, Weiller C, Unterrainer JM
Br J Psychol · 2025 Nov · PMID 41312743 · Publisher ↗
The Tower of London (TOL) is a planning task frequently used in clinical settings and research. Planning and execution times are the most common outcome variables despite yielding lower effect sizes in clinical group com...
The Tower of London (TOL) is a planning task frequently used in clinical settings and research. Planning and execution times are the most common outcome variables despite yielding lower effect sizes in clinical group comparisons and lower test-retest reliability than planning accuracy. Here, it is proposed that planning time be analysed not in isolation, but in relation to the combined duration of planning and execution, yielding a novel pre-planning index (PPI). In N = 179 healthy participants, test-retest reliability analyses yielded higher absolute agreement and less intra-individual variability over two sessions for PPI than for planning and execution times. The clinical validity of PPI was probed by comparing patients known to exhibit planning deficits and healthy controls. Stroke and Parkinson's patients showed significantly lower PPI than controls, driven by reduced planning and longer execution times. There was no difference in PPI between patients with mild cognitive impairment and controls. Consistently across healthy participants and patients, the positive correlation of PPI with planning accuracy exceeded that of planning times with accuracy. Thus, this pre-planning index can enhance both the reliability and clinical validity of TOL latency variables and represents a useful complement to accuracy for measuring planning performance in health and disease.
On how people describe paintings with mirrors.
Bertamini M, Lucia M, Diaz S … +1 more , Soranzo A
Br J Psychol · 2025 Nov · PMID 41268935 · Publisher ↗
Since antiquity humans have been fascinated by mirrors; yet, when asked to predict what is made visible in the reflection, or to interpret a scene with a mirror, observers make systematic errors. Many observers claim tha...
Since antiquity humans have been fascinated by mirrors; yet, when asked to predict what is made visible in the reflection, or to interpret a scene with a mirror, observers make systematic errors. Many observers claim that a character in a scene is looking at themselves when their reflection is visible, despite not sharing the same viewpoint. The first part of the study consisted of a survey of artworks containing mirrors, and the creation of a catalogue. The second part, using 21 artworks and an online methodology (N = 97), confirmed that the Venus effect impacts most participants. The third part (N = 101) tested whether the effect relates to cognitive/emotional perspective-taking - taking the perspective of someone else - or visual perspective-taking - understanding what can be seen from a certain viewpoint. We related the magnitude of the Venus effect to scores on the AQ test (as a measure of cognitive/emotional perspective-taking) and the ROMP test (as a measure of visual perspective-taking). AQ scores did not predict the Venus effect, and ROMP scores did. We conclude that the Venus effect is likely to occur because people fail to understand what can be seen from a given viewpoint.
The relationship between parental control types and mental health types in Chinese adolescents.
Wang X, Zhu N, Yu X … +4 more , Wei M, Chen S, Liu W, Liu Y
Br J Psychol · 2025 Nov · PMID 41263698 · Publisher ↗
This study investigated the relationship between parental control types and mental health categories among Chinese adolescents. About 2240 adolescents (1267 males; M = 14.09) were recruited and completed the Parental Con...
This study investigated the relationship between parental control types and mental health categories among Chinese adolescents. About 2240 adolescents (1267 males; M = 14.09) were recruited and completed the Parental Control Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Life Satisfaction Scale at two time points. Results revealed that adolescents' parental control could be classified into seven types, while mental health could be classified into three types. The key finding demonstrates significant dynamic interactions between these variables: at T1, the "high behavioral control-low psychological control" parental control type (e.g., behavioural guidance type) significantly promoted adolescents' transition towards more optimal mental health categories; conversely, adolescents classified in the "complete mental health" category at T1 were more likely to have parents exhibiting the "high behavioural control-low psychological control" positive parenting pattern at T2. This "virtuous cycle" pattern was confirmed, although the "vicious cycle" commonly observed in variable-centred research between psychological control and poor mental health did not fully emerge in this study. These findings elucidate the complex bidirectional relationships between perceived parental control and mental health development among Chinese adolescents.
Demystifying the mist: Why do individuals hesitate to accept AI educational services?
Shao A, Lu Z, Liu SQ … +2 more , Shi Y, Lu W
Br J Psychol · 2025 Nov · PMID 41215639 · Publisher ↗
Rapid advances in AI technology are fuelling the proliferation of AI applications across industries, including educational services. With the allure of intelligent tutoring, individuals now face the choice of their educa...
Rapid advances in AI technology are fuelling the proliferation of AI applications across industries, including educational services. With the allure of intelligent tutoring, individuals now face the choice of their educational approach-either parental engagement or utilizing AI educational services. This research employs an experimental design approach to examine individuals' decision-making processes involving AI educational services. Across five studies, we observe that, relative to AI educational services, parental engagement induces less guilt, receives a higher valuation and increases individuals' willingness to recommend it to others. We attribute these preferences to a perceived parental responsibility. Intrinsic attribution and conformity promote individuals' WOM. This research is the first to uncover the impact of educational approaches on individuals' guilt and downstream behaviours in the AI-in-Education field, shedding light on attribution as its underlying mechanism and offering actionable strategies to enhance individuals' WOM. The findings offer novel insights to AI-human interaction psychological research and hold practical implications for AI-in-Education industry practitioners.
Temporal dynamics of cue integration for sense of agency in social comparative context.
Chen Y, Zou X, He H … +1 more , Zhang X
Br J Psychol · 2025 Oct · PMID 41084987 · Publisher ↗
Cue integration theory suggests that the sense of agency arises from the interaction of multiple cues, weighted by their reliability and availability. However, whether this integration is dynamic or static remains unclea...
Cue integration theory suggests that the sense of agency arises from the interaction of multiple cues, weighted by their reliability and availability. However, whether this integration is dynamic or static remains unclear. This study explored the potential dynamics of cue integration by examining the interplay between internal and external cues in social comparison contexts. Participants in the two experiments controlled a circle to a target location, with the circle's motion either fluent or disfluent. After completing the task, the participants received feedback on their performance relative to others, delivered in either a social (hand gestures in Experiment 1) or non-social format (arrow symbols in Experiment 2), presented either before or after they provided agency ratings. Results revealed that both socially and non-socially formatted feedback influenced agency ratings for future actions (forward modulation) as well as for past actions (backward modulation). Notably, a dynamic pattern of integration was evident only between socially formatted feedback and motion fluency: under disfluent motion, forward and backward effects of socially formatted feedback intensified over time. Conversely, with fluent motion, the impact of socially formatted feedback diminished over time. These findings underscore the complexity of cue integration, indicating a need to incorporate temporal dynamics into cue integration theory.
Denialist vs. warmist climate change conspiracy beliefs: Ideological roots, psychological correlates and environmental implications.
de Gourville D, Douglas KM, Sutton RM
Br J Psychol · 2025 Oct · PMID 41084221 · Publisher ↗
In the current research, we use network analysis to examine the structure, ideological foundations and correlates of climate change conspiracy theories, distinguishing between denialist and warmist beliefs. Denialist bel...
In the current research, we use network analysis to examine the structure, ideological foundations and correlates of climate change conspiracy theories, distinguishing between denialist and warmist beliefs. Denialist beliefs, typically endorsed on the political right, claim that climate change is exaggerated, whereas warmist beliefs, more prevalent on the left, allege the suppression of climate science and the downplaying of climate change. Across four studies, these beliefs showed a weak and unstable positive correlation but were reliably connected via indirect associations with general conspiracy beliefs and negatively through opposing relationships with denial of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) and conservatism. General conspiracy beliefs and denial of ACC were not directly connected but were instead related indirectly through climate-specific conspiracy beliefs: positively via denialist and negatively via warmist. We found no evidence across studies for an association between climate change conspiracy beliefs and indices of non-rational thinking. Finally, denialist beliefs were negatively associated with pro-environmental intentions, environmental concern, policy support and collective guilt, whereas warmist beliefs were positively related to these outcomes, except for environmental concern, where no significant relationship emerged. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing ideological variants of climate change conspiracy beliefs to contextualize their psychological significance and potential impacts.
Negative targets specifically enhance conscious and unconscious social attention.
Yuan T, Wang L, Chen A … +1 more , Jiang Y
Br J Psychol · 2025 Oct · PMID 41070628 · Publisher ↗
Humans are highly adept at utilizing various social signals, such as eye gaze and biological motion (BM), to detect important events (e.g. threat, reward) in the environment, a phenomenon termed social attention. Here we...
Humans are highly adept at utilizing various social signals, such as eye gaze and biological motion (BM), to detect important events (e.g. threat, reward) in the environment, a phenomenon termed social attention. Here we investigated whether the affective information carried by the contextual event would modulate this social attention behaviour. By introducing natural emotional pictures (negative, neutral and positive) as peripheral probing targets within the modified central cueing paradigm, we found that central BM induced a stronger attentional orienting effect towards negative targets than neutral and positive ones. Moreover, this modulation was observed in attentional effects induced by another well-known social cue (i.e. eye gaze), whereas no such effect was obtained with the non-social arrow cues. Importantly, this negativity bias persisted at the subliminal level, as shown by the significant attentional effects towards negative targets induced by unconscious social cues (i.e. BM, eye gaze). In contrast, no attentional effects were obtained with non-conscious arrow cues. Overall, these findings reveal a general enhancement of negative targets on conscious and unconscious social attention induced by different types of social signals (i.e. BM, eye gaze) and highlight the distinction of social attention compared to non-social attention in detecting potentially detrimental events.
Information and affective valence influence judgments of complexity, liking and understanding.
Sun X, Che J, Nadal M … +1 more , Leder H
Br J Psychol · 2025 Oct · PMID 41063579 · Publisher ↗
Visual complexity is a key factor in perceptual and evaluative judgments. People's representation of visual complexity is constructed from quantitative and structural image features, but it is also influenced by familiar...
Visual complexity is a key factor in perceptual and evaluative judgments. People's representation of visual complexity is constructed from quantitative and structural image features, but it is also influenced by familiarity and expertise. We examined how people represent visual complexity and its impact on perception and evaluation, focusing on information about paintings and their affective valence on judgments of visual complexity, liking and understanding. Seventy-six participants rated 60 representational artworks of negative, neutral, and positive valence on complexity, beauty and understanding. Half of the participants received written information about each artwork. Results showed that negative artworks were judged as more complex than neutral artworks and positive ones, but this effect was attenuated by the provided information. Liking judgments increased with judged complexity, were higher for positive artworks than neutral ones, for neutral than negative ones, and were higher when information was provided. Understanding judgments were higher for positive artworks than neutral ones, and higher for neutral artworks than negatively valenced ones. Information increased understanding only for negative artworks, and judged complexity did not affect these judgments. In sum, the representation of the visual complexity of an image is influenced by its valence and the available information, modulating judgments of complexity and liking, but not of understanding.
Out of the dark - Psychological perspectives on people's fascination with true crime.
Perchtold-Stefan C, Rominger C, Ceh S … +3 more , Sattler K, Veit SV, Fink A
Br J Psychol · 2025 Oct · PMID 41058102 · Publisher ↗
The success of the true crime media genre reflects humanity's avid curiosity about violence, deviance, and murder, yet psychological research on this phenomenon is lacking. In this article, we highlight why true crime co...
The success of the true crime media genre reflects humanity's avid curiosity about violence, deviance, and murder, yet psychological research on this phenomenon is lacking. In this article, we highlight why true crime consumption may be relevant to various research fields that go beyond simple media preferences. Additionally, we present a large-scale behavioural investigation for comprehensive empirical insights into motives, and behavioural and well-being correlates of true crime consumption. In n = 307-571 participants, we (a) confirm a robust gender difference in true crime consumption in favour of women, and (b) find more general (morbid curiosity) and distinct motives (defensive vigilance, excitement) for true crime consumption. Additionally, (c) through principal component analysis, we extract five components from numerous variables (negative affectivity, antagonism, fear of crime, self-focused adaptive regulation, and affective creativity) to test for contributions to true crime consumption. Ultimately, (d) in multiple regression models, gender, income, fear of crime, and antagonism emerged as unique predictors of overall true crime consumption, though results varied for different formats (e.g., podcasts) and motives. Notably, defensive vigilance motivation (higher in women) was linked to more adaptive self-regulation. Our investigation adds to the emerging body of research on negative crime-related information seeking.
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