Does true crime increase negative affect, or negative affect lead to true crime? A cross-lagged analysis on the dynamics of consuming frightening media.

BACKGROUND

Even in today's high-choice media landscape, people are drawn to stories of crime and murder, best exemplified by the massive appeal of the true crime genre. Research on negative effects of violent media on consumers has yielded highly contested results though, with traditional models often predicting negative impacts that are absent in other empirical studies. Newer avenues in horror research even suggest that frightening media may act as training grounds for coping with anxiety.

METHODS

We investigated both perspectives in a two-week daily diary study on positive and negative affect (anxiety, anger) and true crime consumption (data collected in 2024). Cross-lagged multilevel modelling (Bayesian estimation) was applied to data of n = 199 participants to examine if affect on day n predicted true crime consumption on the following day (n + 1) and vice versa.

RESULTS

We found that today's anxiety positively predicted violent true crime consumption of tomorrow, and in turn, violent true crime consumption of today positively predicted positive affect of tomorrow. However, none of these effects exceeded our smallest effect size of interest (β = .10).

CONCLUSIONS

If our associations replicate, they could suggest that anxiety may motivate engagement with self-relevant negative media for emotion regulation purposes, potentially yielding affective benefits. Alternatively, true crime consumption and affect may be largely unrelated in everyday life. Consistent with the latter, we found no evidence that true crime consumption increased anxiety or anger, failing to support traditional theories of media-induced fear and aggression.