Evolution plays a big role in our obsession with gruesome true crime stories like the Alex Murdaugh murder trial
Alex Murdaugh and the Evolutionary Reason We're Drawn to Violent Crime
“Humans, broadly, are built to be intrigued by and alert to potentially dangerous situations,” says psychologist Coltan Scrivner, research scientist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “We’re curious about threats in our environment. So anytime we get a hint that there might be information about danger out there, the attention mechanisms in our minds sort of kick on and guide us toward that information.
Just who does the killing also plays a role in our fascination with cases like Murdaugh’s. There were more than 26,000 homicides in the U.S. in 2021,the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But that hardly meant there were 26,000 investigations or trials that drew the kind of attention Murdaugh’s did. What those other cases lacked was celebrity. Murdaugh has been widely described as the wealthy scion of a prestigious South Carolina family.
Then there is the gruesomeness of this particular crime. Much was made at trial of the horrific effect Murdaugh’s shotgun had on the bodies of his wife and son—similar to the primacy given to the slashings sustained by the victims in the Simpson trial. It is more than morbidness that causes us to be so fascinated by such gory details. It is, again, evolution and self-protection.
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