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The Ted Bundy Effect: True Crime, Fan Mail, and the Illusion of Control · Inside The Criminal Mind

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome back. Everybody.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Today's story is hybrivestophilia. It's an uncomfortable psychological territory that
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: we're going to be entering that many people find disturbing, confusing,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: or even uncomprehensible.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And I get it. It is. Let's stick with me.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: The question is why do some individuals become attracted to
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: violent killers?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Why do serial killers receive love letters?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Why do convicted murderers develop fan bases, Why did women
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: attend the trials of ten Bundy like they were celebrity appearances,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: and why decades later do social media users still romanticize
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: offenders like Richard Ramirez, Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. It's
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: a bizarre concept, really, And I remember tell asking students
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: about this, who was Ted Bundy?
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Everybody knew? Who was Jeffrey Dahmer?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Everybody knew, But when I asked him about Gerald Ford,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: almost nobody knew. About half the class didn't know he
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: was president at one point, Jimmy Carter about two thirds,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: but almost everybody ninety percent plus new Ted Mundy. The
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: phenomenon of being attracted Women attracted to these serial killers
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: is called high brestophelia. High brestophelia is hy bris t.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Phi l i A.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: More informally, people sometimes call it the Ted Bundy effect.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I have to say it's easier to spell and say.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Today we're going to unpack this phenomenon carefully and scientifically,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: not sensationally, because beneath the headlines and internet fascination, why
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: is something psychologically important? Human beings are not attracted only
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: to kindness, safety, and stability. Sometimes attraction becomes entangled with fear, power, danger, trauma, dominance, fantasy,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: or the illusion of emotional rescue, and when that happens,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: the result can become psychologically and socially dangerous. Before we begin,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: it's an important clarification. Being interested in true crime does
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: not mean someone has hypristophelia or the Ted Bundy effect.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Millions of people consume the true crime content out of curiosity, education,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: or attempts to understand human behavior. Hybrivestophelia specifically involves emotional, romantic,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: or sexual attraction to the defender. That distinction matters for
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: those who are interested in true crime. We've spoken about
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: this before.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: A lot of it is kind.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Of a way to access our shadow, the things that
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: we are not happy about that we think about or
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: do in a safer way, right in a world that
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: we would never be a part of.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: But we can see it in a safe in a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: safe distance. So let's go back.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: So the term hybristophilia come from well I was introduced
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: by John Money, a sexologist in the eighties. The words
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: arise from the Greek term hohobessen, meaning to commit an
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: outrage against someone, and of course phelia is attraction, So
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: clinically speaking, hypristophilia refers to sexual romantic attraction toward individuals
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: known to have committed serious crimes, often violent crimes kidnapping,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: sexual assault, armed robbery, terrorism. In some cases, the crime
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: itself becomes psychologically central to the attraction. Now clinically this
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: is often discussed as a type of paraphilic interest, though
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: the research remains limited and debated. Psychologists sometimes divide hypristophelia
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: into two categories. Passive this is the more common form.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: The individual is attracted to the criminal but does not
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: participate in crime themselves. This may involve writing prisonly letters,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: visiting inmates, marrying and incarcerated offenders, fantasizing about dangerous criminals,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: or idealizing violent offenders emotionally. Now, the more rarer and
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: more dangerous kind is the active hybristophilia. Here, the attraction
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: involves direct participation and criminal behavior. Examples might include assisting crimes,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: helping conceal evidence, aiding escape, or becoming sexually aroused through
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: involvement in violence itself. Now, importantly, not all admirers of
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: criminals meet clinical criteria for periphilia. You may even think
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: about Bonnie and Clyde here. Some are motivated by fame, attraction,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: anti authority, IDs, sensation seeking, getting back up society, loneliness,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: unresolved attachment needs. Human motivation is complex and multi factorial,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: basically meaning there's a lot of factors involved, and forensic psychology.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: He repeatedly and reminds us that behavior almost never emerges
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: from one single cause. One of the biggest misconceptions about
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: high bristophelia is that it's simply about physical attraction.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It usually isn't.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: The attraction often involves symbolic psychological meanings, power, danger, dominance, notoriety,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: emotional intensity, or fantasy based identity formation. Sometimes a criminal
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: becomes psychologically transformed into a fantasy object rather than perceived
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: realistically and Once fantasy overwrides reality, critical judgment can deteriorate dramatically,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and fantasy is one of these defense mechanisms. If you
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: look at the psychodynamic world, well, the person who lives
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: obviously not in reality, somewhere that they believe is safer.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: It's a defense mechanism. Exactly what it means.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: It's a mechanism to defend and protect your inner self.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: No offender symbolizes phenomenon more than Ted Bundy. Bundy was
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: convicted of multiple murders during the nineteen seventies.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I think over thirty five.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: But what shocked many observers wasn't only the brutality of
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: his crimes. It was the admiration he received. Yes, Bundy
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: was an attractive man, and maybe that's part of the
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: reason women packed courtrooms during his trials. Some reportedly cried
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: when he was convicted. Others described him as charming, intelligent, misunderstood,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: or attractive.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: And he was a lot of these things.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Oddly enough, if you could separate that from his obviously
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: heinous behavior, the horrific things he did. He received hundreds
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: of romantic letters while incarcerated.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Eventually he actually.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Married a long time supporter, Carol Ann Boone during trial proceedings.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: She later gave birth to a child believed to be
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: followed by Bundy. From a forensic psychology standpoint, Bundy represented
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: a uniquely dangerous psychological packet. He possessed superficial charm, manipulative
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: social intelligence, confidence, emotional mimicry, and what psychopathy researchers call
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: impression management. So what is impression management? Well, impression management
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: is a psychological process by which individuals consciously or unconsciously
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: attempt to control how they are perceived by others. Who
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: draws from Irving Goffman's framework dramatical journal framework where social
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: life is understood as a performance. You remember Shakespeare even
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: said it right, Remember we are all actors in the
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: stage of the world. I'm paraphrasing and probably didn't do
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: a good job. Back to Goffman's framework, social life is
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: understood as a performance and the stealth is strategically presented
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: depending on the audience and context. Basically, as Young put
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: it is a persona the more core mechanisms including gratiation,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: cultivating like a ability through charm, flattery and warmth, self promotion,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: emphasizing competence and intelligence, which we saw with Bundy a
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: lot both of these, exemplification projecting moral virtue or integrity,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: intimidation using dominance or threat to establish control. This is
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: less relevant in Bundy's case in regards to the general
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: public supplication, performing vulnerability or helplessness to elicit sympathy, which
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: he did. Bundany's arguably the most instructive forensic example of
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: pathological impression management. His effectiveness was rooted in several convergent factors.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: He cultivated a persona of conventionality. Bundy was handsome, well spoken,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: politically connected, and enrolled in law school.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: He looked like the person anyone would.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Suspect, and he knew it that surface presentation was not
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: incidental but weaponized. He used feigned helplessness as a predatory tactic,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: often approaching victims while wearing a fake caste or sling
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and asking for assistance. This inverted the perceived threat dynamic entirely.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: He positioned himself as the vulnerable party, activating the victim's
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: pro social instincts. In his trials, he represented himself using
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: the courtrooms another stage. He was charming to the judge,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: flirtatious with female observers, and composed under pressure. He understood
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: the competent legal performance with signal sanity, intelligence, and control
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: to the jury and the media. So we continue on.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Psychopathic offenders are often not socially awkward monsters, and neither
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: was Bundy. Some are highly skilled at appearing charismatic. In fact,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: one of the defining features of psychopathy is the ability
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: to mimic emotional normo normalcy convincingly. Bundy understood social presentation
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: extraordinarily well, and media amplified it. Televised trials transformed him into.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: A cultural spectacle.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: You could say this is important psychologically because repeated media
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: exposure creates familiarity, and familiarity can create perceived intimacy. Psychologists
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: call this parasocial relationship. It's a one sided emotional bond
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: form with someone who does not actually know you. Celebrities
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: generate parasocial attachment all the time, but notorious criminals can
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: generate it too, especially when media reportedly repeatedly focuses on appearance, charm, intelligence,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: or emotional backstory. Bondy wasn't alone. Ramier is married a
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: supporter while on death row. Charles Manson maintained devoted followers
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: decades after orchestrating murders even had some making money off
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: his shirts and pictures. Faces Jeffrey Dahmer continued receiving admiration
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: and other details of cannibalism and murder after the details
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: of cannibalism and murder became public. More recently, act like
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Chris Walltz have received romantic support from strangers online. The
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: pattern repeats across generations, and every generation think it's uniquely shocking,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: but psychologically the mechanisms remain surprisingly consistent. One of the
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: strongest theoretical frameworks for understanding the ted Mundy effect comes
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: from attachment theory. Attachment theory proposes that early relationships shape
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: later emotional expectations. Children exposed to instability, neglect, unpredictability, abuse,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: or inconsistent caregiving may develop insecure attachment styles. Some individuals
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: grow up associating love with emotional volatility. Intensity becomes confused
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: with intimacy, danger becomes confused with passion. Fear becomes intertwined
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: with attachment, and this is clinically important because many violent
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: offenders initially present themselves as emotionally intense, dominant, protective, or
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: psychologically consuming. For someone with unresolved detachment wounds, the intensity
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: can feel emotionally magnetic, doesn't feel safe. It's definitely not healthy,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: but psychologically familiar, and familiarity often feels compelling. Psychodynamic psychology
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: sometimes describes us as repetition compulsion, the unconscious tendency to
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: recreate unresolved emotional dynamics. A person repeatedly drawn toward dangerous
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: partners may unconsciously be attempting to master earlier emotional wounds.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: In other words, if I can finally make this dangerous
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: personal love me, maybe I can heal something unresolved inside myself. Now,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: to be clear, this does not mean everyone attracted to
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: criminals has trauma, nor does trauma automatically produce maladaptive attraction.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Most trauma survivors, the overwhelming majority, never develop hybristophelia, but
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: clinically unresolved trauma parents can increase vulnerability to dangerous relational dynamics,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: especially when it's combined with low self esteem, identity diffusion, loneliness,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: dependency needs, or emotional deprivation, and many offenders will exploit
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: this intentionally. Highly psychopathic individuals are often exceptionally skilled at
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: identifying emotional vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, they have pretty high emotional intelligence.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: They can read people really well. They marror needs very
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: well as too, they create illusions of intimacy. They can
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: alternate affection with emotional manipulation, and for psychologically vulnerable individuals,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: interment intermittent reinforcement can create powerful attachment bonds the same
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: conditioning principles observed in abusive relationships. Take a break for
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: a second, folks, and hey, don't forget to share and
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: subscribe this podcast if you're enjoying it. You can also
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: catch some of our other ones, Old Cases Solved, where
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: we highlight cases that have been solved recently, Cold cases.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: We just did an episode on one that was solved.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: There was a forty year old murder, hopefully providing hope
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and to those who have lost someone due to a
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: heinous crime or a murder. Also, you can catch some
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: of our other podcasts, Stories of Special Forces Operators and Spycraft,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: where we talk about espionage stories current in the past
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: the Special Forces. We have a lot of interviews with
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Special Forces operators as well as insight and psychologically about
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: how they operate. Back to our episode, one of the
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: darker realities in forensic settings is this some violent offenders
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: become more attractive because they're feared. Fear and arousal activate
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: overlapping physiological systems.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: We've seen this if you remember the study with people going.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Across the bridge and they had people asking them how attractive.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: They were, and they were rating them.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: When they moved the bridge and shook it, the individual's
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: heightened arousal made the people score higher on one to
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: ten scale. For some individuals like this, danger itself becomes
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: eroticized psychologically, again not common, but clinically documented. Another major
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: psychological components where clinicians sometimes can formally call the savior fantasy.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: The belief often sounds like everyone misunderstands him. I see
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: the real person underneath. He would never hurt me. I
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: can change him. This dynamic appears frequently an abusive relationships,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: generally not just criminal attraction. We see this a lot
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: of intimate partner violence. The partner becomes psychologically framed as wounded, misunderstood,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: or emotionally damaged or secretly redeemable. The relationship then provides
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: the admirer with a sense of purpose the uniqueness, emotional importance,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: or identity psychodynamic terms. The individual may derive self worth
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: through rescuing the criminal becomes less a person and more
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: psychological project Now, prison settings intensify the fantasy formation dramatically.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: But why Because real world intimacy is limited. Most interactions
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: occur through what letters, phone calls, control visits, fantasy imagination.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: The offender controls the narrative, and without ordinary day to
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: day relationship stressors, well idealization can flourish. The admirer sees fragments,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: not the full personality. This creates fertile ground for projection.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: People project fantasies onto the offender strength, sensitivity, intelligence, vulnerability,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: and misunderstood brilliance. Meanwhile, the actual violence becomes psychologically minimized
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: or compartmentalized.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: This cognitive process is called splitting.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: The offender becomes psychologically divided into a monster everyone talks
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: about versus the special person only I truly understand, And
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: once someone emotionally commits to that narrative, contradictory evidence often
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: gets rationalized away. That's where cognitive distortions become critically important. Denial, rationalization,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: or some of the defense mechanisms we call idealization fantasy.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: What role does social media play in all this? And media,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: unfortunately not a good one. Modern media has dramatically amplified
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: the hyperstophilic tendencies, especially social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and YouTube, have created ecosystems where criminal offenders can become asynthesized, romanticized,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: even edited clips attractive actors, dramatic music, courtroom footage. The
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: fender becomes transformed into a symbolic character rather than a
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: human being responsible for heinous crimes and real suffering. This
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: creates moral and psychological distortion for the audience. For example,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: after the Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer was released, social
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: media became flooded with romanticized edits of the killer. Many
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: victim families publicly criticize this phenomenon because from their perspective,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: and it's true, their levels were being erased while the
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: offender became entertainment and we see that constantly. This raises
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: major ethical concerns through crime media occupies a difficult psychological space.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: On one hand, education awareness an investigative journalism can provide
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: a legitimate public value.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: On the other, repetitive.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Sensationalism can unintentionally glorify offenders, especially when attractiveness is emphasized,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: trauma histories are overhumanized, or violence becomes stylized entertainment. There's
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: also something psychologically seductive about proximity to notoriety. Some individuals
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: feel psychologically elevated through association with infamous figures, almost like
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: proximity to power, even destructive power. And historically society is
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: often confused notoriety with importance, and that confusion matters. One
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: of the most dangerous outcomes occurs when empathy becomes detached
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: from accountability. I think the new book that just came
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: out might represent this interestingly enough, Gadsad's book Suicidal Empathy
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Understanding Why someone became violent psychologically valuable, but understanding should
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: never become romanticization. Forensic psychology aims to explain behavior.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And not excuse.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Again, I don't get anything for the promo because suicidal
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: empathy is an interesting ones.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I believe one of the chapters dealt with this concept.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: So what does Hybristophelia ultimately teach us in the end? Well,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: it teaches us something uncomfortable. Human attraction is not always rational.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: People are sometimes drawn toward intensity instead of stability, dominance
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: instead of safety, fantasy instead of reality, emotional chaos instead
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of emotional health, and modern media ecosystems can magnify those vulnerabilities.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: From a forensic psychology perspective, hybristophilia sits at the intersection
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: of several components, one being attachment pathology, trauma dynamics, paris
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: social bonding. As we explained earlier, sensation seeking, cognitive distortions,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: not looking at reality the way it is, just like
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: fantasy formation and cultural storytelling. But we should also avoid
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: simplistic judgment. Many individuals involved in these dynamics are psychologically
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: vulnerable rather than malicious. Some are profoundly lonely, some are
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: trauma survivors, some are searching for identity, some are captivated
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: by danger and power, and some become psychologically consumed by
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: fantasy narratives that gradually detach from reality. At the same time,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: violent offenders frequently exploit these vulnerabilities, particularly the psychopath. The
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: psychopath offenders skilled or skilled the manipulation as I mentioned earlier,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: and that reality cannot be ignored. The broader lesson here
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: may be this. Human beings often crave meaning, intensity, and
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: emotional significance, and when those needs go unmet in healthy ways,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: well many times they can attach themselves to dangerous people
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: and dangerous narratives, which is why psychological literacy matters. Understanding
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: manipulation matters, Understanding attachment patterns matters, Understanding how media shapes
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: perception matters, because once fantasy overwhelms critical thinking, risk assessment deteriorates.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: In forensic psychology, deteriorating risk assessment can have devastating consequences. Well,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: hopefully you enjoyed today's podcast episode on this rare phenomena
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: of what's happening here in hybristophilia, And as a little
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: bit of a bonus, let's look at some of the
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: data in regards to the endivid's very limited research on it,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: because it's considered still relatively rare and it is understudied.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: It is reported mostly in women, more so than men.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Often focused on male offenders, frequently associated with high profile
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: violent criminals such as serial killers or notorious gangsters. Common
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: demographic patterns found than research where gender. Most cases documented
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: involve women attracted male defenders, especially offenders proceed as dominant, dangerous, charismatic,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: famous right they can attach their own identity to this
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: famous person. Research is repeatedly note that female attraction to
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: male violent offenders is far more commonly documented than the reverse. However,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: male hyprostophelia does exist. One forensic paper described men becoming
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: sexually emotionally attached to a female serial killer in assisting.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Her crimes age.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: When you look at this population the sample, modern online
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: studies suggests a phenomenon is increasingly invisible among late adolescents,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: young adults, and gen Z social media users.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Education.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: One of the interesting findings is that hybristophelia is not
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: limited to one social class. Some are educated, some held
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: stable employment, some had trauma histories, although these are not
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: fit obvious clinical stereotypes. Several studies in forensic theories suggest
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: higher rates of childhood and stability, abusive relationships, and trauma exposure,
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: but it is important to understand these are risk correlations
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: not in universal findings, and that many people with trauma
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: histories do not develop the hyperstic hybrostophilic interests.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Actually the majority don't.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Researchers frequently described recurring themes we talked about earlier. The
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: data is pretty weak on the prevalence. We don't have
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: a universal accepted prevalence rate for it. Most studies use
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: prison pen pals, courtroom fan communities, online forums, things of
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: that nature, and the attraction to bad boys is not
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: is not the same as attraction to serial murderers, so
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: there's different degrees of it as well. That as we
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: talked about passive and aggressive or active. So hopefully you've
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: enjoyed this podcast. If we found the episode valuable, please subscribe,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: leave a review, hit the like button, share it with others,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: and as always, stay curious, stay psychologically aware, and never
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: underestimate the complexity of human behavior.