What does she see in him? Hybristophiles and spree killers

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JPCP-D-22-00063(1).pdf(1.48 MB)
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Date
2022-11-05
Authors
Shresta, Amber
Dempsey, Maria
Tuohy-Hamil, Senan
King, Robert
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Publisher
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Published Version
10.1007/s11896-022-09550-6
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Abstract
For further understanding of spree killers, we explored fan communities of the same on Tumblr. We aimed to fit their expressed paraphilic desires with earlier typologies of aggressive/passive hybristophiles (women who fetishize killers) and a previously proposed typology of spree killers themselves. Tumblr fan site content (text and pictures) was investigated using a combination of visual and textual content analysis, latent class analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis, using other celebrity fan sites as controls. The general trend was for hybristophiles to have surprising levels of self-knowledge with a small sub-set expressing worrying tendencies to fetishize the killings themselves over and above sexual desires towards the perpetrators. Although the division of hybristophiles into active and passive has been previously shown, we believe we are the first to link this to spree killers who are more or less explicitly advertising their behaviors to their fan base. Much attention has been directed to issues of so-called toxic masculinity and incels, but it is important to appreciate that they do not exist in a vacuum. This material contributes somewhat to understanding the toxic soil in which killers flourish.
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Keywords
Amok , Evolutionary psychology , Fan communities , Mass murderers , School shooting , Spree killing
Citation
Shresta, A., Dempsey, M., Tuohy-Hamil, S. and King, R. (2022) 'What does she see in him? Hybristophiles and spree killers', Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology. doi: 10.1007/s11896-022-09550-6
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URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10468/13886
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Applied Psychology - Journal Articles
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© 2022, the Authors, under exclusive licence to Society for Police and Criminal Psychology. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology.The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-022-09550-6