By IANS,
Washington : Women prefer real crime stories based on rape and murder — more so than men — as they fear becoming victims, says a new study.
Many people might assume that men, being the more aggressive sex, would be most likely to find such gory topics interesting.
But research says women fear becoming victims of crimes, so they turn to crime books in a possible effort to learn strategies and techniques to prevent crimes.
For instance, by understanding why someone decides to kill, a woman can learn the warning signs to watch for in a jealous lover or stranger. By learning escape tips women learn survival strategies they can use if actually kidnapped or held captive.
However, it is possible that reading these books may actually increase the very fear that drives women toward them in the first place. It is a vicious cycle.
“We do know that women, compared to men, have a heightened fear of crime despite the fact that they are less likely to become a victim,” write study authors Amanda M. Vicary and R. Chris Fraley, psychologists at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, a release said.
The findings were published in the inaugural issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science.