Why we love psychological thrillers
Former police psychologist Dr Emma Kavanagh is the author of six bestselling thrillers and a non-fiction guide to coping with burnout called How To Be Broken.
The appeal of crime novels, and of psychological thrillers specifically, is an enduring one. The earliest known example of a psychological thriller depends on who you ask. Daphne du Maurier, Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe… all have been attributed with beginning a trend that continues unabated. But for as long as there have been stories, there has been an element of the psychological. And that is likely no coincidence.
Let me explain. Humans are a highly social species. Our success has come from our ability to interact with others. And so evolution has created within us a drive to understand the human mind. Paleontological research has suggested that one of the most important developments in the human brain is that of the Default Mode Network. The DMN is an area of the brain that becomes active when we are not focused on the outside world. It is the area responsible for daydreaming, for thoughts of our past, our future. It’s the area that is critically involved in understanding the thoughts of those around us. And it is the area that is crucial to imagination and the way we process stories.
Evolution is a hard taskmaster. It allows little to remain that isn’t of immense value to us, especially in high-value locations such as the brain. We know that when we read about a character’s misery, the area of the brain involved in emotion and pain becomes activated. When we read about movement, our own movement centres light up. And so stories allow our brains to mimic the activities of a character. They essentially serve as a training ground, allowing us to experience a range of social environments vicariously. Research has shown that those who read fiction score better in empathy measures. Experience is a rich teacher for us, and so stories allow us to build up mental models of events and reactions to them. They also allow us to better understand the experiences of our fellow humans. In psychological thrillers, we find other elements of value. We find danger, the risk of death. Terror Management Theory suggests that our own fear of mortality is what draws us
to experience fictional risk, without fear of real-world consequences. Research has also suggested that thrillers can serve to induce feelings of compassion – making us better social animals – and can increase our appreciation of the important things in our own lives.
Danger intrigues us. It’s meant to. We are programmed to pay attention to the things that might kill us. Serial killers, for example. They pique our interest, because it is evolutionarily valuable for us to have some kind of understanding of how such threats operate.
Psychological thrillers also provide us with an insight into traumatic events. What research tells us is that being exposed to the traumatic experiences of other people (even if they are fictional), and their subsequent resilience and survival, makes it more likely that we will experience resilience and post-traumatic growth in the aftermath of our own difficulties. Psychological thrillers are beloved. And they are beloved not simply for the thrills that they give us, but for the lessons that they can teach.
Research shows that thrillers can serve to induce feelings of compassion