By Sarah Rogers,
London Metropolitan University.
This research paper examines UK criminology students' perceived interest in serial killers and aims to provide an answer to the question: Morbid curiosity, or something more? The participants were all criminology students who were studying for a dual degree or a single degree at London Metropolitan University and were over the age of 18 at the time of the study. The method used for this research project was a quantitative, survey-based approach with some qualitative questions. The sample for this research was small in scale as there were only a limited number of responses completed (12). The responses were majority female (83.3%) with a small sample of male participants (16.7%). The drawback to this was that there was not an equal sample of respondents. The results confirm that criminology students studying at London Metropolitan University in the UK are indeed interested in serial killers. The data also concludes that ‘morbid curiosity’ does have a place in this to a degree. The data collected also found a correlation regarding gender and consumption of serial killer documentaries, which offers some interesting social justice insights regarding the unique interests of women and their subsequent motivations to study criminology. The data found that this is due to a need to understand serial killers’ behaviour and cognitions, to educate and increase the chances of evasion.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1004063