Rethinking hybristophilia: Media, culture, and the multidimensional construction of attraction to violent offenders

In recent years, hybristophilia has gained increasing visibility within contemporary media and digital ecosystems, particularly in the context of true crime, criminal fandom, and online communities centred on notorious offenders. However, this growing visibility contrasts with a notable lack of conceptual precision within scientific literature. The term is used inconsistently to refer to heterogeneous phenomena, including sexual attraction to offenders, romantic relationships with incarcerated individuals, media-driven fascination with criminal figures, and parasocial engagement in digital environments. This article argues that hybristophilia does not constitute a unitary psychological construct, but rather a complex phenomenon that emerges at the intersection of general psychological processes and mediated dynamics of representing transgression. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from psychology, criminology, and media and cultural studies, the article distinguishes between the term’s strict sexological meaning and its broader cultural uses. A heuristic framework organised around five dimensions—morbid curiosity, interest in immorality, emotional regulation of threat, relational and media scripts, and affective intensification of transgression—is proposed to account for how attraction to violent offenders is configured through the interaction between psychological processes and mediated narratives. In this sense, the article highlights the role of digital environments in the aestheticisation, humanisation, and, in some cases, romanticisation of offenders, contributing to ongoing debates on the cultural meanings of crime and deviance.