for as long as i could remember i've
been
fascinated by serial killers whenever
there's a docu-series or biopic about
serial killers
i'm intrigued to watch i love shows like
dexter and recently my beautiful
girlfriend tristan and i
binge watched hannibal recently a great
docu-series was released on hbo called
i'll be gone in the dark
which is based on michelle mcnamara's
hunt for the golden state killer
one of my other fascinations is colts
which is why the cancelled too soon show
the following
was one of my favorites because i
combined the two
but as a happy-go-lucky non-psychopath
i've always felt kind of weird that i'm
so interested in serial killers
fortunately it turns out that i'm not
the only one
there are actually a bunch of us out
there who are interested in the stories
of serial killers
like me i'm guessing many of the people
who take interest in this topic
aren't necessarily morbid or think
serial killing is a noble trait
so aside from learning about serial
killers i've always wanted to know why
people like you and me
are drawn to these stories there's
another youtube creator by the name of
sarah hawkinson who has discussed this
topic quite a bit
but she takes a more moral and ethical
look at serial killer fandom
in her videos she discusses people who
glorify serial killers
by wearing their merch or even going as
far as to get tattoos of them
although she's a massive horror movie
fan sarah hawkinson believes it's
morally wrong
to romanticize these serial killers i
personally agree with sarah
that we shouldn't put people like dahmer
bundy and others on a pedestal
for their murders lives have been lost
and families have been destroyed by
these murders
but when it comes to our fascination
with serial killers i don't think it's
about admiring
people who have killed it's something
else
aside from reading watching or listening
to stories about serial killers
there are those who go even further
people have paid thousands of dollars
for charles manson's hair
or a painting from john wayne gacy then
there are others who fall in love with
serial killers
serial killers like richard ramirez and
ted bundy were bombarded
with love letters it'd be absurd to
think that all of us who are interested
in learning about serial killers
would condone the heinous crimes
committed by these people
but what about those who are more
extreme what's going on in the minds of
those who buy murder memorabilia or fall
in love with these serial killers
it also seems to be a bit reductionist
to think that this entire group of
people
believes murder is okay so what's going
on
in this video we're going to attempt to
understand the psychology of those of us
who are interested in the topic of
serial killers this is the second video
in the series supernatural psychology
and now you're probably wondering what
serial killers have to do with the
supernatural
well aside from psychology we're going
to be talking about our innate belief in
essentialism
which often goes on notice from learning
about serial killers to admiring them
to falling in love with them we're going
to cover it all but before we get
started if you're new to the rewired
stall
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we practice critical thinking and
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to gain a better understanding of them
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upcoming video essays
when i got sober back in 2012 one of the
sayings i became familiar with
was keep the best and leave the rest it
was referring to learning how to stay
sober through the experience of others
but being strategic about what
suggestions you take
there were some people who were
extremely insightful and wise when it
came to certain aspects of life
but with others they were a hot mess
like the man who could encourage you to
go to 7 12
step meetings a week but he was also
cheating on his wife
or there was the woman who managed to
stay sober but
she kept hanging out with old friends
who drank and used drugs
the keep the best and leave the rest
learning model is a great way to live
life
too often we fall victim to the belief
that people are binary
we see people as all good or all bad but
as people on a mission to learn and grow
we must be skeptical of that binary
thinking and realize that humans are
much more nuanced than matt some of the
worst people out there have traits that
we admire
but due to the horn effect we feel it's
taboo to even acknowledge it
in the last video we discussed the
psychology of the halo effect
which is a bias that makes us think one
good aspect of a person
makes them all good on the other side of
the spectrum
is the horn effect this bias makes us
believe that one bad quality of a person
means that they have no traits that we
can learn from or should admire
due to the societal type of black and
white thinking it's no wonder that
people like you and i feel a little
weird
about how interested we are in serial
killers although i enjoy learning about
serial killers
something in the back of my head is
constantly saying
this is pretty twisted but is there
something psychologically going on that
we don't realize
dr julia shaw may have some answers
dr julia shaw is a german-canadian
psychologist who specializes in false
memories
but her range of knowledge goes far
beyond that her true
expertise is in criminal psychology and
she's often called upon as an expert
witness in various trials
in a recent tweet she says the following
i spend so much of my
career as a scientist who studies
criminal psychology saying
i don't do that nope not that either
also
not that i'm not a therapist a profiler
a police officer
i don't directly interview offenders and
i've spent almost
no time in prisons instead i do research
try to understand
why people do quote unquote bad things
write books
train police on how to use
evidence-based interview approaches
and work as an expert witness who
examines case files
exclusively on the issue of false memory
if i knew or did all the things that
people assume i do as a criminal
psychologist
i'd need about 10 different phds what do
people get wrong about the area of your
expertise of work
for those of you who watched my video on
tati westbrook and shane dawson you know
that i'm really interested
in understanding how memories work and
that's how i discovered dr
julia shaw after reading her
best-selling book the memory illusion
remembering forgetting and the science
of false memory
i immediately read her other book evil
the science behind humanity's dark size
in her book she argues that the idea of
quote unquote evil
is lazy and people are much more complex
than that
for example she writes about this false
idea that we have that serial killers
are these emotionless monsters as a
scientist
part of her job is to let go of these
biases in an
effort to discover the truth it's
considered taboo to empathize
at all with serial killers but dr
shaw discusses how someone like jeffrey
dahmer wasn't driven by our illusion
of pure evil although what he did was
absolutely grotesque
dahmer was a human being who was
extremely lonely
dahmer ate his victims because he
believed it'd bring him closer to them
so they could never leave him he even
tried injecting acid into his victims
brains
to turn them into zombies who would be
there with him forever
i'm going to go out on a limb and
suggest that nobody watching this video
would go to these lengths
but loneliness is a very human emotion
in her book dr shaw is arguing that our
conception of evil
is that people do awful things out of
this drive for bloodlust
she says that's our psychological
defense as a way to dehumanize
serial killers to separate us from them
if we were to acknowledge that these
people expressed human emotions
it'd mean that more of us were capable
of these acts
although 99.9 of us would
never commit these acts the rational
part of us
knows that serial killers like dahmer
were human
aside from discussing the nuanced
subject of evil and crime
in chapter three titled the freak show
she explained studies
on what make people quote unquote creepy
and why some of us
are fascinated by the topic of serial
killers one possible explanation that dr
shaw gives us
for why we're intrigued by serial
killers is that it's a psychological way
for us to confront
death as we learn about these stories
it's a way for us to confront death
from the comfort of our homes without
being in real danger
in his book how pleasure works yale
psychologist paul bloom
has another interesting perspective
bloom argues that one reason we're drawn
to fictional horror movies
is that it's a way for our brain to run
through life-and-death scenarios
to better prepare us if we were put in
an awful situation
bloom states that although we know a
zombie apocalypse
most likely isn't going to happen our
brain gets pleasure from watching these
movies
because it helps us strategize in our
minds on an
unconscious level we're able to ask
questions like
if i was in this scenario which
neighbors could i trust to help me
survive
and which of my friends are most likely
to betray me
the other explanation that dr shaw
brings up
is that we admire people with qualities
we don't have
even though we never want to be them or
do what they do
this is one of those keep the best and
leave the rest scenarios
as we learn about serial killers
although we don't condone their actions
we admire how cunning they are it takes
a highly intelligent person
to avoid being caught for that long
aside from intelligence
we may admire their confidence so
although we'd never aspire to be a
serial killer
some of us are fascinated about a serial
killer's traits
like intelligence this is actually
something that's quite common
there are plenty of non-murdering
celebrities that people love
for various traits i'm no fan of our
president but i know one of the reasons
donald trump was elected
was because he never apologizes and
quote unquote says what's on his mind
you see this on youtube as well
it's hard to argue that someone like
trisha paytas or tana mojo isn't a hot
mess
but these youtubers are able to live in
a way that many of us can't
so although you may not respect trisha's
moral compass
maybe you admire her body confidence and
fearlessness
when it comes to speaking her mind so
now that we know that people interested
in learning about serial killers
aren't necessarily morbid or glorifying
these people
this doesn't necessarily explain some of
the other human behaviors
in this next section we're going to
switch gears and get supernatural to try
to understand
why people buy murder memorabilia by
learning
about essentialism
when i was a kid i was absolutely
obsessed with buffy the vampire slayer
in fact i even wanted to name my son
xander but
his mom only agreed to make his middle
name alexander
each week i watched buffy and would
watch re-runs
on repeat eventually i started writing
the cast fan letters and one day none
other than buffy herself
sent me a letter back sarah michelle
gellar sent me an autographed picture
and it made my whole world i wrote her
again with a thank you
and she wrote back but when i opened the
letter i was
furious it was the exact same picture
with the exact same autograph
buffy didn't sign this she probably
didn't even put this fake autographed
picture in an envelope and send it to me
so
i did what any other rational child
would do and i sent her one more letter
expressing my anger for this autographed
scam she was running
a couple weeks later i received a reply
in that envelope
was the exact same autographed picture
aside from my tiny little heart being
broken there was something much
deeper going on that's part of the human
experience and that
is essentialism why did it make me feel
so
good believing that sarah herself
touched the envelope and photo
with her very own signature why did it
feel
so bad when i realized it was fake why
is it that when people are touched by a
celebrity they say that they're never
going to wash their hand again
and why do people spend insane amounts
of money at celebrity auctions
even weirder why did people buy bel
delphine's bath water
well the answer is essentialism
in his book supersense experimental
psychologist bruce hood
discusses the cognitive phenomenon of
essentialism
essentialism is our belief that objects
have an essence to them
essentialism is our belief that objects
have an essence to them
this is also why i believe that that
essence is attached
to them and can be transferred while we
don't openly acknowledge this
supernatural belief
it's one that most of us hold and
through bruce hood's studies he's found
that we develop it when we're young
children
bruce hood and paul bloom who was
mentioned earlier
have done studies on children to see
when they develop essentialism
in one study they made children believe
that one of their cherished possessions
like a toy or a blanket was duplicated
in a machine
they wanted to see if the children
believed that an exact duplicate
was as valuable to them as the original
what they found
is that at a very young age we see our
possessions as having a certain essence
that's special to us for example think
back to your favorite childhood stuffed
animal
if it were damaged or lost and your
parents replaced it
would you value it as much as the
original most likely not
because the new one doesn't have the
same essence so why do people pay
thousands of dollars for charles
manson's hair or paintings from john
wayne gacy
paul bloom conducted a study titled
physical contact
influences how much people pay at
celebrity auctions
in the abstract he states
contagion is a form of magical thinking
which people believe that a person's
immaterial qualities or essence
can be transferred to an object through
physical contact
here we investigate how a belief in
contagion influences the scale of
celebrity memorabilia
using data from three high-profile
estate auctions
we find that people's expectations about
the amount of physical contact between
the
object and the celebrity positively
predicts
the final bids for items that belong to
the well-liked
individuals like john f kennedy and
negatively
predicts final bids for items that
belong to disliked
individuals like bernie manoff so their
study indicated that we'd pay more for
something that was touched by a
well-liked individual
but why do people pay so much for serial
killer memorabilia
well as we discussed in the last section
there are certain qualities
that people do admire about these
killers despite
the person being a killer what's even
more fascinating
is what they found in a follow-up
experiment the abstract says
as follows a follow-up experiment
further suggests
that these effects are driven by
contagion beliefs
when asked to bid on a sweater owned by
a well-liked celebrity
participants report that they would pay
substantially
less if it was sterilized before they
received it
however sterilization increased the
amount they would pay
for a sweater owned by a disliked
celebrity
think about that for a second how much
would you pay for something worn by your
favorite celebrity
how much would you pay if it was
sterilized if you're like most people
you'd pay less but why because
sterilization
once again affects our magical thinking
and we believe that part of a person's
essence has now been removed
this also explains why people would pay
more for a sterilized item from a
disliked celebrity
this form of supernatural thinking also
explains cannibalism
in a future video we'll dive into that
supernatural psychology
but some people believe they absorb a
person's strengths
if they eat them but is this true for
essentialism when it comes to items as
well
in another study bruce hood found that
people believed they'd be a better
person if they wore
mr rogers famous sweater why
for those of us who remember mr rogers
he embodied goodness
and being completely wholesome so due to
our essentialism
we think that wearing his clothes would
transfer some of his essence to us
and make us a little bit better of a
person although magical thinking is a
supernatural belief
it actually works as we've discussed
before the placebo effect
is real and it's powerful the power of
beliefs is strong
which is why when you tell a child that
something you gave them is magic
and will make them brave they'll act
braver for some of us
owning something of mr rogers or gandhi
or mlk
might make us act better as well based
on our supernatural belief
bruce hood wanted to know if
essentialism could have the opposite
effect as well
so he did a study that he calls the
killer's cardigan
fred west was a serial killer in england
who committed 12 murders
in one study hood wanted to see if
people would wear a cardigan that was
worn by fred west
and many people who knew of his brutal
crimes say they wouldn't
when bruce hood asked who would wear
this cardigan to audience
when he gives talks he sees people
physically
recoil when others say they'd wear this
cardigan
why because of essentialism but remember
the essence of a serial killer is
different from person to person
for some people they'd be honored to
wear a killer's cardigan
regardless of how rational we think we
are we must admit that our tendency for
magical thinking of essentialism
is pretty fascinating it explains why
people buy
murder and celebrity memorabilia and why
people would buy
something as ridiculous as beldelphine's
bath water
it also explains why it's so hard for us
to get rid of things
but more importantly it gives us some
insight into those who struggle with
mental illnesses
that cause them to hoard so thus far
we've learned that people are
interested in learning about serial
killers as a way to unconsciously
run through scenarios or we may be drawn
to their intelligence or other traits
we also now have explanations as to why
people would consider owning items
from serial killers in this last section
we'll try to figure out
why people fall in love with some of
these serial killers
we all know people who fall for the bad
boy or bad girl
while some people go for the motorcycle
riding boy in high school
or the tattooed girl falling in love
with a serial killer is on a whole
different level
we're no longer discussing attraction to
someone who is a little on the
rebellious side
this is someone who has been convicted
of murder in this final section we're
going to dive into a little psychology
but we don't have time to get into the
psychology of why you're attracted to
certain people
i've actually covered this in a previous
video titled why you date who you date
which will be linked up in the info card
today we're going to be discussing the
psychology
behind conventionally attractive people
getting better treatment than most
believe it or not there have been a ton
of psychological studies on this subject
based on the research we know why people
like ted bundy and richard ramirez
receive more love letters than ed kemper
in 2019
there was quite an uproar about the
casting of hollywood stud
zac efron playing ted bundy people were
upset that casting this attractive man
and making him a sex
symbol in the movie was morally wrong
and a disservice to the victims
but many women were attracted to the
real ted bundy
despite his vicious murders going back
to the halo effect
for some reason we perceive attractive
people as
less dangerous one of the most recent
examples of this went
viral in 2014 and it's the story of
jeremy meeks
aka the hot felon when his bug shot was
released
women and men alike could only talk
about how attractive meeks was
after being released in 2016 he even
began a modeling career
although jeremy meeks is attractive he
wasn't in prison for some
traffic violations or something minor in
2002
he was charged with robbery and corporal
injury
to a child he was also a member
of the northside gangster crips and in
2014
he was charged with felony possession of
a firearm
and grand theft but for some reason
these crimes are
dampened due to his physical appearance
in her book
evil dr julia shaw discusses our
intuitions about whether a person is
creepy
or trustworthy she cites a 2008 study
where participants rated 34 people
on whether they were trustworthy or not
based on photos alone
half of these people were trustworthy
and the other half weren't
how did the researchers decide who was
trustworthy
half of these photos were of nobel peace
prize winners
and the other half were men on the
america's most wanted list
the results basically we suck at knowing
who is trustworthy
or not because we use arbitrary features
like a person's appearance as a compass
shot also cites a study to see what
people categorized as quote unquote
creepy
they categorize creepy men as typically
lanky
or awkward think about that for a second
the top traits of quote-unquote creepy
people
were features completely out of their
control this is a prime example of the
halo effect
think about your favorite romantic
comedy if an attractive man
keeps showing up at a woman's work or
where she lives
uninvited it's cute and shows that he's
into the woman
but if this was an unattractive man he'd
be a psycho
research shows that unattractive people
are less likely to get good jobs
and they're also subject to harsher
punishments in 2015 dr julia shaw did a
study at the university of british
columbia
and found that unattractive and
untrustworthy looking people
were convicted of crimes by mock jurors
with less
evidence and they are less likely to be
exonerated
with evidence that proves their
innocence it's easy for us to sit back
and judge these people
who fall in love with these serial
killers but they're just
further down the spectrum than most of
us ask yourself how many exes you have
where you put up with more of their
toxic behavior just because they were
attractive
most of us have at least one or two on
our list
as much as people like to talk about how
terrible technology has made the world
i often think about how it's definitely
decreased the amount of serial killers
as i watch documentaries like i'll be
gone in the dark
or ones about people like ted bundy i
can't help but think about how much
sooner they'd have been caught
if they had security cameras back then
or social media
today it's a common practice for a woman
to share her
location with her friends on a first
date just
in case and if i'm being honest i did
the same thing back in my single days
when we think about fear and anxiety we
think about them as these negative parts
of what makes us human
but as we discussed some of us who are
fascinated by serial killers
are on a higher alert because we're
mentally running through these scenarios
on a regular basis
having a healthy amount of anxiety keeps
us safe and on the lookout for
suspicious activity
but we also need to remember that our
gut feeling
isn't always accurate in this video you
also
learned how we instinctually believe
that attractiveness
means trustworthiness but that's not
always the case
we also learned that even if we're not
suspicious many of us still have
supernatural beliefs
when it comes to essentialism so the
next time you're going to spend your
hard-earned money on something that was
once owned by a celebrity
really sit back and think about it for a
second although the essence of the
celebrity may have a placebo effect on
you
you don't want to break the bank on it
and if you're like me
ask how much you're really willing to
spend on going to a concert
how much is that experience worth and
why is there an essence of being in the
presence of a celebrity
the other day tristan introduced me to
the channel cruel world happy
mind where she discussed jared leto's
quote unquote cult
with weekend retreats costing upwards of
seven thousand dollars
we need to realize that celebrities are
taking advantage
of our essentialism but finally
if you gain nothing else from this video
i hope you realize that there are some
good reasons
why you're fascinated with serial
killers like me
you're not glorifying or romanticizing
these killers
but you're interested in the subject
because you're a critical
thinker and love to learn
all right everybody thank you once again
for making it all the way through this
video and i hope
you learned some new fascinating stuff
about serial killers
and essentialism and all that and like i
said i found it really interesting
that one of the reasons that we are
interested in this or even like scary
movies
it helps our brain run through these
scenarios
like anxious people are much more
prepared on
average the other people but for some of
us like i actually have anxiety
disorders
so i do therapy and everything like that
and as you know here at the rewired soul
huge advocates for mental health so if
you need help don't be afraid to ask for
it i personally use better help
online therapy and every video down in
the description below there is a link
to better help online therapy it's an
affiliate link so what that means is
that you get affordable
online therapy and a little bit comes
back supports the channel
and helps me out for all the work that i
put into these crazy long video essays
all right but i hope you enjoyed uh this
second video in the supernatural
psychology series
i do have some more and i have a bunch i
have like a billion
ideas for videos all of you like so many
ideas and there's not
enough time all right so i'll hopefully
get the next one out soon
all right but anyways that's all i got
for this video if you like this video
please give it a thumbs up if you're new
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and a huge thank you to everybody who
supports channel either by being a
patron
or buying my books from the uh rewired
soul website or getting merch from the
merch store
you're all awesome thanks again for
watching i'll see you next time
