Between Zac Efron landing that Ted Bundy movie and Darren Criss starring as Andrew Cunanan — not to mention Evan Peters playing a whole handful of notorious cult leaders on American Horror Story — there’s been a recent surfeit of hot dudes playing extremely terrible criminals. Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood, but what does this mean for you, the person who suddenly finds herself attracted to Taylor Kitsch in David Koresh drag when you’re just trying to enjoy a nice night of TV watching? Are you…into criminals? According to experts, probably not, but for posterity’s sake, read this hybristophilia explainer to be sure.

What is hybristophilia?

Hybristophilia is a type of paraphilia in which a person “gets sexually aroused over someone else committing an offensive or violent act,” says Katherine Ramsland, PhD, a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University and author of the book . As defined by Merriam-Webster, paraphilia is “a pattern of recurring sexually arousing mental imagery or behavior that involves unusual and especially socially unacceptable sexual practices.” More commonly discussed types of paraphilia are things like pedophilia, zoophilia, and objectophilia.

Because access to notorious criminals is pretty well limited, hybristophilia can manifest itself as relationships maintained via letters sent and received while the criminal is in prison. To be clear, though, it’s only hybristophilia if the non-criminal party is actually aroused by the idea of the criminal committing a murder or similar — just writing a letter to a prisoner or keeping in contact with someone you already know doesn’t count.

Notorious murderer Richard Ramirez, who received tons of letters while in prison. Getty Images

How common is it?

No one knows for sure, but certainly not that common. “There is no empirical research,” says Louis B. Schlesinger, PhD, a professor of forensic psychology at John Jay College. “There are case reports of these individuals, there’s discussion of them, but really no empirical research from a scientific perspective.” Those case reports usually involve instances of women being attracted to male criminals and not the other way around. “The population of female inmates is so much smaller than [the population of] male inmates,” says Dr. Schlesinger, “and women are not committing sexual murders and these extraordinary sorts of things.”

Sheila Isenberg, journalist and author of , points to the case of Veronica Compton as one example of a female criminal who had a male admirer, but that too began the other way around. Compton was in a relationship with Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, and went to prison for attempting to commit a copycat murder. While she was in prison, she married a professor and they had a child together.

Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were convicted of murdering their parents. They each got married while in prison. Getty Images

And why does it happen?

“People want to be close to the notoriety of it,” explains Dr. Ramsland. “They also get a sense that they’re special to the person, so that if the person escaped he or she wouldn’t harm…so there’s a bit of narcissism in it as well. But primarily the idea is that they want to get close to a violent person so that they can either participate in a fantasy life that involves them or actually become partners with them.” Dr. Schlesinger also notes that some people believe it has to do with the fact that an incarcerated boyfriend is preferable in the sense that he can’t cheat on you — “the woman will know where her boyfriend is at all times” — but both he and Dr. Ramsland emphasize that it’s hard to say in the absence of research.

Isenberg, however, has a different theory. She agrees that people involved with notorious criminals enjoy the notoriety, but she doesn’t believe it’s sexual — she just thinks they want to be famous. “It’s a desire for fame and notoriety,” she says. These women are not going into it saying, ‘Gee, I want to be famous.’ It’s subconscious. They want to be noticed. They want to be important, like we all do.” Isenberg also notes that she interviewed more than three dozen women for Women Who Love Men Who Kill, and “every single one” had suffered some form of abuse in their lives. “I know it sounds weird and counterintuitive, but a man behind bars can’t hurt you,” she explains, “so he’s safe.”

How does it differ from say, a casual interest in true-crime TV shows?

If you’re not sexually aroused by the sight of a crime being committed, then you probably don’t have hybristophilia. “The difference between somebody who’s just watching every one of these shows that comes out and somebody’s who completely addicted to it is obsession,” says Dr. Ramsland. “Can you get up and go do something else or miss one? Then you’re probably not obsessed with it. But if you form your entire life around seeing these shows and binging them and watching them over and over and identifying with the people in them, now you’re in an obsessive mode. But again, that’s not necessarily sexual. When it rises to the point where it’s sexually arousing, and especially if it’s the only thing in your life that’s sexually arousing, now you have a paraphilia…a paraphilia is really about not just, ‘This is one of the many things a person does sexually.’ This is their primary arousal stimulus.”

And how does it differ from following a cult leader?

Again, it’s the issue of sexual arousal. “There are some people who are mesmerizing, charismatic people who use their verbal skills to almost create a trance-like sense in their followers, and that doesn’t necessarily amount to a paraphilia,” says Dr. Ramsland. “It’s not necessarily sexual for those people.”

Adds Dr. Schlesinger: “[With someone like] Jim Jones or David Koresh, there’s an actual relationship. You’re interacting with the person. The person is not incarcerated. He’s there…a lot of these people are seeking out men where there is no real relationship in terms of contact because the guy’s unavailable. He’s locked up.”

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How much like Ted Bundy is Zac Efron really?

“He’s so not Ted Bundy,” says Dr. Ramsland.

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Eliza Thompson senior entertainment editor I’m the senior entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan.com, which means my DVR is always 98 percent full.

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