Through a survey carried out by Psychological Science magazine and published by IFLScience, it was possible to understand that people are attracted to villains who are likable through sharing similarities with their readers or viewers.
To learn more about the results of this behavioral research, be sure to check out the full text.
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According to researchers in the journal Psychological Science, sympathy for fictional villains may be a safer way for people to deal with the dark part of their personalities.
Rebeca Krause, one of the researchers in this study, states that fictional stories can offer a kind of refuge for viewers, in this way, they will be able to make comparisons between themselves and the negative characters in the stories fictitious.
Furthermore, Rebeca added that “People want to see themselves in a positive light. Finding similarities between yourself and a bad person can be uncomfortable.” In this way, it is possible to say that comparing yourself with someone who does not exist can be much easier than looking for similarity with someone who commits crimes or evil in real life.
How was the study
By surveying 232,500 anonymous people via the Charac Tour website, researchers found that people actually tend to like both sides of stories. That is, they feel that there are similarities with both the good guys and the bad guys.
After this research, two more experiments were carried out, one being a comparison analysis to find out if people knew how to differentiate fictional villains from real ones, as well as fictional heroes from real life ones real. And in the other, psychological tests were carried out to find out how people felt different in relation to fictional villains and whether they felt their self-image was threatened by from that. However, even with the 3 studies, the researchers say that it is still not possible to conclude anything about this subject.