Darth Vader, The Joker, Voldemort, Loki, Ursula… the bad guys are very often popular in the cinema. Some are even more beloved than the heroes of the movies. Why such a craze for villains? This is what a scientific team from the University of Michigan sought to understand.
- According to a study by Northeastern University, voluntary exposure to pain while watching horror movies promotes the release of endorphins.
- Another reason advanced for the love of horror films: the scary images could serve as educational material for the brain.
No matter how selfish, power-hungry, or greedy the character is, many of us love the movie’s “villain.” Its dark side challenges us and fascinates us, sometimes much more than the “nice”. The reason, according to a new study from the University of Michigan? We tend to attribute redeeming qualities to them.
Ursula and Woody’s ‘real me’ under scrutiny
To determine how individuals make sense of the antisocial acts committed in feature films, researchers at the American University conducted three studies with 434 children (ages 4 to 12) and 277 adults. Works to appear in the journal Cognition April 2023, focus on the gestures of familiar fictional villains and heroes like Ursula from The little Mermaid or Woody from Toy Story.
The first experiment revealed that the children viewed the actions and emotions of the villains as extremely negative. This suggests that young audiences’ tendency to judge people as good does not preclude their appreciation of extreme forms of badness.
The following two tests assessed the beliefs of young and old viewers regarding the moral character of the characters. Among other things, they had to assess how they felt, whether their actions reflected their “true self” or whether they could change over time.
Villains are “inwardly good” for onlookers
The data collected showed that both children and adults consistently rate villains’ selves as extremely bad and significantly more negative than heroes’ selves. However, the researchers also detected an asymmetry in their judgments. Indeed for the volunteers interviewed, the malevolent characters were more likely to have a “me” that differed from their outward behavior than the heroes. Both children and adults believed that protagonists like Ursula could have a certain inner goodness, despite their evil or immoral actions. On the other hand, very few of them imagined that Woody could be “inwardly evil”.
“In other words, people believe there’s a disconnect between a villain’s outward behaviors and their inner self. And, that’s a bigger gap for villains than for heroes.”explains Valerie Umscheid, doctoral student in psychology at the University of Michigan and lead author of the study.
