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Why We Hate Bad Guys in Real Life But Love Them in Stories
The difference between a hero, an antihero, and a villain is often a matter of narrative.
Entertaining stories, both fictional and ostensibly real, usually rely on a balance of likable characters you can root for and dastardly villains you can hate. More accurately, they rely on villains that you love to hate, because make no mistake, fans love villains, from the Jackal to Chucky.
In the real world, we tend to dislike the villainous characters in our lives, while entire fandoms build up around our favorite fictional baddies. But why? It turns out there are a number of distinct psychological processes responsible for our love affair with degenerate and dishonorable characters.
People like fictional villains who are similar to them
Almost everyone has a favorite villain, and who that is might say something about them. According to research using online personality quizzes, people gravitate toward villains with whom they share qualities. It’s the reason shows like Peacock's House of Villains can exist. We might not want to be friends with any of those people in real life, but we love watching them on TV.
We might like villains who are similar to us because they allow us to explore the darker sides of ourselves without actually tarnishing our reputations or self-image. Interestingly, that response stands in contrast to how we react in real life. When we see someone similar to ourselves exhibiting villainous behaviors, we tend to recoil. That’s because we see the darker parts of ourselves writ large in the real world and we don’t like it.
When you take those same qualities and paint them on top of a fictional character, that discomfort suddenly disappears. In fact, we become even more fascinated by them. If you find yourself drawn to a villain who is clever or ambitious or powerful, you might see or desire those qualities in yourself.
Our fascination with evil has an evolutionary origin
In addition to staring our shadow selves in the face, humanity’s fascination with villains might have a deeper cause. It makes evolutionary sense to pay special attention to the villains among us, because they pose a threat.
When your neighbors are trustworthy, you don’t have to spend any extra attention on them. But when they are wicked, it serves you to keep an eye on them. A certain fascination may have developed in our psyches to motivate ongoing vigilance in the face of apparent danger.
We love some villains because we don’t consider them villains
Antiheroes stand in contrast to more conventional villains because their actions are justified within the narrative structure of the world they inhabit. Fictional professional killer John Wick gets a pass for his villainous actions because they are properly motivated. A villain’s underlying agenda matters.
Characters like Poison Ivy with her environmental motivations, Killmonger with his desire to expand the umbrella of care beyond Wakanda, or the android Ava from Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, who just wants freedom, are all examples. Each of these characters did objectively wicked things, but for reasons we can understand and sympathize with.
Why people love serial killers and true crime
Fascination with true crime likely relates to that previously mentioned desire to keep an eye on the shadowy parts of our world, and they are reinforced by what’s known as a justice sequence. In true crime documentaries, viewers are presented with a crime, then shown an investigation which usually ends with a trial and conviction.
True crime viewers see the worst of human behavior, but almost always after the fact once the crime has been solved. Seeing the justice sequence comforts viewers by reinforcing the ideas that, yes, bad things happen, but they also get resolved.
Taken together, when villains are presented in the context of a story, surrounded by a narrative we can wrap our heads around, they lose some of their bite and become more palatable. In many cases, they even become enjoyable.
Watch your favorite scoundrels on House of Villains, streaming now on Peacock.
