Summary: Both children and adults are more likely to see villains as having some inner goodness than to see heroes as having hidden bad qualities.
Source: University of Michigan
We’ve always been fascinated by villains.
From television dramas to blockbuster films, audiences often find themselves drawn to antagonists. Even when villains display selfishness, cruelty, or ambition taken to excess, many people suspect there may be redeeming qualities beneath their hostile behavior. A new study from the University of Michigan sheds light on this intuition: both children and adults are more likely to attribute inward goodness to villains than to attribute inward wrongdoing to heroes.
“People perceive a larger gap between how villains behave and who they are inside than they do for heroes,” said Valerie Umscheid, a University of Michigan psychology doctoral student and the lead author of the study. In other words, villains often appear somewhat less malevolent on the inside than their actions suggest, while heroes tend to be seen as consistently good both inwardly and outwardly.
The researchers ran three studies involving a total of 434 children aged 4–12 and 277 adults. Participants judged both familiar characters—such as Disney’s Ursula from The Little Mermaid and Pixar’s Woody from Toy Story—and newly created fictional heroes and villains. The goal was to understand how people interpret antisocial acts and decide whether outward actions reflect a character’s “true self.”
Study 1 confirmed that children readily recognize and label villainous actions and emotions as strongly negative. This finding indicates that children’s general tendency to view others positively does not prevent them from identifying extreme wrongdoing or appreciating the darker traits of villains.
Studies 2 and 3 broadened the investigation by asking both children and adults about several aspects of moral character and inner life. Participants judged how a character felt internally, whether their actions matched their true self, whether their true self could change over time, and how an impartial, omniscient evaluator might assess their inner nature. Together, these measures offered a converging picture of how people reason about the relationship between behavior and an individual’s core identity.
Across these assessments, both age groups consistently rated villains’ inner natures as more negative than heroes’. Yet the researchers also identified a notable asymmetry: participants were more inclined to believe that villains’ inner selves differed from their outward behavior than to believe the same about heroes. In practical terms, people were more likely to imagine a villain as secretly having some goodness than to imagine a hero as secretly harboring bad impulses.
Umscheid and her colleagues interpret these results as reflecting a general tendency to allow for complexity in the moral lives of bad actors while seeing good actors as morally consistent. This asymmetry may help explain why villains remain compelling figures in stories and culture—audiences are open to the idea of redemption or hidden motives even for characters who commit wrongs.
The research also clarifies developmental aspects of moral reasoning. Children, even at young ages, recognize severe wrongdoing but simultaneously entertain the possibility that outwardly bad behavior might not fully reflect a person’s inner character. This pattern suggests an early-emerging appreciation for psychological complexity when judging moral agents.
The authors discuss implications for how people interpret real-world moral behavior, for narrative design in media, and for future research. They note limitations—such as the focus on fictional characters and the specific age range studied—and recommend further work to explore cultural differences, real-world transgressions, and the factors that influence beliefs about moral change and redemption.
About this psychology research news
Author: Press Office
Source: University of Michigan
Contact: Press Office – University of Michigan
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access. “What makes Voldemort tick? Children’s and adults’ reasoning about the nature of villains” by Valerie A. Umscheid et al., published in Cognition.
Abstract
What makes Voldemort tick? Children’s and adults’ reasoning about the nature of villains
This research examines how children and adults make sense of antisocial actions committed by villains. Across three studies with 434 children (ages 4–12) and 277 adults, participants evaluated both familiar and novel fictional heroes and villains.
Study 1 found that children readily view villains’ actions and emotions as highly negative, showing that children’s positivity bias does not prevent recognition of severe wrongdoing.
Studies 2 and 3 assessed beliefs about characters’ moral character and their “true selves.” Measures included judgments about internal feelings, the alignment between actions and inner nature, whether the true self could change over time, and how an omniscient evaluator would assess inner character.
Results showed that both children and adults rated villains’ inner selves as more negative than those of heroes. Crucially, however, participants were more likely to judge villains as having inner qualities that diverged from their outward behavior—reporting more often that villains were inwardly good than that heroes were inwardly bad.
The paper discusses implications for theories of moral development, narrative engagement, and beliefs about moral change, and it outlines limitations and directions for further research into how people reason about the true selves of moral agents.