People Tend to Like Morally Upright Heroes, Dislike Least Moral Villains

People tend to like heroes who
are morally upright according to a new study done by researchers at Ohio State
University, Texas A&M University and University of Buffalo.
According to Matthew
Grizzard,lead author of the study, villains least liked were the ones who were
most immoral. Character morality was believed to be linked to how much people
like them but in the 1990's anti-heroes who did bad things also began to be
liked.
The study was done on 265 college
students by asking them about the characters they liked and disliked. They were
asked to name the fictional characters associated with such attirbuted. The
disliked heroes were considered less moral than liked heroes while liked
villains were rated as more moral than the disliked ones. The liked anti-heores
were considered more moral than the disliked ones.
Anti-heroes and morally ambiguous
characters like Walter White in Breaking Bad. He is a chemistry teacher turned
drug kingpin in the show. It was quite difficult to rate such characters,
participants said.
Source:
https://news.osu.edu/even-today-we-want-our-heroes-to-know-right-from-wrong/
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