Villains are shown throughout media to be a plot source of conquering the bad and letting the good win. Every story needs a villain, which can appear in a multitude of ways from the environment the hero is in or the hero having some sort of inner demon. With that being said, when there’s a physical villain in a story many readers seem to love them more than the hero itself. Fanfiction, fan art, and even full movies are being produced to solely focus on villains in the media. So why is that? Why are villains so captivating to us as the viewers?
To start, I think we need to state the obvious which is how (most) villains are hot. For both sexes, lively movements, facial averageness, as well as social or financial dominance seems to be a core value for most ideal relationships (Bryan, Webster, & Mahaffey, 2010). Compare this to Hollywood villains, we can see picture-perfect people playing the role of a villain who tends to be boisterous and active to dominate the field that they’re targeting. This can be seen in movies such as The Wolf Of Wall Street (Scorsese et al.) where we have a conventionally attractive man (Leonardo DiCaprio) playing the role of the manipulative confident con man to take over the stock market in New York. You need to have some sort of physical attraction for us to route to for the villain as it allows us to relate to them in a level deeper than a blob of slime. A blob of slime simply doesn’t have the appeal we’re looking for in a devious dominating villain.
This leads us to personality. Aggressiveness, expressiveness, athleticism, excitability, and intelligence are another set of factors that seem to stand across romantic relationships as desirable or something we yearn for (Felmlee, 1995). These traits found in almost every villain. They have to be charismatic, aggressive, smart, and lively or else why would their followers choose to follow them? Loki from the Marvel universe reflects this as a humorous, upbeat, coy, charismatic villain which has lead to a massive social media following.
Empathy is another key reason which makes a villain more approachable and relatable. Almost every villain that is widely loved outside of their film or story has some sort of tragic back story and can even be considered the victim. Victims are seen as these pure and innocent characters that need protection (Grizzard, Huang, Fitzgerald, Ahn, & Chu, 2017) and to see this shattered by an external force is sad or upsetting. This victimization shapes them into a darkness we see later on and births the villain persona. We want to feel for the villain and understand their pain. In The Lorax (Renaud, 2012) we observe The Once Ler being pushed by his toxic family dynamic to harvest the environment he once loved to profit from it. This gives a villain motive and develops a morale (Bergstrand & Jasper, 2018) that we as the audience can now understand after learning about their back story. Empathy can also leave space for potential redemption where the villain turns good. Gamora from Marvel is a prime example of this where she is then redeemed and chooses to help the heroes she was once in conflict with, thus turning into a hero herself.
Lastly, I found this next part to be extremely interesting and wanted to include it in my blog post about how uncertainty in attraction aids in a higher romantic attraction (Whitchurch, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2010). In most forms of media, the protagonist always has a love interest and that love interest always ends up with the protagonist, but what about the villain? As an audience, we want to put ourselves in a character’s shoes which is why romance movies and novels exist as some form of escapism. It’s a comforting idea that we could end up with the main protagonist and live the same sort of life. This is a given. What isn’t a given is a romantic path with a villain. With a hero, we know exactly how to obtain that goal, but a villain leaves us more clouded in mystery and has us thinking. This uncertainty leads to more thought drifting towards the villain of the story rather than the hero and can turn into a romantic appeal.
All in all, I’m here to settle that villains are appealing to mass audiences due to their physical attraction, personality, potential empathy, and uncertain romantic interest. I know personally I’m happy to say I’m a sucker for them!
References:
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca/doi/full/10.1177/0190272518781050
Bergstrand, K., & Jasper, J. M. (2018). Villains, Victims, and Heroes in Character Theory and Affect Control Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 81(3), 228-247. doi:10.1177/0190272518781050
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167210395604
Bryan, Webster, & Mahaffey. (2010). The Big, the Rich, and the Powerful: Physical, Financial, and Social Dimensions of Dominance in Mating and Attraction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(3) 365–382 doi:10.1177/0146167210395604
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca/doi/pdf/10.1177/0265407595122009
Felmlee, D. H. (1995). Fatal Attractions: Affection and Disaffection in Intimate Relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12(2), 295-311. doi:10.1177/0265407595122009
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca/doi/full/10.1177/0093650217699934
Grizzard, M., Huang, J., Fitzgerald, K., Ahn, C., & Chu, H. (2017). Sensing Heroes and Villains: Character-Schema and the Disposition Formation Process. Communication Research, 45(4), 479-501. doi:10.1177/0093650217699934
Renaud, C. (Director). (2012). The Lorax [Video file]. United States: Universal.
Scorsese, M. (Director), & Scorsese, M., DiCaprio, L., Aziz, R., McFarland, J., & Koskoff, E. T. (Producers). (n.d.). The wolf of Wall Street [Video file].
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca/doi/full/10.1177/0956797610393745
Whitchurch, E. R., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not . . . ”. Psychological Science, 22(2), 172-175. doi:10.1177/0956797610393745
Social Cognition 
What is an action movie without a villain anyway?If the villain is taken away the whole thing falls apart. Shows with boring villains get cancelled, villains are a necessity, we need them in our lives at least fictionally. “We construct villains for the powerful emotions they inspire in the audience” (Bergstrand and Jasper, 2018) in this article it talks about the negative emotions we feel for the villains. I feel that the more attractive a villain is the more likely said villain could switch sides, in movies the uglier the villain gets the deeper into evil he?she falls. I also find that it is unusual to have an unattractive hero besides the older you get the more sense the villain makes. Although lets take a look at Loki in one movie he’s the bad guy, in another he’s a hero, in another he’s a bit of both, reminder that he is a trickster God, Marvel would not have been able to use such a loved character in so many ways if he was unattractive because heroes are always attractive. The movie business is about money, if fans gravitate towards any character you can almost bet they will be included in more movies.
Bergstrand, K., & Jasper, J. M. (2018). Villains, Victims, and Heroes in Character Theory and Affect Control Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 81(3), 228–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272518781050
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I thought this was a really interesting topic! I was thinking that our attraction to villains could also stem from the power of human empathy. As we learn more and more about the villain’s tragic backstory we begin to learn why they are the way they are. Even though they’ve done some horrible things we try to understand why and we can forgive them based on their tortured, internalized worldview. A side point, but I also feel like women are especially vulnerable to caring for the ‘bad guy’ because we’re naturally nurturing individuals that want to believe that people can get better and do better. I think that also goes into women falling for the wrong guys because they’re traditionally attractive and they see them as ‘projects’ that they can help. I think it also doesn’t hurt these villains’ cases when they’re ridiculously hot because naturally humans think that anything beautiful must in fact be good deep down (Keen et al., 2012).
Keen, R., McCoy, M., & Powell, E. (2012). Rooting for the Bad Guy: Psychological Perspectives. Studies in Popular Culture, 34(2), 129-148. Retrieved July 14, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23416402
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This is such a fascinating topic, I personally love (most) villains in stories more than the heroes. After reading your blog I was interested in finding out more about why we tend to like villains in stories so much, but not so much in real life. I found a study by Krause & Rucker, 2020, which looked at why people tend to shun individuals that are similar to them that have negative traits, but tend to accept fictional villains that are like them. The researchers found that people tend to deny they are like a real-life person even if there are similarities between them if the person has negative characteristics. People have a tendency to want to portray themselves in the best light possible and if they are compared to someone with negative characteristics that threatens that portrayal. What the individuals are experiencing is called self-threat. The researchers found there is no self-threat experienced when individuals are seen as similar to villains. This is due to the separation between reality and fantasy, which mitigates the threat. Personally, I find this finding interesting since I enjoy taking quizzes on which villain I am most like, but I have never thought about self-threat by being like someone in real life but wanting to avoid them due to their negative characteristics.
Literature Cited
Krause, R. J., & Rucker, D. D. (2020). Can Bad Be Good? The Attraction of a Darker Self. Psychological Science, 31(5), 518-530. doi:10.1177/0956797620909742
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca/doi/full/10.1177/0956797620909742?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed
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