The psychology of evil: what fascinates us in bad guys

Superheld*Interior stories celebrate their renaissance-both in film and series as well as in video games, as Spider-Man Miles Morales shows. But today it's not about hero, but about their opponents: bad guys, culprits, villain - in short, evil in person.

• the highly sanctuary duality: good and bad
• the thing with evil
• curiosity about serial killer?
• People of the same kind stick together
• "Psychopath" is the new "evil"
• mystery of psychopathy cleared up
• complex characters are often better

And maybe when reading these terms you can tell that words like "villain" seem slightly childishly. In the course of this article, I will take a psychological look at whether there is "evil in person", what has to do with psychopathy and why some people are more fascinated by villains than others.

the highly sanctuary duality: good and bad

By definition, bad guys are characters that violate legal and moral values with their behavior. In most cases (e.g. Exdeath in Final Fantasy V, Waluigi in Super Mario Brothers or General Shepherd in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) In video games, they are less to think about moral principles, but are more of a projection surface for protagonists And with it also the players to demonstrate their own good and heroic action.

This attitude may be sufficient for games with a strong gameplay focus such as Jump & Runs. However, games that focus on the story element, however, can particularly shine because characters have a certain degree of complexity and, for example, offer the players a level of reflecting on their prosocial values and norms.

However, this is hardly possible if there are clichéd representations of "good against evil", "we against them". Unfortunately, our world is not quite as easily knitted, and supposedly "evil" or "immoral" people often have reasons for their behavior. But is there something like the "pure evil" in the psyche?

the thing with evil

It makes sense to first ask yourself when we call something "evil" or "malicious". In games, it is often the first appearance of a villain that causes the protagonist to harm or take something (e.g. beloved people, princesses, skills or objects). At first we do not perceive this as "nice" because it reluctantly strives for our own goals and wishes. The person initially only makes this an antagonist, i.e. a person who has a conflict with us. That doesn't mean that the other person is a chaos -loving culprit.

Jolina Bering

__@jolythepsych

Psychologist Jolina likes it when you are faced with moral pitfalls in games and the concepts of good and evil are blurred more and more, or you have to choose to burn with your love in games and let a whole city destroy a tornado.

When is someone "bad"? Especially we perceive something as evil when an unjust or reluctant behavior is shown without seeing a recognizable reason for it. So "evil" is the person who does evil for evil will. Sounds pretty nasty, but are there such people at all? So live and in color in reality? To quote Jonathan Frakes from "X-Factor the incredible" as an answer: "You believe this story is true? Wrong, it is fictitious!"

The fact that we perceive people as "evil" is due to a gap in the knowledge. But why do we do that? We have a basic need for control and orientation and that sometimes requires more, sometimes less, which can be neatly sorted into drawers. That saves time and energy. If we do not know or understand the motifs of another person, for example because they either have other values or lack context and background information, it crunches in the head. Our brain simply cannot endure not to understand behavior and therefore stuff such behaviors into the remaining drawer with the inscription "evil".

Spoiler warning Attention, in the following paragraph there are spoilers for the story of The Last of Us 2! If you don't know the story yet, you can skip this paragraph.

A game, which is exactly what is demonstrating this knowledge gap, is The Last of Us 2. From the point of view of Ellie, Abigail is a clear antagonist and culprit at the beginning of the game. However, this assumption is corrected to the players if they are initially with a lot of displeasure Hatting into the shoes of Abigail and when it comes to realizing that it is just complicated and the world does not consist of black and white but consists of many different shades of gray.

And that doesn't necessarily have to be bad : Anyone who can get involved that characters are not only good or bad will experience them as more complex and interesting. In the case of the bad guys, the tendency has become increasingly evident in recent years to give them understandable motifs or at least a history of origin. Since we basically want to understand behavior, the presentation of internal processes of the antagonists and "bad guys" serves our control and orientation needs, so that space is created for curiosity and we start to be interested in these characters.

curiosity about serial killer?

But not only diverse characters, but also very dark characters such as serial killers and psychopaths awaken our interest with their very different world of thoughts and behavior. In psychology, this curiosity for cruel behavior and its perpetrators is also called "morbid curiosity" and actually has an evolutionary psychological sense.

Our brain is not only well sorted, but above all prepared, especially when it comes to dangers. Morbid curiosity occurs increasingly in people who perceive the world as dangerous, which, according to the study situation, leads, among other things, that women* in particular deal with serial killers, psychological drillers and the topic of "True Crime". But what is that good for?

By dealing with violence and the perpetrators in a secure framework (e.g. in video games), we try to identify warning signs in order to be better prepared in a real situation and to avoid dangerous persons using behaviors or personality traits.

People of the same kind stick together

Another explanation for a high fascination for bad guys is also identified, as a Danish research group found: In their study, they were able to show that people who themselves have a higher level of "typical evil" personality traits rate, evaluate bad guys more positively. So these people unconsciously recognize their own characteristics in the villains, and therefore they think it's great. Simplified one can say: the more “villain” slumbers in one yourself, the higher the fascination for other villains.

“Typical Evil” Personality Properties understands the personality traits of the dark triad: Machiavellism, narcissism and psychopathy. Machiavellism denotes the tendency to lie to people for their own advantage, cheat and manipulate and to have a rather cynical attitude towards morality. Narcissism is a personality property that is characterized, among other things, by increasing self, low criticism and pejorative behavior.

But what about psychopathy, the now very common character for bad guys in video games?

"Psychopath" is the new "evil"

Although there are also games like Bioshock, in which “psychopathic” characters such as Frank Fontaine are well established, it often looks like a replacement drawer for “simply evil” in some other video games and media and is often used as a way out, the trouble of a differentiated character presentation to avoid.

Not a good example : Lynch from Kane & Lynch is a rather little successful implementation. In addition to being a psychopath, he also got schizophrenia and addiction from the character writers onto the plate. Because: more mental illness = more evil, right? Simply throwing these constructs together in one character is questionable, but using mental illness as a sign of malice is extremely critical. It draws a wrong picture of addicts to addiction or schizophrenia as dangerous and violent people and contributes to the stigmatization of mental illnesses through the type of representation in the game.

But also at Trevor in GTA V or one of the most cult villains, the Joker in the Batman Arkham series, psychopathy is presented as an explanation for the action. Psychopathy is actually not a diagnosis at all, but is often used as a term to describe people and personalities who are noticed by reduced emotional feeling (e.g. empathy or repentance), impulsiveness, manipulative behavior (e.g. lies) and little sense of responsibility in everyday life and often an antisocial personality disorder suffer. For a long time there was the assumption that these so -called "psychopaths" have no emotional feeling, but this is not the case.

mystery of psychopathy cleared up

New studies show that the process of suppressing emotions when trying to strive for goals simply works much more in people with high psychopathy tendency than in neuronormative people. This also makes sense for us in everyday life if, for example, we overcome our fear or nervousness to give a lecture because we have the goal of making our work well or being promoted.

"Psychopaths" also quickly get bored and therefore need intensive stimulation. If you have inadequate impulse control or conscientiousness, the goal of having fun through violence can be much more feelings, such as the fear of the consequences or empathy for the victim, suppress than that would do that in neuronormative people.

Of course, not all "psychopaths" become criminal, but the presence of these personality traits is a strong indication that the person becomes criminal again as soon as they have committed a crime. Therefore, security custody and/or accompanying psychological treatment are usually necessary to prevent further crimes.

** You have a favorite base weight?

__62 __7

Village World Cup

The group phase is running, right now!

__

complex characters are often better

Although rather one-dimensional characters such as Bowser play in Jump-and-Run as an action engine, we also fascinate more fascinated bad guys, with understandable motives for action: they not only offer us the opportunity to put our own moral values to the test, but leave Take a look at the mirror of our own personality and show us what we should take care of.

Which bad guys fascinated you the most?