Can bad be good? The attraction of a darker self
Krause and Rucker analysed records from an online character-quiz site (about 232,000 registered users) and found people preferred villains who resembled them, then ran five laboratory experiments (1,685 participants). Reported experiments: 100 students rated matches to fictional villains as less uncomfortable than matches to real villains; in 397 participants, removing the sense that stories are socially safe lowered interest in a film for villain-resembling viewers. Psychological Science 31(5), 518-530, 2020.
Krause and Rucker analysed records from an online character-quiz site (about 232,000 registered users) and found people preferred villains who resembled them, then ran five laboratory experiments (1,685 participants). Reported experiments: 100 students rated matches to fictional villains as less uncomfortable than matches to real villains; in 397 participants, removing the sense that stories are socially safe lowered interest in a film for villain-resembling viewers. Psychological Science 31(5), 518-530, 2020.
Written from the abstract level via OpenAlex record; experiment details from Kellogg Insight (2 March 2020) and the Association for Psychological Science news release (22 April 2020); authors and pages checked at OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
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://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620909742