Individuals within the UK are more likely to consider that fictional heroes like Harry Potter and Gandalf would share their political opinions, whereas villains like Darth Vader and Cruella de Vil would vote for opposing events, new analysis reveals.
The College of Southampton researchers behind the examine say this tendency, for folks to venture their very own views onto fictional characters, is fuelling political polarisation.
The tendency additionally prolonged past fiction. When offered with information tales about politicians participating in charitable or corrupt behaviour, individuals tended to affiliate the “good” politician with their most well-liked occasion and the “unhealthy” politician with the opposition.
Dr Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte of the College of Southampton defined the implications of those findings: “If we see ‘villains’ as belonging to the opposite facet, then we additionally are inclined to affiliate increasingly destructive attributes with that group.
“This isn’t solely unhealthy information for polarisation, but additionally makes us extra simply prone to misinformation that confirms the present biases we maintain in regards to the voters of sure events.”
The primary of two research, carried out by researchers from the College of Southampton and the College of Vienna, surveyed 3,200 people in the UK and United States.
Individuals had been requested which political occasion they believed varied fictional characters from standard franchises, together with Marvel, Disney, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Sport of Thrones, and Star Wars, would help.
Within the UK they had been requested if the characters had been extra more likely to vote Labour or Conservative, whereas within the US they had been requested if they’d vote Democrat or Republican.
The solutions had been then cross-referenced with the respondents’ personal political leanings.
The researchers for the examine, printed within the journal Political Science Analysis and Methodology, discovered that individuals had been 20 per cent extra more likely to venture their very own politics onto a hero than a villain.
The respondents had been additionally 20 per cent extra more likely to say a villain would vote for the opposing occasion than their very own.
Within the second examine, 1,600 folks within the UK had been proven considered one of two contrasting information tales a few native councillor – one wherein the councillor donated cash to a neighborhood charity and one other wherein they’d stolen cash from the charity.
The outcomes confirmed that about one in six folks falsely remembered which occasion the councillor represented, with a “robust tendency” to see the charitable donor as a member of their occasion, and the thief as a member of their rival occasion.
Dr Turnbull-Dugarte mentioned: “Individuals consider heroes usually tend to belong to their group however can settle for a proportion won’t. Respondents had been way more constant when figuring out a villain as belonging to the opposite group.
“In a context the place polarisation is excessive, projection seems to be extra about defining who we aren’t, than who we’re.”
He added that the tendency to see heroes on their facet and villains on the opposite was larger amongst these with stronger political identities, with these on the political left extra inclined to take action than these on the appropriate.
Dr Turnbull-Dugarte added: “To beat growing political division, we have to recognise this tendency to venture heroic and villainous traits alongside partisan traces and recognise that actuality is at all times extra advanced and nuanced than our biases would have us consider.”
