Bringing character back: How the motivation to evaluate character influences judgments of moral blame

Human beings are deeply moral creatures. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the stories we tell. Literature, cinema, and television are replete with tales that (either literally or metaphorically) describe the battle between good and evil, and tell the stories of the heroes and villains fighting for each side. But while we may root for the heroes, it is the villains that often capture most of our attention. Like audiences in the silent-movie era, who would boo and hiss loudly when the villain appeared onscreen, not only are we motivated to condemn the villain for his immoral actions, we seem to take great pleasure in doing so. For those of us of a certain age, there was one villain who allowed us this pleasure more than any other: Darth Vader, the antagonist of the original "Star Wars " films. From the moment he stepped onto the screen, there could be no doubt in the audience’s mind that he was the bad guy. Vader exuded all of the cues used by moviemakers to communicate “evil”: He was clad entirely in black, spoke with a deep, ominous voice, and was as much a machine as a human being. To be sure, if we ever encountered him in real life we would have been very motivated to keep a safe distance. The motivation to identify and condemn villains is not limited to our role as audience members, however. Few tasks are as important to our social well-being as figuring out who th