According to a new study from the University of Waterloo, what happens in comedies and cartoons when a character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is not far off from people’s perceptions of the real world.
The moral nature and goals of the supernatural beings are evident, and were intended to emphasize the characters’ decision-making difficulty with hilarious outcomes. And when it comes to persons they see as good or bad, people have similar expectations.
Expectations regarding how good and bad people respond to requests were investigated by the researchers. The researchers wanted to know why the devil and demons are frequently depicted as eager to grant unintentional requests in movies and folktales, but angels are not.
Their findings show that people’s perceptions of good and bad personalities are influenced by their perceptions of regular people.
“Our findings suggest that people expect good agents to be sensitive to requests’ intentions, while evil individuals are expected to be relatively insensitive to these intentions,” said Ori Friedman, a developmental psychology professor at Waterloo and the study’s lead author. “People’s expectations concerning requests sent to both regular persons and supernatural agents are shaped by these findings.”
People have different notions about how being nice or bad influences other people’s decisions, according to the study. People believe that evil people are unconcerned with anything that does not directly affect their goals.
These findings back up prior study by implying that at least some people’s everyday ideas about supernatural creatures are influenced by their perceptions of humans.
“One aspect of seeing someone as evil may be that we expect that person to focus less on the intentions of others and more on the outcomes of people’s actions,” says Brandon Goulding, a PhD candidate in developmental psychology and co-author of the study. “However, we believe that a good person will assess what someone intended to accomplish against what they actually did.”
Five tests were used to investigate people’s expectations about good and bad agents. In the study, 2,231 people read short stories about a protagonist’s request to a human or supernatural figure and then judged how likely it was to be granted. When the request was directed to a decent person, the ranking was based on whether the requester understood what they were asking for. Even when they were confusing and didn’t reflect the requester’s intentions, evil people were expected to grant requests.
“This study reveals something fascinating about how people perceive good and evil: individuals do not believe that wicked forces are solely concerned with producing harm. Instead, people associate evil with indifference and a lack of concern for others’ desires “Friedman remarked. “It also implies that people believe moral goodness entails more than just achieving positive outcomes. Moral goodness is also associated with caring about what other people desire and intend.”