Who does Spiderman vote for? Study shows people project their political views onto fictional heroes and villains

By Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, Associate Professor in Quantitative Political Science, University of Southampton

From a very young age, we’re socialised to view the world as being made up of “goodies” and “baddies”. When you’re a child fooling around with your friends in the playground, nobody ever wants to be the baddy. And when it comes to dressing up, everybody wants to be Luke Skywalker – not Darth Vader.

This oversimplified way of viewing the world as being made up of right and wrong or good people and bad people doesn’t dissipate as we grow older. If anything, it tends to solidify as we form the social identities that define who we are in adult life.

This is particularly the…

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