Harry Potter, Spider-Man, and Gandalf would surely vote the same way you do—right? Darth Vader, Cruella de Vil, and Joffrey Baratheon, on the other hand, would back the opposing party. At least, that’s what many people believe.
According to a new study led by Dr. Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte from the University of Southampton, people in the UK and the US often assume their favorite heroes would vote the same way they do, while villains would side with their political opponents.
This phenomenon highlights a deep-seated psychological tendency that may be fueling political polarization.
Political Projection
The study, which surveyed 3,200 people across the UK and the US, asked participants to imagine how characters from popular franchises like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones would vote. Would Gandalf support Labour or the Conservatives? Would Spider-Man lean Democrat or Republican?
People were 20% more likely to assign their own political preferences to heroes than to villains. Conversely, they were just as likely to assume villains would vote for the opposing party.
This kind of projection isn’t as harmless as it may look at first glance. It reinforces the “us versus them” mentality that drives political polarization. When people consistently associate negative traits with their opponents, it becomes harder to find common ground—or even to see the humanity in those who hold different views.
“If we see ‘villains’ as belonging to the other side, then we also tend to associate more and more negative attributes with that group,” says Turnbull-Dugarte, lead author of the study. “This is not only bad news for polarization, but also makes us more easily susceptible to misinformation that confirms the existing biases we hold about the voters of certain parties.”
The research didn’t stop at fictional characters. In a second experiment, around 1,600 people in the UK were shown one of two news stories about a local councillor. In one version, the councillor donated money to a charity; in the other, they stole from it. Notably, neither story mentioned the councillor’s political affiliation.
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Yet, about one in six participants falsely “remembered” which party the councillor belonged to. Those who read about the charitable act were more likely to assume the councillor was from their own party, while those who read about the theft assumed the councillor was from the rival party. Even when participants were asked to guess the councillor’s affiliation, their guesses still aligned with their partisan biases. It’s striking how deeply ingrained partisan biases can shape not just our opinions but even our memories.
A Path Toward Less Polarized Politics
This tendency was especially pronounced among those with strong political identities and was more common among left-leaning individuals than those on the right.
“People believe heroes are more likely to belong to their group but can accept a proportion might not,” Turnbull-Dugarte explained. “Respondents were much more consistent when identifying a villain as belonging to the other group.”
In an era of deep political divisions, understanding how people project their biases onto both fictional and real-world figures could help address the root causes of polarization or at least minimize them.
Often, in the stories we tell ourselves, the heroes always wear our colors—and the villains always belong to the other side. But if people instinctively see their political rivals as villains, what does that mean for democracy?
“To overcome increasing political division, we need to recognise this tendency to project heroic and villainous traits along partisan lines,” says Dr. Turnbull-Dugarte. “Reality is always more complex and nuanced than our biases would have us believe.”
The findings were published in the journal Political Science Research & Method.
