*Written by Lark Devon, author of adult fantasy romance where the research shows. Published August 31, 2026.*
**Short answer:** We're drawn to villains who resemble us, as long as a story keeps that resemblance from feeling like a threat. That's the most direct finding so far, from a set of experiments on fictional villains. Studies of mating preferences and social status add smaller clues about why danger reads as appealing on the page.
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I've always wondered if the movies have us figured out. Do we actually want the villain? The bad guy with blood on his collar and exactly one soft spot, where the soft spot is you?
Part of me didn't want to know. If the answer was that we secretly want a man who'd actually hurt us, I'd have some thinking to do about the books I love, and the ones I write.
Everybody's got a theory. Either we all want to fix a broken man, or we've got some secret death wish. I didn't buy either one, so I went digging through what psychologists have actually tested.
The short version is yes, we want the villain. A particular villain, in a particular place.
## What Morally Gray Means in a Love Interest
When people say "morally gray," they usually mean the love interest who ignores everybody's rules and is dangerous enough to get away with it. All that danger points outward. The person he loves gets the soft side.
I call this **asymmetric morality**: dangerous to everyone else, safe for the protagonist. That's my own made-up term, so don't go looking for it in a psych textbook.
You get two fantasies in one guy. He's a protector nobody can push around, and you're the one exception to his ruthlessness.
## The Villain Who Looks Like You
This is the study that came closest to my actual question. In 2020, Rebecca Krause and Derek Rucker looked at whether people like a fictional villain more when the villain is like them. They pulled data from more than 232,000 registered users, then ran five lab experiments with 1,685 people.
Turns out yes, with a catch. Being similar could make people like a villain more, but only when the similarity didn't make them feel bad about themselves. Psychologists call that feeling **self-threat**: the sting of realizing you've got something in common with a bad guy.
Krause and Rucker think stories give us a fairly safe place to spend time with a darker version of ourselves. That was the first answer that clicked for me. They didn't figure out which villain traits people liked, though.
## Dads, Cads, and the Byronic Hero
The dangerous love interest goes way back. Milton's Satan in *Paradise Lost* (1667) is one of the early seductive rebels. Lord Byron helped lock in the brooding outcast with poems like *The Corsair*, and his lover Lady Caroline Lamb famously called Byron himself "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Then in 1847, Emily Brontë gave us Heathcliff in *Wuthering Heights*.
In 2003, Daniel Kruger, Maryanne Fisher, and Ian Jobling put two types from 19th-century British Romantic literature in front of readers. The "proper hero" is the dependable, cooperative guy, the Dad. The "dark hero" is the daring rule-breaker, the Cad. Their readers were 257 female undergrads.
For a long-term relationship, the proper hero won. For a short-term affair, a dark hero won in one of the study's two character matchups, and the other matchup showed no clear preference.
The researchers explain the dark hero with evolutionary psychology: he puts high effort into mating, and he's daring and socially bold. That's a theory built on a small group of students and four characters from books, so I take it with a grain of salt.
## Why We Can't Stop Watching the Scary One
In 2013, Joey Cheng, Jessica Tracy, Joseph Henrich, and their colleagues showed that people climb the social ladder two different ways. **Prestige** is status people hand you because you're good at something or wise. **Dominance** is status you take by scaring people.
In one study, an eye-tracker followed where people looked while they watched short group interactions. Both the dominant and the prestigious people got more looks. The dominant ones got their way without anybody liking them, while the prestigious ones got their way and got liked.
None of this was about romance or villains. I use it anyway when I write, because it tells me a scary guy can own the room without a single person in it liking him, so I still have to give readers a reason to like him.
## The Dark Triad: What the Psychology Actually Says
Pop culture loves the idea that people fall for the **Dark Triad**: Machiavellianism (using people to get ahead), narcissism (thinking you're the most important person in the room), and psychopathy (cold and impulsive).
In 2009, Peter Jonason and colleagues linked those traits, as a package, to a short-term mating strategy. In 2014, Carter and colleagues looked at how that played out differently for men and women.
Both studies are about how real people date, so they can't explain why we fall for a villain an author built on purpose. Neither one tested who people actually find attractive. They also didn't look at the loyalty romance writers bolt onto a dangerous guy. I'll give the pop version one thing: the confidence and smoothness that come with narcissism can look a lot like what we fall for on the page. That was a relief. The ugly answer I was dreading at the start never showed up in the studies I read.
| Myth | Reality |
| :--- | :--- |
| Readers want to date real-world abusers and criminals. | Stories let readers explore dark traits at a distance from real harm, though that doesn't explain every reader's response. |
| The Dark Triad makes men universally attractive in real life. | The cited studies tie the trait cluster to some short-term mating attitudes and behaviors, and none of them show universal attraction. |
| Attraction to villains is about wanting to "fix" a broken man. | The appeal comes from several places, including safe distance, competence, status, and the character's selective devotion, and no single motive fits every reader. |
| Milton's Satan and the Byronic hero are modern marketing inventions. | Milton's Satan (1667) and Byron's Romantic outcasts are early, influential examples of the seductive, charismatic antihero. |
> [!lore] In a city of cutthroats, the deadliest killer is the one who notices everything about you. *La Perla* pits two rival assassins against a marauder camp where competence is the ultimate aphrodisiac. [Start reading →](https://larkdevon.com/storytime/story/la-perla)
## How I Used This in La Perla
<!-- lark-relationship-inline-image -->
When I developed *La Perla*, I wanted to put two genuinely morally gray characters into a pressure cooker. Almartín is a ruthless, gutter-born assassin who takes contracts because he excels at violence. La Perla is equally lethal, an archer who needs every coin of the contract to buy her mother off a colonial transport ship.
In the marauder camp outside Torrel, they bond over raw, lethal competence.
Almartín is terrifying to his targets, but the moment he interacts with La Perla, his dangerous capability shifts into hyper-attentive respect. He challenges her and matches her speed, protecting her flank while letting her take her own kills. Giving Almartín outward dominance combined with inward recognition gave their dynamic the spark I wanted readers to feel.
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## What La Perla Would Say
> *Nobody knows La Perla's real name, and she does not sit still for interviews. Hand her the research on morally gray men. This is what you get.*
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Some academic with clean fingernails thinks women like killers because of status cues and safe flight simulators.
Let me explain how this works when you are actually holding the knife. When you grow up in Torrel's back alleys, a soft man is a corpse waiting to happen. The world is full of men who smile politely in daylight and sell you out the moment the rent comes due. A man who knows how to kill and does not pretend otherwise is the only honest thing in the city.
I look at Almartín because he is the only person in this camp who does not make a mistake. When he opens a sentry's throat between two tents, his footwork is silent, and he never hesitates with the blade. That's competence. In my line of work, competence is the difference between getting paid and ending up in a ditch.
The writer calls it asymmetric morality, as if it is a puzzle to solve. If a man is soft to the whole world, he is weak. If a man is hard to everyone except you, he has made a conscious choice.
Almartín could take my contract and collect the whole six thousand after slitting my throat. He knows it, and I know it. Instead he puts a throwing knife through a three-inch gap in the canvas to drop the man behind me, then grins like he held a door open. He is arrogant and ruthless, probably doomed, but when he looks at me through the smoke, telling myself I do not want him is the hardest lie in the world.
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> [!lore] A dark fantasy romance about two assassins who cannot afford to fall in love and cannot stop themselves from trying. *La Perla* is out now. [Meet Almartín and La Perla.](https://larkdevon.com/storytime/story/la-perla)
## Related Questions
### Why are readers attracted to morally gray characters?
Morally gray characters combine danger and competence with devotion aimed at one person. The most direct research, Krause and Rucker (2020), found that people liked villains who resembled them more when the resemblance felt safe, and stories supply that safety.
### What is the difference between a "Dad" and a "Cad" in evolutionary psychology?
As framed by Kruger, Fisher, and Jobling (2003), "Dads" represent dependable, high-investment partners, while "Cads" represent daring, high-mating-effort partners. In their undergraduate sample, proper heroes were strongly preferred for long-term relationships, while short-term preferences varied by character pairing.
### How can fiction make villains feel safer to explore?
Krause and Rucker found that when a comparison stopped threatening people's self-image, they became more attracted to fictional villains who resembled them. They proposed stories as a safe place to make that comparison.
### Does the Dark Triad make people attractive in real life?
Carter et al. (2014) linked Dark Triad traits to mating-related attitudes and behavior, but the studies cited here did not measure romantic attraction or relationship outcomes. Fictional-villain appeal should not be treated as attraction to those traits in life.
### Who are some influential early morally gray heroes in literature?
Milton's Satan in *Paradise Lost* (1667), Lord Byron's brooding outcasts in the early 1800s, and Emily Brontë's Heathcliff in *Wuthering Heights* (1847) are influential examples. No single character can be identified as the original.
## Related Reading
- [The Shaky Bridge Study: Does Fear Really Make People Fall in Love?](https://larkdevon.com/blog/the-shaky-bridge-study-does-fear-really-make-people-fall-in-love)
- [Enemies to Lovers, According to Science](https://larkdevon.com/blog/enemies-to-lovers-according-to-science)
- [Why Is Forbidden Love So Compelling? The Romeo and Juliet Effect Revisited](https://larkdevon.com/blog/why-is-forbidden-love-so-compelling-the-romeo-and-juliet-effect-revisited)
- [Why Do Women Read Monster Romance? Researchers Actually Asked](https://larkdevon.com/blog/why-do-women-read-monster-romance-researchers-actually-asked)
- [Does Absence Actually Make the Heart Grow Fonder?](https://larkdevon.com/blog/does-absence-actually-make-the-heart-grow-fonder)
- [Adrenaline Dates: Can Danger Be an Aphrodisiac?](https://larkdevon.com/blog/adrenaline-dates-why-danger-is-the-oldest-aphrodisiac)
## Sources
1. Krause, R. J., & Rucker, D. D. (2020). Can Bad Be Good? The Attraction of a Darker Self. *Psychological Science*, 31(5), 518–530. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620909742
2. Kruger, D. J., Fisher, M. L., & Jobling, I. (2003). Proper and dark heroes as DADS and CADS: Alternative mating strategies in British Romantic literature. *Human Nature*, 14(3), 305–317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1008-y
3. Milton, John (1667). *Paradise Lost*. Public-domain text: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26
4. Byron, George Gordon (Lord) (1814). *The Corsair: A Tale*. London: John Murray. Oxford World's Classics edition. Primary text: https://archive.org/details/corsairtale00byrorich/page/n3/mode/2up
5. Brontë, Emily (1847). *Wuthering Heights*. London: Thomas Cautley Newby. Penguin Classics edition. Primary text: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/768
6. Cheng, J. T., Tracy, J. L., Foulsham, T., Kingstone, A., & Henrich, J. (2013). Two ways to the top: Evidence that dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable avenues to social rank and influence. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 104(1), 103–125. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030398
7. Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., Webster, G. D., & Schmitt, D. P. (2009). The Dark Triad: Facilitating a short-term mating strategy in men. *European Journal of Personality*, 23(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.698
8. Carter, G. L., Campbell, A. C., & Muncer, S. (2014). The Dark Triad: Beyond a ‘male’ mating strategy. *Personality and Individual Differences*, 56, 159–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.09.001