Why We Feel Sympathy For a Psychopath: The Dark Truth

Man Is Not Truly One, But Truly Two

There is a famous proverb in Japan. Every person in the world wears three masks. One mask is for the general people outside. One mask is for their own loved ones. And the last mask they keep for themselves. Meaning, without a mask, a person is even afraid to face their own self.

What lies behind that mask that everyone is so deeply unwilling to confront?

Whatever lies behind the mask, one must admit in a single sentence that humans are quite peculiar — and irrefutable proof of that can be found in the complex thought process of human beings. For instance, when people see a hero's heroism on screen, they feel happy — but in many cases, it turns out they are actually supporting the villain playing the role of the hero. If that weren't the case, why would Joker, Marvel Universe's Loki, Breaking Bad's Walter White or Saul Goodman, or Pushpa be so popular? Why would the entire world celebrate them? Why do even extreme-level psychopaths like Joker or Hannibal Lecter receive so much support from us?

The World Is Neither Black Nor White

This world around us — how much of it is white, and how much of it is black, do we really know?

Forget the world — you, me, all of us — are we white or black? Or grey?

In simple terms, that question cannot be answered straightforwardly. Meaning, humans are complex — they cannot be placed into the simple definitions of right or wrong, black or white. They exist in a grey space in between the two. Which is why the simple equation of right versus wrong, or good versus bad, is far less complex than what the world actually is.

Complex are our points of view, and complex are our choices too. This strange mind, taste, and thought of ours — we do not see its reflection in conventional heroes. We see it in the villains and anti-heroes on screen.

Why We Connect With Anti-Heroes

Anti-heroes give a thumb's down to conventional rules and norms. They fight against heroes. They also fight against the weaknesses within their own character. Do they have no good qualities? Of course they do. But still they are villains, anti-heroes. Do these traits overlap with ours as well? Is that why we start feeling connected to them?

Before diving a little deeper into the connection between anti-heroes and people, one thing must be said first. That is — the villainous characters we see on screen, if observed closely, have their own personal code of conduct for their way of living. Disregarding conventional rules and norms, they question social governance and live life on their own terms. This is the thing that ordinary people can relate to the most.

Moral Absolutism vs. Moral Relativism

The gap between how we wanted to live our lives and how we are actually living them gradually becomes clear through the actions of these characters. We realize that the dark characters on screen are essentially confronting us with our true selves.

Because we find a connection between these characters and our own strange way of living, we subconsciously begin to justify these characters as well. Let us go a little deeper. Let us look at our social structure for a moment.

This social structure around us has, since the beginning of creation, been dominated by moral absolutism. The core message of moral absolutism is just one thing: there are certain moral principles across the entire world, and people will be judged on the basis of those principles. This principle finds a parallel in Deontological theory — an ethical theory deeply associated with the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Deontology, or deontological ethics, is an idealistic moral theory where the morality of an action depends on whether that action is right or wrong. Deontology essentially works as a catalyst for distinguishing between right and wrong. Meaning, this theory also does not think beyond the equation of right and wrong.

The Problem With Moral Absolutism

The biggest problem with moral absolutism is that there is no clear parameter or analysis regarding which moral values are good and which are not. There is also a counter-philosophy to moral absolutism — one that is far stronger. That is moral relativism.

The core message of moral relativism is just one thing: with so many countries, states, and people of so many different characteristics in the world, how can the same rules, the same laws, and the same punishments apply to everyone? Moral relativism also raises the question of whether this is actually a healthy system at all.

Meanwhile, regardless of how much discussion or debate takes place, moral absolutism's blunt statement remains just one: there are only two glasses in the world — good and bad — and there is nothing in between. Either you are good or you are bad. There is no in between.

Suppose you had to do something wrong because you became a victim of circumstances. Moral absolutism will not look at what situation you were in when you did it. It will only look at what you did — and everything else will be determined on that basis alone.

Our political and religious institutions also support moral absolutism in one breath, and impose various restrictions to keep this philosophy intact.

The concept of moral absolutism is controversial in this way. This ideology is not flexible, not considerate. There is no room here for division based on person, situation, or need. Alongside this, moral absolutism has a problem — it creates a social binary. Meaning, in an already increasingly fragmented world, yet another division where there are two groups: one group follows this moral absolutism, and another group challenges it.

Needless to say, anti-heroes and psychopaths belong to the second category. And the fictional heroes we glorify are the defenders of moral absolutism — called moral agents. And that is precisely why people feel rooted to the charismatic performances of anti-heroes in proportional measure, and inversely so with heroes.

Since the vast majority of people want to challenge social culture, seeing dark-shaded characters doing exactly that on screen makes people feel an intense sense of similarity. Gradually, the scale of support tilts toward these characters. And in this way, morally right heroes are pushed somewhat onto the back foot.

The Psychology of Sympathy for Villains

And yet it is also true — when people see a hero on screen, seeing them make the right decisions at the right time, seeing their charm, everyone feels happy. But alongside that, there is also a suppressed sense of envy, a sense of regret — the regret of not being able to make the right decisions at the right time the way the protagonist hero does.

And that very regret transforms into sympathy when people see anti-heroes on screen. Making one wrong decision after another, fighting an unequal battle in the struggle of life, the story of an anti-hero filled with both faults and virtues begins to feel like one's own journey. Without realizing it, the connection with the character gradually deepens.

Aristotle's Theory of Catharsis

Understanding Aristotle's Theory of Catharsis makes it a little easier to understand people's connection with anti-heroes. This theory says every person needs emotional vent-out. They need emotional release. People do this in various ways. In recent times, this vent-out happens most effectively when people watch anti-heroes on screen. When villainous characters are turning everything upside down like a house of cards, when anti-heroes suddenly appear as a threat in front of the social structure — this, at the level of the social surface, becomes a source of comfort for people.

Carl Jung's Shadow Side

In the surrealistic novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls, it was said that even a person's shadow has the power to think. That the shadow too thinks, smiles, and cries. While this may not be true in reality, it is a tested truth that every person has a shadow side. The first person to speak about this side was Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. He said the shadow side is essentially the dark side of the human — a side that grows very subconsciously, slowly.

If one is not careful, if the reins are not pulled at the right time, this dark side takes the person to the edge of an abyss. It transforms them into a demon.

Primarily after passing through the teenage years, a person's shadow side gradually forms. Under the pressure of society, the things a person could not do, the things they had to endure and accept — the connection of these events, unbeknownst to everyone, transforms into some dark reflections. Things people must carry forward with them.

Stepping away from this topic for a moment — think about it. Think about the psychopath you like. See if your dark side matches the activities of the anti-hero you are thinking about. It almost certainly will. Why does it match? Do these characters then represent our collective shadow side? Let that answer remain unanswered for today.

The Backstory That Binds Us

American thriller writer John Guch once said: it is the melancholy-laden backstories of anti-heroes that connect people to these characters.

Let us break that down a little more. That humans are lovers of sorrow is an eternal truth, and the fact that the feeling of sorrow is far more intense than the feeling of happiness has also been scientifically proven. And we see that very thing proven in the case of anti-heroes. If you observe closely, every anti-hero has a story. A story that is deeply personal and steeped in sorrow. Is it through that thread of sorrow that we have a deep connection with them?

Take Joker — he had an extremely traumatic childhood, and had to face discrimination one after another. Take Walter White — only thinking of his family, he had to descend into an uncertain labyrinth. Take Loki — he did not become the mad villain overnight; he went mad slowly, gradually moving further and further away from the people he loved. Meaning, whichever anti-hero we talk about, none of them flipped to the other side of the coin suddenly. Fighting with the monster called society, life, or existence — drowning in sorrow — they themselves transformed into monsters. The famous line spoken by Walter White became real: "I am not in danger. I am the danger."

Rising From the Margins

Another thing is noteworthy. All anti-heroes have come from the marginal class. They grew up in the grassroots, in uncertainty, amid various crises. Then, when discrimination kept growing until their backs were against the wall, they turned around and stood their ground. Alongside this, their stories are also deeply humane — a mixture of tenderness and toughness. If people feel a sense of closeness with characters of such deep and strange stories, can they really be blamed?

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said: it is in the nature of humans to support someone. If a third person is left in a place where two strangers are fighting, it will be seen that after a short while, that person is supporting one of the two fighters. In most cases, this support will go to the one who is comparatively weaker, the one who is oppressed. This sympathy works in the case of anti-heroes as well. The way heroes are glorified in cinema and stories — packed with shining, heroic elements — and squeezed into that — on the opposite side of that, sympathy for the comparatively disadvantaged anti-heroes begins to grow in people. People suddenly discover that they are supporting not the hero, but the oppressed villain. The entire process happens in the subconscious mind, without them even wanting it to.

The Cultural Shift: Why Anti-Heroes Rise in Times of Crisis

Around the 1960s and 70s, a new genre of film called Post-Western cinema began to be made in Hollywood. These films are not like the classic Western thrillers we grew up reading about as children. Yes, there are still dusty horses, cowboys, hats, a cigar at the corner of the protagonist's lips, and a Colt 45 in hand. But unlike the heroes of classic Western stories, the moral ground of these protagonists is not clear. These are people living in moral complexity. These central characters challenge the social system. They attack good people, they loot. The strange thing is that despite having so many negative qualities, people started loving these characters. As a result, these films became quite popular at that time.

Why did these films become popular? Looking into that reveals that when these films were being made, a cultural shift was underway in Europe and America. The Vietnam War, the counter-culture movement, global crises, and the turbulence of various unfolding events left people's minds not with doubt, but with questions. Are the values of the previous generation correct? If one stays morally right, will any reward come? Or is it all a deception? The directors of that time made films making this very moral crisis of the people their central point. Rather than being preachy, the stories began to incorporate experiments, open-ended narratives, and fragmentation. The films began to challenge central authority and existing morality as well. The result — the films were hits.

Although the popularity of such films declined for a period in between, over the past two decades, anti-hero films have begun to become popular again. The reason for their popularity is the same: distrust of existing political and social institutions. The threat of the Great Depression, food crises, climate change, COVID-19, Palestine, Israel, the Russia-Ukraine war, and much more. These events are steadily shaking our moral compass — that much is clear. And alongside that, it is also becoming clear what lies behind the growing sympathy for anti-heroes and psychopaths.

The Mirror We See Ourselves In

This affection for negative characters is essentially a celebration of the complexity of our own psychology. In the no man's land between what harsh reality is slowly trying to make us into and what we do not want to become — there we see a mirror. In that mirror, certain characters are reflected — characters who, like us, are a mixture of faults and virtues, who cannot figure out exactly what to do, who make mistakes and feel regret, who have no one to appreciate them, who have no one to tell their story to, who face injustice and also commit injustice.

These characters — suspended on the barbed wire between good and bad — seep into our minds quietly. Perhaps because we see a transformation of our own lived battles on screen. Perhaps because we see the face behind our mask finally falling away — that is why we feel a sense of oneness with these characters. The sympathy we reserve for them becomes our own long-held sigh.

Fighting with rage, inequality, and ever-growing contradictions, we — having lost ourselves — discover ourselves on screen. And we realize: the story of the villain on screen is not someone else's story. It is our own.