If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a badass, a new study reveals what you need to do.
By following questions about more than 2,000 people, researchers in the US have improved the dictionary meaning of the word.
Badass has ‘external strength’ (including physical strength, ‘impressive presence’, or both), internal strength (such as moral courage and bravery), or both.
This is why different men and women – from peacemakers to brutal warriors – can be seen as evil, according to experts.
Notables include Genghis Khan (AD 1162 to 1227), the brutal founder of the Mongol Empire who killed an estimated 40 million people, he says.
Khan was very prolific, fathering hundreds of children in his territories, and some scientists estimate that he has 16 million male children alive today.
Other villains are former American players Mike Tysona Pakistani academic Malala Yousafzai is South Africa’s anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.
For example, Mandela, who was described by researchers as ‘unquestionably strong’, showed great courage in his life, while Tyson is strong or dangerous.
Former American boxer Mike Tyson (pictured) can appear strong or fearsome, the study says – but these are just a few of the traits that make a person ugly.
Genghis Khan (AD 1162 to 1227) was the brutal founder of the Mongol Empire who killed an estimated 40 million people.
The study was conducted by Breanna K. Nguyen, a clinical psychologist at Yale University, and Michael Prinzing, a psychologist at Baylor University.
‘People of all kinds, from pacifists to brutal warriors, can all be considered bad,’ they say in their newspaper.
‘This new work explored how people think about what it means to be evil, and provides insight into a seemingly surprising concept.’
Many different people have been mentioned as villains, the group says, including Genghis Khan, Mike Tyson, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai, as well as Navy SEALs.
Combined with the dictionary definitions of these words, we come to believe that a bad person is evil, cruel or dangerous and good, interesting or admirable.
For example, the Cambridge Dictionary defines villain as ‘a bad or slightly dangerous person’ and as ‘a person or thing that you admire or admire’.
However, Genghis Khan fits the first part of that definition and not the second, while Malala Yousafzai, on the contrary, does not fit the first part, but fits the second.
In an attempt to provide a better definition, the researchers tested four tests totaling 2,020 adults from mixed generations and races.
The word cloud shows the adjectives used by students to describe ‘bad’. The size of the word is related to the number of words
Nelson Mandela, who has been described as a researcher ‘without doubt’, wrote that courage ‘is not the absence of fear, but overcoming it’
The researchers asked what makes a person the most evil, while presenting them with fictitious situations to see how much ‘evil’ they are.
Negative adjectives include ‘fearless’, ‘tough’, ‘true’, ‘good’, ‘confident’, ‘brave’, ‘willing’, ‘independent’, ‘good’ and ‘capable’.
The team also found that when people decide whether someone is bad or not, they focus less on ‘superficial’ outer toughness, and more on inner toughness.
Superficial evil is characterized by ‘external’ strength – such as having a large height and mature appearance or physical strength, while deep evil is characterized by ‘inner’ strength, such as courage, bravery or strength of character.
Some internal behaviors that are considered bad include resisting social pressure, doing good morally and dealing with adversity.
People who are not considered superficially bad – meaning that they look thin or weak on the outside – may still ‘remain a deep source of badness’ by having these traits.
Generally, a villain can have these external or internal characteristics – explaining how different people from Genghis Khan and Malala Yousafzai can both be evil – but all great villains can have both.
“While a warrior like Genghis is the epitome of outer strength, Malala is the epitome of this inner strength,” the pair say. their paper.
Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai is a young woman who is famous for her moral values and advocacy for women’s education.
The first idea that a person might be evil might be related to being strong and fearsome (like the Navy SEALs, pictured).
The researchers say the word ‘badass’ may have started with one meaning, but over time it expanded to include more.
‘Thus, the original meaning may be more negative, but the broader meaning may also include some positive qualities,’ they say.
This new method of evaluating what makes it negative can be used to test other groups of people in the future, such as hippies and nerds.
‘For example, we can associate the idea of being a hippie with some concrete things (long hair, discarded clothes, music festivals of the 1960s), but one might think that this idea also reaches more,’ the group adds.
The new study has been published as a pre-published paper on PsyArXiv, meaning it has not been peer-reviewed.
