Overall, this reading was straightforward. Goethals and Allison laid out their ideas about who a hero was to the public and then supported their views with logical reasoning and “scientific” studies. However, I don’t agree with how they conducted one of their studies. The authors asked a group of 75 people to rank heroes and villains on a scale from 1 to 10. In the studies, Goethals and Allison found that real villains ranked at a score of 3.9 while their fictional counterparts had a rating of 2.2. They also found out that real heroes had a score of 7.8 while their fictional counterparts had a score of 8.7. (chart from chapter shown below)
The authors stated that “this average difference was unlikely to be due to chance or random variation” (35). I felt that this was a small sample size. After some research, my concerns were proven correct by this website. I made the following chart using the website’s data.
With a sample size of 75 participants, the error bounds would be about 11.5%. While their conclusion that fictional characters are exaggerated in qualities to create an exciting story makes sense, their sample size makes their study nearly invalid. This 11.5% error is enough to make the rankings of the heroes swap places (real: 8.7 vs. fiction: 7.7), meaning that real-life heroes can be ranked higher than their fictional counterparts. This 11.5% error can also close the gap between the villain scores to make their qualities look less exaggerated in fiction (real: 3.45 vs. fiction 2.45).
I believe that if Goethals and Allison used a bigger sample size, they would be able to retain similar results still, but would increase their accuracy and credibility. In turn, this would allow them to have a stronger claim with better data while maintaining their beliefs.