Researcher and assistant professor Matthew Grizzard's study found that people found moral characters to be more likable and immoral characters to be less likable.

A sample of college students analyzed villians, heroes and "morally ambiguous characters," rating how moral they perceived the character to be.

“The more moral a character is, the more I like them. The more I like a character, the more moral I perceive them to be. It is nearly impossible to separate these factors,” Grizzard said.

Grizzard said liking for the morally ambiguous characters was most difficult to predict.

The study was published in the Journal of Media Psychology and Journal of Communication online.

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