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The psychological foundations of the hero-ogre story

A cross-cultural study

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Abstract

Stories in which a hero defeats a semi-human ogre occur much more frequently in unrelated cultures than chance alone can account for. This claim is supported by a discussion of folk-tales from 20 cultures and an examination of the folk-tales from a random sample of 44 cultures. The tendency to tell these stories must, therefore, have its source in the innate human nature discussed by evolutionary psychologists. This essay argues that these stories reinforce innate positive biases in the perception of self and ingroup and negative biases in the perception of outgroups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Comparative Literature, SUNY Buffalo, North Campus, 638 Samuel Clemens Hall, 14260, Buffalo, NY

    Ian Jobling

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  1. Ian Jobling
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Correspondence to Ian Jobling.

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Ian Jobling is a Ph.D. student in comparative literature at SUNY Buffalo. His dissertation explores cross-cultural patterns in heroic narrative and, in particular, the heroic narrative of nineteenth-century Britain. His study of the portrayal of the hero in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe appeared in 2001 in Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 2(2):29–43.

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Jobling, I. The psychological foundations of the hero-ogre story. Hum Nat 12, 247–272 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-001-1009-7

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