Why am I rooting for a serial killer?

Recently, I found myself rooting for a serial killer.

Let me explain. I was watching a TV show with a character who had killed several men, for all sorts of reasons. She was on trial. But over a couple of seasons, I’d gotten to know her—the pain in her past, the warped sense of justice she clung to, the moments of vulnerability that slipped through her armor. And—most significantly—I was charmed by her.

When I pulled back from the spell of the screen, the magnetism of the character and broke down the facts, I realized something uncomfortable: in real life, I wouldn’t have been rooting for her. Her decisions only made sense in TV land, where narrative logic bends morality into something more palatable.

But that’s the power of storytelling. That’s the power of the stories we both tell ourselves, and those we are told.

A well-crafted narrative can make us empathize with people we’d normally condemn, or even turn villains into heroes. It reframes motives, edits out inconvenient truths, and ha…