 An evolutionary psychology explanation for heroic risk-taking is that it is a costly signal demonstrating the ability of the hero.It may be seen as one form of altruism for which there are several other evolutionary explanations as well.Roma Chatterji has suggested that the hero or more generally protagonist is first and foremost a symbolic representation of the person who is experiencing the story while reading, listening, or watching; thus the relevance of the hero to the individual relies a great deal on how much similarity there is between them and the character.