Those who (enjoy to) hurt: The influence of dark personality traits on animal- and human directed sadistic pleasure

Jill Lobbestael; Franziska Wolf; Mario Gollwitzer; Roy F Baumeister

doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2024.101963

Those who (enjoy to) hurt: The influence of dark personality traits on animal- and human directed sadistic pleasure

J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2024 May 5:85:101963. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2024.101963. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Jill Lobbestael¹, Franziska Wolf², Mario Gollwitzer³, Roy F Baumeister⁴

Affiliations

¹ Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Universiteitssingel 40, 6229 ER, Maastricht, the Netherlands. Electronic address: jill.lobbestael@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
² Deutsche Gesellschaft für Verhaltenstherapie (Ausbildungszentrum Ostwestfalen-Lippe) [German Association for Behavioural Therapy (training Centre East Westphalia-Lippe)], Germany.
³ Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
⁴ School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

PMID: 38739973
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2024.101963

Abstract

Background and objectives: Sadistic pleasure - gratuitous enjoyment from inflicting pain on others - has devastating interpersonal and societal consequences. The current knowledge on non-sexual, everyday sadism - a trait that resides within the general population - is scarce. The present study therefore focussed on personality correlates of sadistic pleasure. It investigated the relationship between the Dark Triad traits, and both dispositional and state-level sadistic pleasure.

Methods: N = 120 participants filled out questionnaires to assess their level of Dark Triad traits, psychopathy subfactors, and dispositional sadism. Then, participants engaged in an animal-directed task in which they were led to believe that they were killing bugs; and in a human-directed task where they could ostensibly noise blasts another participant. The two behavioral tasks were administered within-subjects, in randomized order. Sadistic pleasure was captured by increases in reported pleasure from pre-to post-task.

Results: All Dark Triad traits related to increased dispositional sadism, with psychopathy showing the strongest link. The coldheartedness psychopathy subscale showed a unique combination with both self-reported sadism and increased pleasure following bug grinding.

Limitations: Predominantly female and student sample, limiting generalizability of findings.

Conclusions: Out of all Dark Triad components, psychopathy showed the strongest link with gaining pleasure from hurting others. The results underscore the differential predictive value of psychopathy's subcomponents for sadistic pleasure. Coldheartedness can be considered especially disturbing because of its unique relationship to deriving joy from irreversible harm-infliction (i.e. killing bugs). Our findings further establish psychopathy - and especially its coldheartedness component - as the most adverse Dark Triad trait.

Keywords: Dark triad; Noise blasting; Psychopathy; Sadism; Sadistic pleasure; bug grinder.