Originally published 2017-12-18.
"Everyday sadism" is the term psychologists use for a mild, common tendency to enjoy other people's (or creatures') suffering, in ordinary life rather than in crime. The best-known evidence comes from a 2013 study led by Erin Buckels at the University of British Columbia. People who scored high on a short sadism questionnaire were more likely to volunteer to "kill" bugs in a grinding machine, and more willing to put in extra effort just to blast an innocent opponent with painful noise.
The study helped convince many researchers that sadism deserves a place alongside the better-known "dark" personality traits. Here is how the experiments worked, what they did and did not show, and how to think about the idea without turning it into an armchair diagnosis.
From the Dark Triad to the Dark Tetrad
For years, personality psychologists have studied the Dark Triad: narcissism (grandiosity and a need for admiration), Machiavellianism (cold, strategic manipulation) and psychopathy (impulsivity and a lack of remorse). People high in these traits tend to treat others as tools.
Enjoying cruelty overlaps with all three, but researchers including Delroy Paulhus, one of the psychologists who first described the Dark Triad, began to argue that it is a distinct ingredient. Someone can be manipulative without finding pleasure in pain, and someone can enjoy others' pain without being especially strategic or reckless. Earlier work, such as a 2009 study of adolescents by Henri Chabrol and colleagues, had already found that sadistic traits predicted antisocial behaviour over and above the Dark Triad. The question was whether that would show up in real behaviour, not just in questionnaire answers.
The bug-killing experiment
Studying cruelty in a lab is tricky: you need a task that feels real to participants but harms no one. Buckels, Daniel Jones and Paulhus settled on killing insects, an act many people perform casually but which still involves causing death through direct action.
Participants were told they had to pick one of several unpleasant jobs: killing bugs, helping the experimenter kill bugs, cleaning dirty toilets, or holding a hand in painfully cold ice water. Those who chose bug-killing were shown a modified coffee grinder and three live pill bugs, each in a cup with a pet-like name. The machine made a convincing crunching sound when used, but a hidden barrier kept the insects safe. No bugs were harmed.
Beforehand, participants had filled out the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale (SSIS), a ten-item questionnaire developed by Aisling O'Meara and colleagues at University College Cork in 2011, along with standard Dark Triad measures.
The results were clear. In the authors' words, "sadists volunteered to kill bugs at greater rates than did nonsadists." High scorers who went through with the task also reported enjoying it more than others did. Dark Triad scores did not explain the choice in the same way.
The noise-blast experiment
A second study looked at harm to a person. Participants played a fast reaction-time game against what they believed was another student, and after each round they won they could blast their opponent with loud white noise. In reality there was no opponent. Participants were also told the other player would not be able to retaliate, so any attack was unprovoked.
The twist was effort. In some conditions, participants could only earn the right to blast their opponent by completing a boring extra task first, such as counting letters in a long string.
Here, a common retelling of the study gets something wrong. When aggression was easy, both sadism and the Dark Triad traits predicted how hard participants hit their opponent. The difference appeared when hurting someone took work. As the paper's abstract puts it, "only sadists were willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person." Wanting cruelty enough to pay a cost for it was the distinctive marker of sadism.
What the questionnaire measures, and why it is not a diagnosis
The SSIS asks people whether ten short statements describe them. The items cover themes such as enjoying seeing others hurt, finding the idea of hurting someone exciting, having hurt people for fun or simply because one could, fantasising about hurting others, and using humiliation to control people. One item is reversed: it states that the person would never deliberately hurt anyone.
In the samples summarised by psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne in Psychology Today, most people agreed with very few items; she reports that 96 percent scored four or lower out of ten. She also notes that participants in the bug-killing study who scored around two were already more likely to choose to kill bugs, suggesting the trait shows up at fairly modest levels.
It is tempting to treat a list like this as a quiz for yourself or a difficult ex. That is not how researchers use it. The SSIS was designed to compare groups in research, not to label individuals. A high score is not a mental health diagnosis, and "sadistic personality disorder" is not a diagnosis in current psychiatric manuals; it appeared only provisionally in an older edition of the US manual and was dropped. If you are worried about your own urges to hurt others, or about someone's behaviour toward you, a qualified mental health professional is the right person to talk to.
Common myths about everyday sadism
"Liking violent films or games makes you a sadist"
Enjoying action movies, hard-hitting sports or video game battles is extremely common and does not by itself indicate sadism. Fiction and sport let people experience excitement and conflict at a safe distance. Research on everyday sadism focuses on taking pleasure in real suffering, especially when it costs effort or targets someone who cannot hit back.
"Sadism is the same as consensual kink"
Popular culture, including the Fifty Shades of Grey books and films, has made sadomasochism a familiar topic. But consensual role play between adults who agree to the rules is a different matter from the non-consensual cruelty this research studies. Consent and the welfare of the other person are the dividing line.
"Sadists understand nothing about how others feel"
O'Meara's team found something more unsettling. According to Whitbourne's summary of their work, people high in everyday sadism appear to understand perfectly well how their actions affect others; they simply care less. Cruelty in this sense is not a failure to notice suffering but a different reaction to it.
Where everyday sadism shows up in real life
Later research has linked everyday sadism to online trolling. A 2014 survey study by Buckels, Paul Trapnell and Paulhus found that people who enjoyed trolling scored high on sadism, leading the authors to describe trolling as a form of everyday sadism. Other work has suggested links between sadistic traits and bullying among both teenagers and adults.
The practical takeaway is not to look for sadists everywhere. It is to take behaviour seriously. Someone who repeatedly enjoys humiliating others, goes out of their way to cause distress, or seems energised by another person's pain is showing a pattern worth noticing, regardless of the label. For most of us, the research is also a mirror: a small appetite for cruelty is more ordinary than we like to admit, and recognising it is the first step to not acting on it.
Sources: Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Behavioral confirmation of everyday sadism. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2201–2209; O'Meara, A., Davies, J., & Hammond, S. (2011). The psychometric properties and utility of the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale (SSIS). Psychological Assessment, 23(2), 523–531; Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Psychology Today (2015); Wikipedia: Dark triad.
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