Psychopathy subfactors distinctively predispose to dispositional and state-level of sadistic pleasure.

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
Jill LobbestaelRoy F Baumeister

Abstract

Sadistic pleasure - the enjoyment of harm-infliction to others - can have devastating interpersonal and societal consequences. The current knowledge on non-sexual, subclinical forms of sadistic pleasure is poor. The present study therefore focussed on the personality correlates of sadistic pleasure and investigated the relationship between the different subcomponents of psychopathy and both dispositional and state-level sadistic pleasure. N = 120 males drawn from a community sample filled out questionnaires to assess their level of psychopathy and dispositional sadism. Then, participants engaged in a bug-grinder procedure in which they were led to believe that they were killing pill bugs. The positive affect they reported after ostensibly killing the bugs served as measures of sadistic pleasure. The bug-grinding task was repeated a second time after installing either a positive victim attitude combined with giving human names to the bugs, or a negative victim attitude combined with labeling the bugs with numbers. Although the Self-centred Impulsivity component of psychopathy had some relevance to sadism, it was the Coldheartedness subscale that showed the strongest relationship to sadistic pleasure. Specifically, increased Cold...Continue Reading

Citations

May 18, 2021·Frontiers in Psychology·Grace A CarrollTom Burke

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