People with sadistic personality traits tend to be rather aggressive, however, it will surprise you to learn that the aggressive behaviour brings them joy only if it harms their victims. However, according to a series of studies conducted on 2000 people, these actions ultimately leave sadists feeling worse than they felt before their actions. Who knew, right?
"Sadistic tendencies don't just exist in serial killers, but in everyday people and are strongly-linked to greater aggressive behaviour," said David Chester, lead author of the study which is published in the Journal of Society for Personality and Social Psychology. To conduct this research, the scientists gauged people's aggressive and sadistic tendencies by measuring participant's likelihood to seek vengeance or to harm an innocent person.
The researchers found that aggression and sadistic behaviour, as measured by personality tests and questionnaires, showed more pleasure in causing harm to others as expected, but they also saw that their overall mood went down following the event. It may be due to how aggression affects the brain, making people perceive something as pleasurable, when it actually creates the opposite effect, suggests Chester.
