Written by Abdullah Qureshi

Sadism is a psychological construct which has a relatively sparse amount of scientific literature. This is odd as sadism as a literary construct has been under study for centuries. According to Meloy (1997), sadism is basically getting pleasure from someone else’s physical or mental pain or from controlling and dominating them. Sadists are also known as violent narcissists or malignant narcissists because they get pleasure from hurting other people and don’t seem to care that they’re hurting others (Meloy, 1997).

So, there are two main components of sadism:

• Deriving pleasure
• ‘Hurting’ another human being

Having understood the components of sadism, I will now extend this investigation. In the next section, the subtypes of sadism will be identified.

Subtypes of Sadism

Psychopathic Sadism

Sadistic Personality Disorder was added as a diagnosis with eight criteria to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–III–R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987). To be diagnosed, a person had to meet at least four of these criteria. It’s interesting that none of the factors mentioned sexual sadism. Instead of that, they focused on dominance and power over other people.

This subtype of sadism pertains specifically to the assertion of dominance over other people and derivation of pleasure from that

Nevertheless, whether it is explored in literary pieces like 120 Days of Sodom, or in scientific manuals such as the DSM-V, sadism does have sexual connotations. In the DSM-V, it is considered as a paraphillic feature.

Hence, the next subtype of sadism I am going to explore is of sexual sadism.

Sexual Sadism

The term sadism was originally used to refer to the sexual arousal that some individuals experience in response to others’ suffering (Krafft-Ebing, 1907). This construct is still assessed today, under the more specific term sexual sadism.

Longpré et al. (2018) assessed the taxonicity of sexual sadism by conducting a taxometric analysis of the scores of 474 sex offenders from penitentiary settings on the MTC Sexual Sadism Scale. Their findings indicated that sexual sadism presents a clear underlying dimensional structure.

Thus, one can be sure that sexual sadism is a separate dimension.

However, there are some major issues with understanding sexual sadism. First, as Marshall and Kennedy (2003) have put it, there is a lack of consensus. Scientists are divided over whether the fundamental feature of sexual sadism is controlling the victim, humiliating them, and/or causing them physical pain.

Others have argued that it is none of these. For example, Proulx et al. (2006) have stated that sexual sadists are in fact primary rewarded by the power they exert over their victims, and not the victim’s distress per se.

To put it in a nutshell, there is confusion over whether

• the infliction of pain gives this pleasure, or
• the exertion of power over the other person is arousing.

Everyday Sadism

Sadism was thought to be a diagnostic condition until not too long ago. A lot of the study on sadism was done in investigative settings, mostly looking at sex crimes (Mokros et al., 2014). More recently, though, it has become clear that cruel traits can show up in other situations as well. This is called “everyday sadism” to differentiate it from sadism in sex or crime situations (Buckels et al., 2013). The idea of “everyday sadism” was helpful because it shows that these traits are present in community groups (O’Meara et al., 2011).

This further allows researchers to study sadism in various functional fields of life. These areas could be business, politics, work-life and relationships

Relation to Psychopathy

To understand the link between sadism and psychopathy, I will first explain the typology of psychopathy.

Millon and Davis (1998), through the psychodynamic approach came up with ten theory subtypes of psychopathy. These subtypes might be useful as a guide. However, they would be hard to study in the real world because psychodynamics are not easily defined.

Another problem is that it looks like a lot of the groups can be combined. There are times when these theoretical subtypes are too similar to help define accurate subtypes within psychopathy. However, factors that seem to be consistent with Cluster B personality disorders are taken into account. For instance, a “disengenuous psychopath” is someone who always needs attention, acts friendly on the outside, has a vague personality, and is never reliable. These traits are also found in psychopaths, but a psychopath who shows all of these traits to the fullest may indicate a stable form.
In 1998, Millon and Davis came up with three more subtypes: the evil psychopath, the covetous psychopath, and the unprincipled psychopath. These all seem to have a lot to do with different parts of antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and sadism.

Here, we can see how psychopathic behavior can be a source of pleasure. This is especially in the case where the individual exerts their dominance over the other.

Difference between Sadism and Psychopathy

There is an overlap between sadism and psychopathy. Psychopathy is a part of the Dark Triad that has links to sexual sadism in both community and clinical samples (Baughman et al., 2014; Mokros et al., 2011).
In spite of these links, there are two types of data that show sadism is not very similar to the other negative personality traits.

Hence, it should be given its own name.

Let us look at these streams of evidence.

Low Correlation

First, the links to the Dark Triad aren’t very strong. For example, in one study, daily sadism was linked to psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism with r values of .31–37 (Chabrol et al., 2009). This indicates correlation. However, the correlation is not huge. Thus, it could be assumed that sadism is a separate construct.

Sadism Explains Antisocial Behavior Independent of the Dark Triad

In addition to the Dark Triad, sadism explains a different kind of antisocial behavior. This is true in the case of cyberbullying (Smoker & March, 2017). It is also exhibited in experiments involving blasting task opponents with white noise (Buckels et al., 2013), or trolling on Facebook (Craker & March, 2016).

So, sadism explains certain antisocial behaviors which are different from the ones observed in classical psychopathy.

Conclusion

Sadism is a unique personality construct. It appears to interact with environmental factors differently. Moreover, its combination with psychopathy or other dark personality traits produces unique outcomes. Hence, there is a need for sadism to be studied more individually. Studying sadism could indeed shed even further light on to deviant behaviors on social media.

Ultimately, by investigating sadism, we could end up discovering even more of the dark side of our personalit.

References

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• Baughman, H. M., Jonason, P. K., Veselka, L., & Vernon, P. A. (2014). Four shades of sexual fantasies linked to the Dark Triad. Personality and Individual Differences, 67, 47-51.
• Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Behavioral confirmation of everyday sadism. Psychological science, 24(11), 2201-2209.
• Chabrol, H., Van Leeuwen, N., Rodgers, R., & Séjourné, N. (2009). Contributions of psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian, and sadistic personality traits to juvenile delinquency. Personality and individual differences, 47(7), 734-739.
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• Krafft-Ebing, R. (1907). Psychopathia sexualis. F. Enke.
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