"I Had to Laugh" And "I Just Smile": Victim Blamers Tend to Be Sadistic and Antisocial Lazy Thinkers Who are Likely to Be Narcissists
"I Had to Laugh" And "I Just Smile": Victim Blamers Tend to Be Sadistic and Antisocial Lazy Thinkers Who are Likely to Be Narcissists
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âI Like It Because It Hurts Youâ, On the Association Between Everyday Sadism, Sadistic Pleasure, and Victim Blaming
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369338805_I_like_it_because_it_hurts_you_On_the_association_of_everyday_sadism_sadistic_pleasure_and_victim_blaming
Normal empathetic responses are compassion and sympathy
suffering induces tender emotional reactions regarding the victim such as empathic concern, compassion or sympathy (e.g., Batson, 2009; Goetz et al., 2010; Sassenrath et al., 2021)
Just world theory believes that âeveryone gets what they deserveâ and is considered a fallacy because it simply justifies a system instead of analyzes whether it is working as intended (no critical thought)
that aims at enhancing othersâ well-being, another prevalent reaction when learning about othersâ suffering is holding the victims responsible for their misfortunes (e.g., Lerner, 1980; Lerner & Miller, 1978; Savani et al., 2011; Van den Bos & Maas, 2009). Blaming innocent victims for the victimizing events they experienced is in line with theoretical frameworks derived from Lernerâs (1980) concept of the belief in a just world involving convictions about how everyone gets what they deserve.
Victim blaming is harsh and unsympathetic, showing those high in empathy are not going to be victim blaming anytime soon
Goals of the current work The present contribution focuses on the harsh and unsympathetic reaction of victim blaming when being confronted with the suffering of innocent others and has three main goals.
Victim blaming derogates the victims by saying what happened to them is just, no matter how absurd this actually is. This points to the sloppy thinking later found in victim blaming where they go with it because itâs an easy answer that doesnât require much thinking, if any.
determinants of derogating innocent victims. Past research mainly centered on individualsâ belief in a just world as key determinant of victim blaming and derogation (see Dawtry et al., 2020, for an overview).
Victim blaming lets people continue to believe they can control their environment in a narcissistic fashion, even when evidence that there are many unknowns and uncontrollables to a given environment are obvious and present. Thus victim blamers are more likely to be coercive controllers, and therefore unliked due to not being found to be respectful as found in previous research.
self-regulatory motivation to control oneâs surrounding which is necessary in the pursuit of long-term goals (Hafer, 2000).
Everyday sadism, or everyday pleasure from the pain of others, predicts the likelihood someone will victim blame. This shows that victim blamers derive pleasure from blaming the victim and therefore willfully double victimize them, which is choosing their pleasure over competently resolving the situation. This suggests gross incompetence and narcissism where personal pleasure is prioritized over basic competence.
namely individuals high in everyday sadism, are particularly likely to engage in victim blaming and whether this is related to the degree of sadistic pleasure experienced meanwhile.
Those high in everyday sadism are not good judges of character and do not have good or sound moral judgment.
individuals high in everyday sadism show impaired patterns of person perception and moral judgment regarding the perpetrator due to their enjoyment of cruelty when facing othersâ suffering (TrĂ©moliĂšre & Djeriouat, 2016).
Individuals who victim blame donât like to put in effort into thinking whenever possible. They have a disdain for true rigor.
we identify reduced willingness to engage in effortful cognitive activity regarding a victim-perpetrator constellation in the context of sexual assault as relevant behavioral outcome associated with everyday sadism
The more someone is willing to be rigorous, the less likely they are to victim blame.
Precisely, we show that the readiness to engage in effortful cognitive activity decreases the stronger individualsâ proclivity for everyday sadism and their engagement in victim blaming is pronounced.
Victim blaming in online mobbing, sexual assaults, racism and homophobia all showed people too lazy to think rigorously and going for the easy answer.
Accordingly, we investigate whether everyday sadism is positively associated with victim blaming due to experienced sadistic pleasure across a variety of relevant societal contexts (e.g., blaming victims of (a) online mobbing, (b) sexual assaults, © racism, and (d) homophobia).
The researchers were able to detect the thresholds between normalcy and pathology in everyday sadists.
Finally, by conducting an ambulatory assessment study based on online ESM we were also able to exploratorily examine potential boundary conditions of the association of everyday sadism, sadistic pleasure, and victim blaming.
Everyday sadism, regardless of whether or not the individual believed just world fallacy, predicted derogating (disrespecting through condescending/not believing/treating as minimizable/treating as negligible/treating as without status or worthiness of respect due to simply being a victim) innocent victims.
In doing so, we present our reasoning why individualsâ level of everyday sadism, independent of their belief in a just world, predicts derogating innocent victims who face suffering. This relation should be driven by increased sadistic pleasure and decreased empathic concern the stronger individualsâ propensity to everyday sadism.
When events cannot be changed, individuals who engage in victim blaming show a disturbing choice to double victimize the victim with victim blaming rather than to feel disturbing feelings of helplessness when real helplessness can be seen to be a valid issue.
Importantly, when the events that have happened cannot be changed, another way of restoring deservingness conviction is by blaming victims for being responsible for and having deserved what happened to them (i.e., derogating the victim; cf. Hafer & BĂšgue, 2005; Lerner, 1980; Lerner & Simmons, 1966). Thereby, the belief in the world as a predictable place is restored, a conviction which seems necessary for individuals to be able to follow their long-term objectives (cf. Callan et al., 2009; Hafer, 2000; Lerner, 1977).
Victim blaming is a way to justify a system, no matter how broken, while evading the homework of thinking critically about whether itâs working or not as it supposed to be anymore. In addition, victim blaming is a direct function of the endorsement of just world fallacy. Therefore, system justifications almost always rely on just world fallacy, and are deeply threatened by valid arguments that there are true and obvious cases of real oppression, and may seek to squash and suppress those first and foremost.
showing that victim blaming represents one route to system-justification (Kay et al., 2005). Correspondingly, victim blaming is a function of the degree to which individuals endorse just-world beliefs
Victim blamers show an antisocial disposition to not want to shield or protect victims, and may antisocially actively prevent the protection or shielding of said victims, showing the collapse of social contract beginning to rot where there are lots of victim blamers
and integrity of individuals with the objective to shield them from sufferingâare negatively associated with blame attributions regarding the
8 victim (Milesi et al., 2020). In contrast, binding foundationsâthat is moral reasoning and concerns centering on the protection of groups and the maintenance of social hierarchiesâhave been positively associated with victim blaming (e.g., Niemi & Young, 2016).
Viewing victims as contaminated and tainted was linked to higher victim responsibility judgments, and was found in groups that bound together using âshared dirty secretâ type rituals. In contrast, individualizing foundations saw victims as significantly injured and they were therefore free to feel empathic concern. This goes to show that in order to rationalize the âshared dirty secretâ as a valid group binders, people have to deceive themselves that the victim of these dirty secrets deserved this, and if this essential self-deception begins to crumble, so does the group cohesion, likely for the good of society. This also gives us good insight into the way murderers and rapists think and continue to join society knowing full well what they did.
Binding foundations predicted perceptions of the victim as contaminated and tainted, including perceptions of higher victim responsibility, greater victim and lower perpetrator blaming. Individualizing foundations, in contrast, predicted perceptions of the victim as suffering and being significantly injured (Niemi & Young, 2016), also involving emotional reactions such as empathic concern and compassionate feelings for the victim (Graham et al., 2013; see also Deitz et al., 1982; Deitz et al., 1984; Watts et al., 2017).
Lack of empathetic concern predicted non-assistance and actively trying to prevent protection. These acts were not seen in people with healthy and natural human empathy.
lack of empathic concern and the experience of pleasure at anotherâs suffering (Buckels et al., 2013; Paulhus, 2014) predicts victim blaming across a variety of contexts and how this is associated with non-assistance with individuals in need.
Observersâ affective reactions should be tested for indifference or even anger and fear if they feel there is an incoming threat that they will soon have to be empathetic to identify narcissism in particular if these observations are made.
observersâ affective reactions when being confronted with suffering individuals (Dawtry et al., 2020).
Enjoyment of cruelty is association with narcissism, Machiavellism, psychopathy, and other antisocial traits as well as sadism. Therefore, narcissism should immediately be tested for if strongly witnessed.
In fact, the enjoyment of cruelty represents the unique feature distinguishing everyday sadism from other antisocial traits (e.g., narcissism, Machiavellism, psychopathy; Buckels et al., 2013; Paulhus, 2014). More precisely, all âdark traitsâ share the tendency to disregard othersâ concerns and preferences (cf. Moshagen et al., 2018; Paulhus, 2014) which is why the individual disposition of subclinical sadism is positively correlated with various other antisocial traits (Johnson et al., 2019).
Schadenfreude is very similar to everyday sadism as it is joy derived from observing othersâ misfortunes. However it may have a more relieving as opposed to perverted feature, as it is often highly used to relieve feelings of immense envy.
the overlap of the above-described enjoyment of cruelty as unique feature of everyday sadism with Schadenfreude as affective reaction referring to joy derived from observing othersâ misfortunes has been discussed (cf. Greenier, 2018; Schumpe & LafreniĂšre, 2016).
Sadism is a stable trait showing an ongoing paraphilia and Schadenfreude is a temporary, relieving experience for which the observer is not responsible yet enjoys the results of, even if they can see the outcome is antisocially brought about.
However, the two affective reactions can be differentiated given that everyday sadism as a stable trait implies the unfluctuating proclivity to experience pleasure in the face of others suffering or humiliation whereas Schadenfreude refers to a transitory experience of pleasure following the observation of otherâs deserved minor misfortunes for which the observer is not responsible (cf. TrĂ©moliĂ©re & Djeriouat, 2016; Ben-Zeâev, 2009)
A disturbing positive affect after witnessing the suffering of others is seen in these types. For instance, users of gore porn are particularly disturbing in their paraphilia, especially when they emote feelings of relief or euphoria after watching.
. In the present research, we refer to sadistic pleasure as the instantaneous emotional reaction of experiencing positive affect in the face of othersâ suffering
Individuals high in sadism not only didnât care, but experienced pleasure watching harm, up to and including euphoric sexual pleasure such as in gore porn demonstrating its perverted/paraphilic feature.
In other words, besides lacking empathic concern (Buckels et al., 2013) individuals high (vs. low) in everyday sadism experience sadistic pleasure while watching/performing harmful
10 behavior towards others (cf. Paulhus, 2014).
Everyday sadism is linked to killing bugs, hurting people one doesnât know, internet trolling, sexual aggression, bullying at school, vandalism, and a preference for violent video games.
yields a positive association between everyday sadism and antisocial behavior (Thomas & Egan, 2022), such as killing bugs or harming unknown others (Buckels et al., 2013; Pfattheicher et al., 2020), internet trolling (Buckels et al., 2019), sexual aggression (Russel et al., 2017), bullying at schools (Pfattheicher et al., 2023), vandalism (Pfattheicher et al., 2019), and a preference for playing violent video games (Greitemeyer, 2015).
Everyday sadists tend to lead up to their sadistic acts with more and more dehumanization, and that these are on the same circuits as circuits found involved in sexual release.
everyday sadism tend to dehumanize their interaction partners in dyadic face-to-face interactions which likely facilitates antisocial behavior towards them (Rogers et al., 2018).
As part of their sadistic and perverted paraphilia, everyday sadists enjoyed seeing gross injustice in the case of victims, exonerating perpetrators and condemning victims. Again, they showed gross incompetence, choosing their sexual/perverted/paraphilic pleasure to the societal collapse and rot this causes.
Furthermore, research in the context of moral judgments indicates that enjoyment of cruelty experienced by individuals high (vs. low) in everyday sadism when facing other individualsâ suffering leads to judgments of perpetrator exoneration (cf. TrĂ©moliĂšre & Djeriouat, 2016)
The trivariate link is therefore established; victim blaming, sadism, and sloppy thinking processes that even if in depth lack rigor.
Furthermore, we argue that everyday sadism is also related to a significant correlate of victim blaming: Reduced willingness to engage in effortful cognitive activity regarding a victim-perpetrator constellation.
Everyday sadism predicts sloppy thought without rigor, no matter how in depth or extensive it initially seems.
. Accordingly, we predict that observersâ level of everyday sadism is negatively associated with willingness to engage in effortful cognitive activity regarding a victim-perpetrator constellation.
Police officers were found to have a good deal of everyday sadism and victim blaming, making their nature as entry points of information very suspect as these features skewed the incoming information nature according to their abnormality.
Study 1d assesses the relation of everyday sadism and victim blaming in a sample originating from a population of individuals who are oftentimes confronted with victims and perpetrators, namely police officers. In all of these studies, individualsâ just-world beliefs were assessed as additional predictor of victim blaming.
Empathic concern is seen as a majority response to all inputs in the empathetic person. It is not one key, secret response revealing their âtrue hidden core of empathyâ when the evidence points to an ongoing pattern of cruelty and victim blaming.
sympathetic, sensitive, soft-hearted, compassionate, tender and moved participants felt (cf. Batson et al., 2007). As for victim blaming, in Study 1a, we assessed empathic concern for the respective target person of the victimizing events described in 10 different vignettes, thus the empathic concern score represents the mean of 10 answers regarding their empathic concern for each target.
Cognitions included, âI couldnât resist a little smileâ, âI had to laughâ, âI think itâs funny howâŠâ âThat personâs pain was entertaining.â This cognitions should be taken seriously as the real warning signs they are.
Based on prior literature (e.g., Lui et al., 2020; Schumpe & LafreniĂšre, 2016), throughout Studies 1a-1d we measured participantsâ experienced pleasure while learning about the victimizing events of the target person with three items: âWhile reading about what happened to [X], I couldn't resist a little smile.â, âWhile reading about what happened to [X], I found some of his/her misfortune a bit amusing.â, and âWhile reading about what happened to [X], it was somehow entertaining to read about what happened to [X].â Again, in Study 1a the mean sadistic pleasure score is based on participantsâ answers regarding the 10 different vignettes, in Studies ab-1d, the score is based on answers regarding three vignettes.
Everyday sadism predicted willingness to blame innocent victims even knowing full well they were innocent, showing perversion/paraphilia in the circuitry
revealed significant positive correlations between participantsâ level of everyday sadism and their inclination to blame innocent victims across the seven subsamples with correlation coefficients ranging from r = .18 (a small effect) to r = .52 (a large effect) based on Cohenâs (1992) categorization of effects sizes.
Everyday sadism was strongly statistically linked to victim blaming and belief in a just world, showing a trivariate circuit. Ironically sadism is the farthest you can get to justice, showing how dangerous it is to have sadists judging what is and isnât justice.
Furthermore, since we assessed everyday sadism and the Belief in just world in all seven subsamples, we again computed a random-effects IDA to estimate the effect sizes for everyday sadism predicting victim blaming while controlling for the Belief in a just world. Across Studies 1a-1d, everyday sadism predicted victim blaming beyond participantsâ Belief in a just world (ÎČ = 0.36, 95% CI [0.26, 0.46]).
They showed addicted properties learning about othersâ suffering and jonesing when there wasnât a lot of news about othersâ suffering (jonesing is when an addict has very powerful cravings)
driven by increased sadistic pleasure and decreased empathic concern experienced while learning about othersâ suffering,
Results were proven that everyday sadism meant more victim blaming due to deriving sadistic pleasure from it, showing they didnât even necessarily believe the victims were to blame, but enjoyed blaming them as it gave them a perverted/paraphilic pleasure to do so. This generally showed these people were unsafe and put their pleasure over maintaining a healthy system that reflected the facts and evidence.
The results revealed a significant indirect effect in that individuals high (vs. low) on everyday sadism engaged more in victim blaming due to increased sadistic pleasure (95% CI indirect effect [0.22, 0.31]) and decreased empathic concern (95% CI indirect effect [0.05; 0.09]), given that both confidence intervals excluded zero (see Figure 1 for detail).
These findings fit personality traits reflected in the HEXACO model
The results of a mediation analysis are consistent with this relation being driven by (a) increased sadistic pleasure while learning about the suffering, and (b) reduced empathic concern associated with increased levels of everyday sadism. Importantly, the positive association of everyday sadism and victim blaming emerged beyond basic personality traits reflected in the HEXACO model (Study 1a)
It was found the purpose of the lack of thinking about the situation thoroughly was to protect the pleasure derived from sadism. Too much rigor and thought would reveal the sadistic circuitry, which would take away the pleasure. Thus, people with addictions to sadism may be found evading or denying when more rigor/consciousness is required because they donât want to give up their addiction to the sadistic pleasure that comes from not being rigorous/attentive to the situation.
Specifically, we tested whether observersâ degree of everyday sadism is associated with their willingness to engage in effortful cognitive activity regarding a victim-perpetrator constellation of sexual assault, when being informed that by remembering as much as possible they contribute to preventing that other women may become the victims of such a perpetrator.
Engagement in effortful cognitive activity (rigorous thought) under instruction may reduce antisocial proclivities, reflecting what r/zeronarcissists has stated on our sidebar about analyticity, and showing that individuals like this may hate analyticity because of what it does to sadistic pleasure addictions. Most addicts don't like people who interrupt their sadistic pleasure addictions, and if you've ever seen an addict going off someone, they will insult and act petulant to those who take away their addiction of choice, often with an unbelievable violence.
Engagement in effortful cognitive activity (recall) under the instruction that remembering more information can help to reduce (future) suffering corresponds to supportive and prosocial tendencies.
Example experiment
âWhile reading about what happened to Sara, I thought that what happened to her was partly also caused by how she acted.â Since we only presented one vignette (instead of presenting several instances of victimizing events as in Studies 1a-1d), we adapted items from Modesto and Pilati (2017) and also asked participants to indicate how much they agreed with the three following statements: âSara is responsible for the situation she now finds herself in.â, âSara is to blame for the situation she now finds herself in.â and âSara could have prevented the situation she now finds herself in.â (M = 2.33, SD = 1.26, α = .88). These items capture perceived controllability, responsibility and guilt attributed to the target person.
Positive affect when reading about Saraâs situation meant sadism and negative affect meant normal/healthy levels of empathy as measured by empathic concern
We followed the procedures of TrémoliÚre and Djeriouat (2016) and assessed sadistic pleasure by letting participants indicate how joyful, delighted, cheerful, enthusiastic, and excited they felt when learning about the victimizing events of the target person Sara. Moreover, we included five items assessing negative feelings such as outraged, down-hearted, disgusted, sad, and loathing which were presented together with five filler items taken from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988; M = 1.87, SD = 0.47, α = .73).
Increasing rigorous thought lowered susceptibility to sadistic addictions that increased victim blaming and had a corrupting effect on the facts
Thereby, we identify a relevant indicator of information processingâeffortful cognitive activity under the instruction that remembering more information helps reducing (future) sufferingâbeing related to individualsâ proneness to everyday sadism going along with increased victim blaming and derogation.
Good working memory as general intelligence did in fact predict someone engaging in more rigorous fact-based thought and less likely to blame the victim sadistically
in one condition reflecting supportive and prosocial tendencies and in the other reflecting good working memory capacity as an aspect of general intelligence (Conway et al., 2003)âdifferentially affects individualsâ task performance depending on their level of everyday sadism
Victim blaming also showed that victim blamerâs accounts are not necessarily trustworthy either; those who victim blamed recalled less information overall, showing victim blaming is an easy way out of being forced to use a limited working memory to put together a fact-based picture that may be more complex.
Also, victim blaming predicted the number of information pieces recalled over and above individualsâ epistemic motivation and their just-world beliefs and level of everyday sadism (see Table 5 for detail).
Individuals show more of their skill when showing off their intelligence vs. showing off their prosocial behavior however, despite this link, showing that victim blamers may think that prosocial behavior is not intelligent when the rigorous results show the opposite is true; individuals with high empathetic concern are more likely to be more intelligent and to get the bigger picture right.
indicate that individuals are generally more willing to recall information when the task is being introduced as measuring working memory capacity as an aspect of general intelligence compared to when the task is introduced as assessing supportive and prosocial behavior.
Increased inclination to blame victims is associated with less effortful thought, so engaging in immediate and easy thinking
everyday sadism is negatively associated with effortful cognitive activity concerning a victim-perpetrator constellation going along with an increased inclination to blame innocent victims.
Review of cognitions associated with sadism such as âI had to laughâ and âI just smileâ
Studies 1a-1d using the following three items (applying a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = âI strongly disagreeâ to 7 = âI strongly agreeâ): "I couldn't resist a little smile."; "I found some of his misfortune a bit amusing."; and "It was entertaining to experience what happened to the other person.â. Means and standard errors of sadistic pleasure (and of victim blaming and empathic concern) over all participants across all daily assessment are presented below when reporting descriptive results from the multi-level analyses.
The majority of individuals do not have everyday sadism, so the statement âeveryone feels that wayâ is a warning sign in itself
In a similar vein, results of the ambulatory assessment study based on online ESM reveal that learning about othersâ misfortunes in everyday life is not an uncommon experience. Also, everyday sadism, sadistic pleasure and victim blaming may not be dispositional reactions by the majority of individuals, but they do occur and given the negative consequences of victim blaming, a better understanding of individual characteristics and underlying processes contributing to it is important.
Schadenfreude is more what the majority experiences and the majority experiences a fleeting feeling of glee at the misfortune of people viewed as dominant, people who are envied, people who are viewed as rival outgroup members, and only in the last case reflecting something like real justice where schadenfreude may occur when the outcome appears to be deserved. Being dominant, envied, or a rival outgroup member are not just or good reasons for wishing pain upon someone and enjoying their pain. Only the last one reflects true justice circuitry, showing the average human is fighting against circuits of injustice if theyâre being lazy and primal in their reasoning, showing the threat of low analyticity scores.
Schadenfreude implies a transitory experience of pleasure when observing otherâs deserved misfortunes (cf. TrĂ©moliĂ©re & Djeriouat, 2016; Ben-Zeâev, 2009), the current findings could still be viewed through the lens of Schadenfreude. Specifically, Schadenfreude is more likely to be experienced when misfortunes happen (a) to a person of high dominance, (b) to someone who is envied, © to a rival outgroup member, or (d) when misfortunes appear to be deserved (cf. Boecker et al., 2022; Lange & Boecker, 2019; Smith et al., 2009).
Schadenfreude could explain some of what was everyday sadism, but not all.
In our studies, one could argue that Schadenfreude is at play with participants observing the victimâs misfortunes and experiencing joy (or pleasure).
Experiencing sadistic pleasure predicts high antisociality and low working memory where working memory is a key component of intelligence.
likelihood of experiencing sadistic pleasure as it entails such antisocial consequences as blaming innocent victims and being less willing to act supportively on their behalf. Taken together, the current research contributes to a deepened understanding of the affective processes determining the blaming of innocent victims suffering from harmful eventsâa harsh but nevertheless widespread reaction in the face of otherâs suffering