Sadism

Screening for dark personalities

Consensus is emerging that the constellation of dark personalities should include the sadistic personality. To build a four-factor measure, we modified and extended the Short Dark Triad (SD3) measure to include sadism. A series of three studies …

Internet trolling and everyday sadism: Parallel effects on pain perception and moral judgment

Objective: This research seeks to clarify the association between online trolling and sadistic personality, and to provide evidence that the reward and rationalization processes at work in sadism are likewise manifest in online trolling. Method: …

Dispositional malevolence and impression formation: Dark Tetrad associations with accuracy and positivity in first impressions

Objective: The Dark Tetrad traits (subclinical psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and everyday sadism) have interpersonal consequences. At present, however, how these traits are associated with the accuracy and positivity of first impressions …

Trolls just want to have fun

In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll …

Behavioral confirmation of everyday sadism

Past research on socially aversive personalities has focused on subclinical psychopathy, subclinical narcissism, and Machiavellianism—the “Dark Triad” of personality. In the research reported here, we evaluated whether an everyday form of sadism …

Comprehensive Assessment of Sadistic Tendencies (CAST-12)

The CAST-12 is a brief (12-item) measure of sadistic personality. It contains subscales for three distinct variants: Direct verbal sadism, direct physical sadism, and vicarious sadism.

Short Dark Tetrad (SD4)

The SD4 is a brief (28-item) self-report questionnaire designed to assess the Dark Tetrad of personality: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism.