People can experience cruelty in different ways. Some of them feel distressed while hurting another person. However, others are prone to feel quite opposite emotions. For instance, there people who feel pleasurable arousing while causing someone a pain (Buckels, Jones, & Paulhus, 2013). The main goal of this paper is to provide the detailed research on this personality trait and provide examples from different findings. In order to achieve this goal successfully, relevant sources of information were carefully analyzed and examined.
There people who wish cruelty and there are those who detest it. This fact shows that there is an individual difference, which is largely ignored in personality research. What is interesting is that modern conceptions of sadism are very similar to those, which are connected with sexual fetishes and criminal behavior. However, different studies show that normal, everyday people are prone to enjoy cruelty. One can notice it when considers the popularity of violent films and video games, which include cruel content. Moreover, military brutality and incidents of police can be also related to this category. These manifestations of cruelty are considered to be the subclinical form of sadism, which is called everyday sadism. The article, which is called Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism, includes two studies that deal with the issue of cruelty (Buckels, Jones, & Paulhus, 2013).
The first study was created in order to connect everyday sadism with an appetite for killing. Murders may be horrific for normal persons, but they are sometimes perpetrated for pleasure. Obviously, it is impossible to study human murder in a laboratory, but authors of study turned to killing bugs. Participants of this study were 78 psychology students. However, data of 7 participants were not recorded. That is why the final sample included 71 participants, 73 percent of them were women and 27 percent were men. All the participants could choose among four available tasks. The first one was killing bugs. The second one was to help experimenter to kill bugs. The third one was to clean dirty toilets. The final one was to suffer pain from ice water. After examining a few participants it was noticed that some of them all the bugs while others refused to do so after killing one or two bugs. Results of the study show that those participants who had a great preference for bug killing showed high sadistic-personality scores (Buckels, Jones, & Paulhus, 2013).
The second study was focused on everyday sadism and hurting innocent victims. It is common for people to attack others in revenge. Sadists are prone to hurt innocent people. There were 71 participants, approximately 49 percent of them were women and 51 percent were men. There was the competition between participants. It was a computer game where participants had to press a button faster than their opponents did. On every test, both participants had to choose the power of the white-noise blast, which was delivered to an opponent. Only a winner could blast a loser. During the study, it was found out that sadists and psychopaths tend to aggress another person when aggression is easy. Moreover, the study showed that sadists tend to increase the intensity of their attacks when they understood that the innocent victim was not able to fight back (Buckels, Jones, & Paulhus, 2013).
The second article deals with the of people’s assessment of cruelty. In order to conduct the study, two samples from different English-speaking countries had to complete the questionnaire. The first sample comprised 130 students from New Zealand. Among them, there were 63 men, 63 women, and 4 participants decided not to reveal their gender. The second study comprised 103 students at the University of Alabama. Among the participants were 21 men, 81 women, and one person did not reveal gender. Questionnaires were the same for both samples. Questionnaires included information about subjects, in which researchers were interested. Then, participants were present 18 scenarios. For each scenario participants had to assess the degree of violence, the amount of violence that was sustained by victims, the amount of suffering addressed by actor, and the pleasure that actor received from his actions. The results of the study showed that the concept of cruelty is similar to both countries. Cruelty is considered to be the purposeful infliction of suffering. In order to be cruel, two elements must be present. The first one is the actual suffering inflicted. The second one is that the actor must intend suffering. Moreover, it was found out that women were prone to rate scenarios crueler than men did. Namely, they assessed sexual assault crueler with more suffering inflicted and intended (Kemp, Brodsky, & Caputo, 1997).
The third article deal with the issue of relationships between humans and nonhuman animals. Factors, which have the influence on attitudes towards animals, have great consequences for intervention in the case of cruelty. The study, which is described in this article, included 241 participants from two private institutions. Approximately 75 percent of them were female and 25 percent were men. The main goal of the study was to evaluate the relationship between empathy and personality on the treatment of animals. The results of this study showed that participants with the high level of empathy were prone to have more positive views of animals. Those who had the low level of empathy had more negative views on animals. Moreover, the study showed that participants who had low scores in empathy perceived animal cruelty in the less distressing way than those who had the high level (Eckardt Erlanger & Tsytsarev, 2012).
As the conclusion, it must be stated that cruelty is a personality trait that is inherent to many people. As different studies show, a lot of people are prone to experience cruelty in different ways. Moreover, some of them may even like it. For instance, sadists tend to cause more pain to people who are innocent. Some people never stop being cruel and continue to hurt others because they like it. However, there are some people who after hurting someone understand that it is not right and they stop doing it. It also must be revealed that women tend to perceive cruelty more emotionally than men do. The level of cruelty largely depends on the level of empathy. As it was found out, people with high level of empathy are less cruel than those who have the low level.
References
Buckels, E., Jones, D., & Paulhus, D. (2013). Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2201-2209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797613490749
Eckardt Erlanger, A. & Tsytsarev, S. (2012). The Relationship between Empathy and Personality in Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes toward Nonhuman Animals. Society & Animals, 20(1), 21-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853012x614341
Kemp, S., Brodsky, S., & Caputo, A. (1997). How cruel is a cat playing with a mouse? A study of people’s assessment of cruelty. New Zealand Journal Of Psychology, 26(2), 19-24.
