The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 37 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism
Abstract
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 should be added to that list. Acts of apparent cruelty were captured using two laboratory procedures, and we showed that such behavior could be predicted with two measures of sadistic personality. Study 1 featured a bug-killing paradigm. As expected, sadists volunteered to kill bugs at greater rates than did nonsadists. Study 2 examined willingness to harm an innocent victim. When aggression was easy, sadism and Dark Triad measures predicted unprovoked aggression. However, only sadists were willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person. In both studies, sadism emerged as an independent predictor of behavior reflecting an appetite for cruelty. Together, these findings support the construct validity of everyday sadism and its incorporation into a new "Dark Tetrad" of personality.
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“These associations reinforce the behavioral characteristics of these individuals and how they may behave on the Internet, allowing us to suggest that dimensions of the dark triad of personality explain online behaviors [4,9,10,16,20,32,34,35,38,39,63].”
From Dark Personality Traits and Online Behaviors: Portuguese Versions of Cyberstalking, Online Harassment, Flaming and Trolling Scales (2023) · cites this paper as [4]
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Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A Brief Measure of Dark Personality Traits
Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014) · Assessment · doi:10.1177/1073191113514105 · Cited by 2,162
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Metadata
- Authors
- Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L.
- Affiliations
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- The University of Texas at El Paso (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-09-10
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 2201-2209
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2123521167
- Cited by
- 637
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 52 · 2025: 65 · 2024: 57 · 2023: 70 · 2022: 68 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 70 · 2019: 56 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 32 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 22.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Association for Psychological Science
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression
- Keywords
- everyday sadism, Dark Tetrad, Dark Triad, cruelty, aggression, subclinical psychopathy, subclinical narcissism, Machiavellianism, construct validity, personality
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aggression, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Female, Humans, Machiavellianism, Male, Narcissism, Personality, Sadism, Young Adult
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