BEHAVIORAL EVIDENCE OF EVERYDAY SADISM IN A NOVEL SAMPLE OF CHILEAN STUDENTS.

Abstract

This study evaluates the behavioural correlates of everyday sadism using Internet material that is commonly available in varied forms. We selected games, images, and videos that best reflected the dimensions of verbal, physical, and vicarious everyday sadism of the Comprehensive Evaluation of Sadistic Trends (CAST). Our participants were 35 students who received the experimental stimuli at the laboratory and completed convergent instruments, such as the Dark Triad and Interpersonal Reactivity Index. We found that the expected correlations with everyday sadism were positively associated with the liking and amusement of cruel games and videos, which was significant for the verbal and vicarious dimensions, and sadism was the only significant predictor of the experimental stimuli. We discuss how a prosocial human adaptation might be potentiated by the enjoyment of not so positive interactions in the virtual environments of social networks, which might help in understanding Facebook trolling or similar phenomena.