Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Sagan Christian.
Speaker 1: What comes to mind when I mentioned the word spike?
Speaker 1: When I mentioned spike is a uh is an aspect
Speaker 1: of human behavior? Well, the very first thing I thought
Speaker 1: of when we started talking about doing this episode. There's
Speaker 1: a scene in Star Trek to the Wrath of Con
Speaker 1: and Con spoilers for a movie that's like thirty years old, UH,
Speaker 1: when Con is dying, but he decides that he's gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, take himself out along with uh the enterprise,
Speaker 1: and he recites the whole speech Captain Ahab speech from
Speaker 1: movie Dick, which you know, the two parallel pretty well together.
Speaker 1: So I think of Con nunion singh when I think
Speaker 1: of spite, Okay, well yeah, I think I think Con
Speaker 1: is definitely a very spiteful care because ULTI millions of
Speaker 1: in a situation where he can't win and he could
Speaker 1: bow out gracefully, but CON's not going to do that.
Speaker 1: It's too much pride, there's too much ego there. He's
Speaker 1: laying it all on the line, So he'd rather he'd
Speaker 1: rather strike back and perish and get like just just
Speaker 1: to you know, raise the middle finger to Kirk rather
Speaker 1: than than just go out. Yeah. This is definitely the
Speaker 1: core of trying to figure out spite, not not just
Speaker 1: like how it works psychologically in our human minds, but
Speaker 1: also like our definition of it when you go and
Speaker 1: you look it up on the dictionary. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: include the encapsulate how we think of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because some of the studies that we get into, well,
Speaker 1: one in particular talks about it, talks about spit and
Speaker 1: says in general spike differs from aggression, which can be
Speaker 1: exercised at little risk to an aggressor, spike carries a cost,
Speaker 1: as if one were calculating that a loss is worthwhile
Speaker 1: if it takes a toll on one's opponent as well.
Speaker 1: But you don't necessarily see that in you know, your
Speaker 1: standard Webster's dictionary, right, Yeah. So the idea here is
Speaker 1: that you are willing to hurt yourself at the expense
Speaker 1: of being able to hurt someone else, right, and that
Speaker 1: hurt is not necessarily physical. Like the most extreme example
Speaker 1: that comes to a lot of people's minds, I'm sure
Speaker 1: is something like a suicide bomber, you know where they're
Speaker 1: they're saying, I will die violently in this cause to
Speaker 1: cause harm to others. But then also something in spite
Speaker 1: that we've all probably experienced on one side of the other. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you've ever taken your time pulling out of a
Speaker 1: parking spot because you don't like the look of that
Speaker 1: car or that driver that's waiting on it, maybe they're
Speaker 1: being a little rude. And so in that case, the
Speaker 1: cost is not nearly as high as losing your life,
Speaker 1: but you are willing to look a little bit like
Speaker 1: a jerk in order to make sure that person gets
Speaker 1: what's coming to them. Yeah. Um, So it makes me
Speaker 1: think of like methods of conflict management, and there's there's
Speaker 1: several different ways that you can manage conflict, but this
Speaker 1: would be what's called the competitive method of conflict management, right,
Speaker 1: where you're basically competing against another person to win in conflict. Right,
Speaker 1: and in this situation, you're not even winning. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a lose loose everybody loses. Like, actually, your whole reason,
Speaker 1: your whole goal here in leaving the parking lot is
Speaker 1: to leave the parking lot and presentably get where you're
Speaker 1: going next in the shortest amount of time, and it's required,
Speaker 1: So you're you're hurting your own objectives, You're you're looking
Speaker 1: like a jerk doing it. There's really no benefit other
Speaker 1: than you feel that you know that ego stroke and
Speaker 1: some sort of deep animalistic um pride in having, you know,
Speaker 1: put one over on the next guy. It's not an
Speaker 1: effective method of problem solving, that's for sure, but it's
Speaker 1: something that I think is within all of us. I
Speaker 1: have to admit that as we were researching this, I
Speaker 1: was really digging deep inside myself trying to remember examples
Speaker 1: where I had been spite full and I couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I have been even that, even the
Speaker 1: mild stuff like driving around the only uh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I am an angry driver, but not a spiteful driver.
Speaker 1: I so no, I can't think of it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: like that. But um I the only thing I could
Speaker 1: think of it as like a practical example of is
Speaker 1: if there's somebody who I personally don't like, I won't
Speaker 1: and I won't support their work, like whether it's a
Speaker 1: book that they wrote or a film that they produced
Speaker 1: or acted in or whatever. Uh even if people are like,
Speaker 1: you have to see this, it is the best thing
Speaker 1: ever you you know, it's going to change your life.
Speaker 1: It's it's the best storytelling, And I go, Nope, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give that person my ten bucks.
Speaker 1: Well have been the cough there could be my own edification.
Speaker 1: You're in. You're messing. You're missing out on the potential
Speaker 1: joys of this product because of the if you will. Well.
Speaker 1: What it reminds me of is you ever read the
Speaker 1: police blotder in Creative Loafing here in Atlanta. I think
Speaker 1: that they have this in a lot of all weeklies
Speaker 1: around the world, but here in Atlanta are all weekly
Speaker 1: does this thing where they take I don't know. Every
Speaker 1: week there's like maybe five or six little snippets out
Speaker 1: of the actual Atlanta Police Departments log uh and of
Speaker 1: just the craziest stories. And almost always every week there's
Speaker 1: one story that involves spite in some way somebody who's
Speaker 1: doing something illegal or something to hurt another person that
Speaker 1: ultimately ends up getting them arrested. Right, um, And they're
Speaker 1: always completely whacked out crazy stories. Some of my favorites
Speaker 1: involved just like you know, people where half naked scrambling
Speaker 1: down the streets and screaming in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: But that's not exactly spiteful, that's just you know, crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And could you certainly see it showed up too at
Speaker 1: times with police encounters where someone decides that the best
Speaker 1: thing they can they can do during this encounter is
Speaker 1: to be spiteful to the officer. Yeah, right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing that it brings out. Law enforcement seems
Speaker 1: to bring spite out in people and on both sides.
Speaker 1: And not not to imply there's there's there's never some
Speaker 1: spite from the police. No, no, absolutely, Um, so okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's have some fune with us for a second.
Speaker 1: So Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart. You know, for those
Speaker 1: of you out there, you know that Robert and I
Speaker 1: are are really into geeky stuff like this. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what is where spite fall? I'm thinking it's neutral evil,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily chaotic, there's there there's determination to it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it doesn't follow a rule oriented uh you know practice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think lawful evils probably where most of your spite
Speaker 1: is gonna fall. But but and in that, you know,
Speaker 1: we definitely have to think about some of the spiteful
Speaker 1: characters we've encountered in things like like when I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of some in addition to a ha
Speaker 1: and con Searcy Lanister comes to mind from Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones as being a very spiteful character who you know,
Speaker 1: she has some some key values, you know, the importance
Speaker 1: of her family and importance for her family, but she's
Speaker 1: often willing to jeopardize all of it out of spite
Speaker 1: for uh an In in the Aura received Enemy. So
Speaker 1: if where would where would Searcy land in the Dungeon
Speaker 1: and dragons alignment charges? I guess you, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you would have to say she's lawful evil she because
Speaker 1: she works within the I guess system of rule. Right.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's interesting. Another one that came to mind,
Speaker 1: And this was a much harder one to nail down
Speaker 1: because there's you know a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: his motivations are still up for discussion and continue to
Speaker 1: you know, to be an item of discussion among critics.
Speaker 1: But Iago in Shakespeare's a Fellow, Okay, yeah, I saw this.
Speaker 1: Give me a little refresher on this because it's been
Speaker 1: a while since I've read Othello. Well, basically Iago is
Speaker 1: the character it just works against Othello the whole time
Speaker 1: and just you know, just really kind of ruthlessly. Um.
Speaker 1: But you never really have a clear sense why, Like
Speaker 1: there's not a situation where it's like, oh, Fellow killed
Speaker 1: my father or you know, generally it's a to try
Speaker 1: and figure out why Iago is so obsessed with taking
Speaker 1: down Othello, you have to you have to apply some
Speaker 1: some outside interpretations such as I think Kenneth Brana when
Speaker 1: he played Iago, he he had he approached it as
Speaker 1: if Iago had feelings for Othello, and so his like
Speaker 1: his his deep rooted hatred came out of you know,
Speaker 1: inner conflict over his uh like he was burned somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Iago is a harder character to to nail down.
Speaker 1: But I think there's there's a certain amount of spite
Speaker 1: to what he does in the play. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: you know, when I was researching this, one thing that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize was like a thing was building homes
Speaker 1: out of spite. Apparently, like if you if you just
Speaker 1: search the word spite on Google, within at least two
Speaker 1: or three pages, you'll find galleries of homes that were
Speaker 1: built in spite of their neighbors. Uh, And I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this is a thing. It's like people are purposely
Speaker 1: building homes to annoy their neighbors that aren't necessarily practical
Speaker 1: or functional homes that they themselves enjoy. Literally, you're talking
Speaker 1: just like mildly so because you're always hearing about like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're building a modern home and it's out of keeping
Speaker 1: with their traditional homes in the neighborhood. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's more along those because then you also see those
Speaker 1: stories like the guy in England who had a giant
Speaker 1: shark like embedded in the roof of his house. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that would fall under this. I'm thinking along the
Speaker 1: lines of like that house and Beetlejuice, you know, like
Speaker 1: like the the weird like postmodern art house that they
Speaker 1: had there. But in that case, you know, there was
Speaker 1: no neighborhood. In this. I think it would be like,
Speaker 1: you know, your nextra neighbors would would hate you because
Speaker 1: it would bring down the property values or something like that.
Speaker 1: But this is apparently, like like I found multiple galleries
Speaker 1: of this, so apparently it's a phenomenon. You know, it
Speaker 1: brings to mind. Uh, I can't remember the character's name
Speaker 1: off hand, but the the individual that Kevin Spacey portrayed
Speaker 1: in Midnight in the Garden A good and evil. You know,
Speaker 1: I have never seen that. My wife loves that movie,
Speaker 1: but I still haven't New Orleans Resident, and uh, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, the individually plays, it's kind of an
Speaker 1: eccentric kind of character. And they were filming some sort
Speaker 1: of historical piece in his neighborhood, and they covered the
Speaker 1: streets and dirt and you know, their horses standing around
Speaker 1: or whatever, and it's kind of a big inconvenience for everybody.
Speaker 1: And they were going to be shooting potentially with his
Speaker 1: house in the background, because it's one of these nice
Speaker 1: old homes. And so he he just draped a large
Speaker 1: Nazi flag stick and all right there on the front
Speaker 1: porch out of spite. You know, it's like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: you're gonna film this neighborhood and film my house at
Speaker 1: the backdrop. Well, I'm gonna do this, which makes completely
Speaker 1: useless for your shoot and also brand Nazi to all
Speaker 1: of my neighbors. Wow, Okay, yeah, I mean that could
Speaker 1: work for sure. I So let's get into lake where
Speaker 1: this saying of because when we think of spite, it's
Speaker 1: always you know that that phrase to cut your nose
Speaker 1: off despite your face. So let's think of like where
Speaker 1: this came from. What where where is this? Well, it
Speaker 1: apparently dates back to at least around the twelfth century.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's generally attributed to pious women who are
Speaker 1: just figuring themselves in order to protect the virginity against pirates, vikings,
Speaker 1: invading armies, etcetera. Basically just to to try and disfigure
Speaker 1: themselves so that they will be looked over when the
Speaker 1: assaults begin. Yeah, I read a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: This was not something I knew about before researching this episode.
Speaker 1: These were mostly women. Uh. And this is a common
Speaker 1: phrase you'll hear me say during medieval times. Uh that, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're so religious that they wanted to preserve
Speaker 1: their virginity, right. And the idea, I mean, this isn't
Speaker 1: when we're talking disfiguring. It's not just like you know,
Speaker 1: they give themselves a scar. They're cutting off their own noses,
Speaker 1: literally cutting off their nose, uh, cutting off their cheeks,
Speaker 1: cutting off their upper lips. Uh. And some of these
Speaker 1: people actually ended up becoming saints in some sense. So
Speaker 1: st Ebba was one that I found who inspired nuns
Speaker 1: to cut off their own noses and upper lips to
Speaker 1: prevent themselves from being raped. Um and there are a
Speaker 1: couple others in there as well. But yeah, that is
Speaker 1: a practice that I was unfamiliar with. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: also reading that it also might be linked to medieval
Speaker 1: acts of spite, in which the nose is cut off
Speaker 1: as a kind of punishment. Um And and it's sadly
Speaker 1: you see this kind of thing continue in the world today,
Speaker 1: you know, war torn regions of the world where uh,
Speaker 1: women are particular demise by having their their nose cut right,
Speaker 1: the mutilation is sort of a marking. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: as graphic as that is, though, remember that because when
Speaker 1: later in the episode we will start to discuss the
Speaker 1: links between spite and and punishment in a in a
Speaker 1: lawful system. Yeah, it seems like there's a connection between
Speaker 1: those things, and then altruism as well. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: like this coin where you've got spite on one side
Speaker 1: and altruism on the other, and it seems like they're connected.
Speaker 1: In human psychology, so it turns out that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of studies, at least at least four that
Speaker 1: we found for the for this episode on spite and
Speaker 1: sort of its origins and how it works within human
Speaker 1: beings and animals too, right, I mean, it's apparently, you know,
Speaker 1: many researchers considered to be an understudied area. But but
Speaker 1: we were able to find some interesting papers about spite
Speaker 1: and where it comes from and what it means. Uh.
Speaker 1: The most basic place to start, of course, would be
Speaker 1: just to ask are humans the only spiteful creatures despite
Speaker 1: possible in any other animal on the planet. And I
Speaker 1: would think any cat owner would assume the danswer is no, Right, Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would. Certainly cats seem to do a lot of
Speaker 1: things out of spite. Mine does as well. But but
Speaker 1: of course, anytime you're dealing with human are actually like
Speaker 1: how much are we projecting on them? Right with anther
Speaker 1: morphizing there, because you know, they're basically just doing a
Speaker 1: much of stupid stuff, and then we just assume will
Speaker 1: you do that to spite me? Why did you get
Speaker 1: crap on the wall? This is like watching videos of
Speaker 1: them on the internet so much just because they remind
Speaker 1: us of our own frailties. Yeah, Sadly, the research we're
Speaker 1: looking at doesn't look at the spiteful cat that would
Speaker 1: have I would like to read a study looking at
Speaker 1: spite and felines, but uh in particular, this was a
Speaker 1: two thousand six study conducted at the Wolfgang Coler Primate
Speaker 1: Research Center and Lives of Germany by Max Playing Institute researchers.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, they're looking at chimpanzees, which of course
Speaker 1: is a great place to look because what seems like
Speaker 1: the post. Before we get into what they found, let's
Speaker 1: describe the methodology here because it's a little I think
Speaker 1: it's a little complicated, right, so um, Dr Kenneth sorry,
Speaker 1: Dr Keith Jensen and his team, they presented the chips
Speaker 1: that they had in captivity with this choice. By the way,
Speaker 1: this all sounds like like an origin film for Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes, like it was a little scary. They
Speaker 1: gave them the choice to pull one of two ropes,
Speaker 1: and by pulling these ropes, they would either deliver food
Speaker 1: to another chim chimpanzee or deliver it to an empty room.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming to that like all of the chimpanzees
Speaker 1: involved in this can see one another and see these
Speaker 1: empty rooms. In either case, the chimpanzee pulling the rope
Speaker 1: did not receive any food themselves, right, So there was
Speaker 1: they didn't get food themselves even though they were hungry.
Speaker 1: So they had a choice to either give the food
Speaker 1: to the other chimp or send it to an empty
Speaker 1: room as a spiteful action towards the other chimp. And
Speaker 1: the chimp wants food, it's a hungry chimp. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you can imagine yourself in that in a similar scenario.
Speaker 1: If you had your your most favorite meal in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say it's I don't know, a deep dish pizza
Speaker 1: and it's right there, right there behind the glass. You
Speaker 1: can't eat it. You can pull one rope and have
Speaker 1: it to land on a plate for another hungry individual
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily know and they can eat it, or
Speaker 1: out of spite, you can just deliver it to an
Speaker 1: empty room and watch it rot. If I can't eat it,
Speaker 1: then that chimp is definitely not eating, right, and you
Speaker 1: both will sit there, mouths watering and hungry and sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this plays into the basic spite principle. If
Speaker 1: I can't have X, then nobody will have X. Right.
Speaker 1: So what happened, Well, they expect that they were expecting
Speaker 1: to see some some spie here, But in half the cases,
Speaker 1: the chimp didn't pull either of the ropes. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: interesting to me that they just decided to to be
Speaker 1: a nerd basically not bother. A quarter of the time
Speaker 1: they pull one rope, a quarter of the time they
Speaker 1: pull the other, but mostly they didn't even bother either.
Speaker 1: They ended up not showing altruism by delivering the food
Speaker 1: to the hungry chimp, and they also didn't show spite
Speaker 1: by delivering it to the empty room, so they just
Speaker 1: didn't care. Yeah, what what would you do in this scenario?
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm I'm so against food wasting. I
Speaker 1: think if I couldn't have it, I would want it
Speaker 1: to go to that individual. I can hardly I cannot
Speaker 1: have a hard time imagining a situation where I'd send
Speaker 1: the food to an Not to make myself sound like
Speaker 1: a pious person, because I'm certainly not, but I would
Speaker 1: do the same thing. I would rather see the other
Speaker 1: person eat it, And almost like on some level, I
Speaker 1: think that there's a biological satisfaction there. Well, you're not
Speaker 1: able to eat it, Well, let's throw everyone always throws
Speaker 1: out the whole time travel, the ludicrous time travel thing.
Speaker 1: Would you go back in time to murder Hitler? Which,
Speaker 1: of course, there's all, there's all, there's so many problems
Speaker 1: with that that question. Uh, but let's put Hitler in
Speaker 1: this So a deep dish pizza, Hitler in the room,
Speaker 1: and then there's an empty room. Do you that you
Speaker 1: can't eat the pizza? Do you send it to Hitler
Speaker 1: and let him eat it? Or does it go to
Speaker 1: the empty room out of spite? Yeah, I'd still I'd
Speaker 1: still give Hitler a pizza. I mean, despite what he is,
Speaker 1: you know, horrible atrocities, he's done. Guy deserves to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we waste enough food in this country, right, let him
Speaker 1: eat the pizza. Then we'll worry about the other concerns later.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and this. But the interesting thing about the
Speaker 1: study is that not only does it cast light on
Speaker 1: spite is this particularly human emotion, but it also makes
Speaker 1: us considered altruism, which which likewise is a trait that's
Speaker 1: largely attributed to humans. Now, granted, there are some some
Speaker 1: strong cases to be made for altruism and species, such
Speaker 1: as the dolphin, but we can only be certain about ourselves.
Speaker 1: We we are altruistic. We do well, we do a
Speaker 1: lot to help other people. Uh, but we're also spiteful,
Speaker 1: so there seems to be this definite connection between the two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it certainly seems like a very human practice. Again, like
Speaker 1: the two sides of the altruism spite coin. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm sure that there are many pet owners
Speaker 1: is out there right now that are thinking, well, I've
Speaker 1: had moments where I've been sad or angry or whatever,
Speaker 1: and my pet has come over and given me attention. Uh.
Speaker 1: And whether they were or not, you know, it felt
Speaker 1: like they were doing this out of altruism too, because
Speaker 1: they didn't want their owner to be sad. Uh, they
Speaker 1: wanted to make them happier. Yeah. And of course there
Speaker 1: have been plenty of studies that or at least you know,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of arguments out there that break down
Speaker 1: altruism and say, well, is anything really altruistic? Are you
Speaker 1: ever really doing anything solely for the good of doing it,
Speaker 1: or you at the very least doing it to make
Speaker 1: yourself feel bad? Right? There must be some subjective, subjective
Speaker 1: objective at hand. And the more you think about altruism
Speaker 1: in spite and then look back on the Dungeon and
Speaker 1: dragons um alignment chart, It does seem like, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly you can say lawful evil is where most of
Speaker 1: your really spiteful behavior would go, but realistically you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna see spite pop up in any given alignment, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean right. The D and D chart is always
Speaker 1: just like a silly way to kind of try to
Speaker 1: frame the world into it easily into nine easy to
Speaker 1: understand philosophies of life. But yeah, I can imagine that
Speaker 1: there's scenarios in which Gandhi probably felt spiteful. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think everybody's gonna have it off. If Gandhi's in a
Speaker 1: room and you're in a room and there's a pizza
Speaker 1: and you can pull it with a rope, do you
Speaker 1: give it to Gandhi or do you let it fall
Speaker 1: into uh, the empty room? How was Gandhi? Is he
Speaker 1: fasting in this particular scenario, Because then I feel like
Speaker 1: a real Oh yeah, if I sent a pizza too,
Speaker 1: I would need to send it to the empty room
Speaker 1: as much as that way, But I think that it
Speaker 1: would show his resolve if you sent it to him
Speaker 1: and he still didn't need Okay, so we're helping him
Speaker 1: to make his statement. Okay, Well maybe so that leads
Speaker 1: us to the study that was done on the different
Speaker 1: types of personalities and how they interact with spite. Right, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: And they did not use the Dungeons and Dragon's alignment chart,
Speaker 1: but it's wortunate but that they did that. They did
Speaker 1: look at at a number of individuals and try and
Speaker 1: figure out, well, who what type of personalities are going
Speaker 1: to contain the most spite. So this research is conducted
Speaker 1: by researchers from Washington State University and the University of
Speaker 1: British Columbia, and they attempted to measure spike from us
Speaker 1: with a test similar to those used for personality traits, right,
Speaker 1: and they came up with like a scale right, like
Speaker 1: how they actually surveyed. So one thing I think is
Speaker 1: interesting about this this is this is my experience from
Speaker 1: going to graduate school makes me critical of almost every study,
Speaker 1: like they very much hammered it into our heads that
Speaker 1: like any study or presented with find holes in it
Speaker 1: immediately taken apart. And the thing that I that first
Speaker 1: struck me about this was that the people that they
Speaker 1: surveyed were all at universities. Yeah, this is a problem
Speaker 1: we we discussed in UM an episode from earlier this
Speaker 1: year about about your studies. That's so often you're you're
Speaker 1: inevitably dealing with with a bunch of you know, waspy
Speaker 1: college students in these scenarios. Yeah, they're they're all. What
Speaker 1: this tells us is how spiteful academics and their and
Speaker 1: their students are not necessarily what the world is. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not a general population example here. But they
Speaker 1: developed this spitefulness scale. They surveyed people at two different universities,
Speaker 1: and it was online, right, so they were able to
Speaker 1: um get some older participants in as well. So maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe those people weren't involved with the university and they yeah,
Speaker 1: they're using the scale. They graded in them how much
Speaker 1: they agreed with seventeen different scenarios, such as, if my
Speaker 1: neighbor complained that I was playing my music too loud,
Speaker 1: then I might turn the music up even loud or
Speaker 1: just to irritate him or her, even if it meant
Speaker 1: I could get fined. So this is this is actually
Speaker 1: another great spie. This is a real world example that
Speaker 1: I can relate to being the neighbor in this situation
Speaker 1: loud neighbor or with h well, I wouldn't call myself either.
Speaker 1: But I when I very first moved to Atlanta, there
Speaker 1: was a person who lived direct lee below me that
Speaker 1: played very, very loud dance music all night. Uh and um,
Speaker 1: you know it was I think maybe a week went by.
Speaker 1: My wife and I were like, all right, this is
Speaker 1: this is a little bit much. We thought maybe it
Speaker 1: was like a one night thing. My wife went downstairs
Speaker 1: knocked on the door to to ask this guy if
Speaker 1: he would turn the music down, and he told his
Speaker 1: dog to sick her. Yeah, and luckily my wife is
Speaker 1: good with animals, so the dog just kind of jumped
Speaker 1: up and she paid it. But there's maybe snapped it snaps.
Speaker 1: My wife is also a lethal assassin. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this guy was definitely playing his music at
Speaker 1: us out of spite. I mean, even after she had asked,
Speaker 1: didn't you turn off your music to to make his
Speaker 1: music less enjoyable? I have to admit that there, Yes,
Speaker 1: this was Okay, here we go. This is one of
Speaker 1: my moments where I was spiteful. Yeah. At the time,
Speaker 1: I was playing because we had just moved here. I
Speaker 1: was playing all of my music through a four by
Speaker 1: twelve guitar amp that I had, which is very loud
Speaker 1: and yeah, I crank it up all right. Another one
Speaker 1: on the list. Just to give another example, I would
Speaker 1: rather know one get extra credit in a class if
Speaker 1: it meant that others would receive more credit than me.
Speaker 1: That one's strange to me. Yeah, like that that one
Speaker 1: I feel like, because the other example is more like
Speaker 1: if you push me, I'm going to push back, right,
Speaker 1: even if we had both miserable, like if if if
Speaker 1: one if, I would rather as both be miserable than
Speaker 1: just me be miserable like that that one, I can
Speaker 1: I can see. This one is more like if I
Speaker 1: refuse to lose and I don't care what the cost is.
Speaker 1: It's that competition thing again for sure. Yeah m hmm. Well,
Speaker 1: so the results of this test weren't particularly shocking where
Speaker 1: they like. They compared it to other personality tests that
Speaker 1: marked things like aggression, psychopathy, narcissism, self consciousness, self esteem.
Speaker 1: This one I found interesting. Machiavellianism, So how do you
Speaker 1: measure Machiavellianism is one thing I'd like to learn more about.
Speaker 1: But what surprised me about it as well is that
Speaker 1: if you are Machiavellian, aren't you by nature inherently uh,
Speaker 1: manipulating planning so that you see benefits, so that you
Speaker 1: win well to to go back to Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: a little bit like little Finger, very machi vellian. Is
Speaker 1: he ever spiteful? Do we ever do things out of spite?
Speaker 1: Does he even include a little spite bonus item in
Speaker 1: his actions? Oh? Wow, that's an interesting question. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into too much spoiler territory for people,
Speaker 1: although I mean it's everywhere at this point, but I
Speaker 1: can't really think of a particular example, can you not?
Speaker 1: Off hand? It seems like he's a chess player, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. It seems like maybe there's some unintentional spite,
Speaker 1: and it's like spide is just kind of a byproduct,
Speaker 1: like I'm going to get what I want. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: played the long game to get what I want, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose when I win. But yeah, but how
Speaker 1: much he doesn't necessarily seem to go out of his
Speaker 1: way to to add extra hurt heisting on top of
Speaker 1: what he does, which is a compliment in the Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones world. Yeah, okay, well let's well, let's go
Speaker 1: into this for a second. Spoilers for Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: season one and the first book. Uh. So when he,
Speaker 1: you know, makes his whole move for power in that
Speaker 1: first season, he uh gets ned Start killed, and even
Speaker 1: though that wasn't his intention, he was spiteful towards ned
Speaker 1: Stark because ned Stark married the woman he wanted to
Speaker 1: be married to, so it was it was a It
Speaker 1: didn't hurt him though, So I don't know that it
Speaker 1: was spite he won. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call it spite. Yeah, I don't think it was spie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting. I'm sure that somebody out there have
Speaker 1: an example for us of Little Fingers spitefulness. I real
Speaker 1: side note here I love over at Ion nine. They
Speaker 1: have this theory that all of Game of Thrones is
Speaker 1: just a chess game between Little Finger and Varis, and
Speaker 1: that it's just all about their machiavellian moves against one another.
Speaker 1: So so if there is spite in in in a
Speaker 1: in either of their stories, it would somehow impact the others. Now,
Speaker 1: coming back to this, uh this study, uh, just to
Speaker 1: throw out where the spikes seemed to pool. In the study,
Speaker 1: they saw most spite in people among people who scored
Speaker 1: high in psychopathy, um, those who are particularly callous, unsympathetic,
Speaker 1: unemotional and they saw us a Spiefulness was also greater
Speaker 1: in people who scored high in narcissism and machiavellianism. So
Speaker 1: that's it. That's also interesting to think about because if
Speaker 1: they're unemotional, um, then what pleasure are they getting out
Speaker 1: of the spieful action? Mhmm. You know, I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's people who are like pure, like like maybe we
Speaker 1: get into a kind of a false model with some
Speaker 1: of these fictional Machiavellian individuals, Like maybe nobody's really that
Speaker 1: Machiavelian and it's more about I I'm spiteful, and if
Speaker 1: I think about my own spite in a Mockavellian sense,
Speaker 1: that I'm not being spiteful, like you're just you're you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose against me and you're gonna pay the consequences
Speaker 1: of that. But but spie is not the spearhead of
Speaker 1: it on my motion, It's not the fuel for the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, that's that's possible. Now, people with lots
Speaker 1: of guilt scored low, but those with shame scored higher.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting to make the distiction distinction, because
Speaker 1: if if you're guilty, you did something bad, but if
Speaker 1: you're shameful, you are bad in terms of how we
Speaker 1: think about guilt and shame. Yeah, and and this is
Speaker 1: also the study where it shut. They first came up
Speaker 1: with a conclusion that men score higher on the spite
Speaker 1: scale than women. Right, uh, And I like how it
Speaker 1: was phrased here the dark triad of psychopathy, narcissism, and
Speaker 1: Machiavilli the dark triad, so that even though they weren't
Speaker 1: exactly using the dungeons Dragon's alignment system, but using language
Speaker 1: that made me think of it. Yeah. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: also children, well, this is another thing that they found
Speaker 1: in this study. Children will often pick up on a
Speaker 1: situation that invites spite, but they won't necessarily act on it, right,
Speaker 1: but they realize what's going on when they had the
Speaker 1: opportunity for it. And yet at this same time, they
Speaker 1: found that older people are less likely to be spiteful
Speaker 1: than younger people. So on the children's side of it,
Speaker 1: I can I imagine it's a lot of it is
Speaker 1: that you have to you have to learn that spiteful,
Speaker 1: but hey, it's the one thing to recognize, well, this
Speaker 1: isn't fair what has happened. But then to to to
Speaker 1: get to that point where you can actually act out
Speaker 1: spitefully because of it, Yeah, that's that's something you have
Speaker 1: to pick up. So this is all right. This has
Speaker 1: no basis in the studies that we read for for
Speaker 1: today's episode. But I'm thinking here that it's possible that
Speaker 1: spite and maybe also altruism are learned behaviors that have
Speaker 1: to be modeled, right, and that that is why human
Speaker 1: beings are more likely to have them, uh than chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: For instance. The chimps don't have models that are showing
Speaker 1: them how to be spiteful. Maybe if you showed those
Speaker 1: chimpanzees the spiteful action of withholding a pizza from Hitler
Speaker 1: uh and then laughed about it with them a couple
Speaker 1: of times, then they would do it. They would be
Speaker 1: more likely to do it. Yeah. And it's as we'll
Speaker 1: we'll discuss in in the in the next section. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems that that altruism and spite kind of emerge
Speaker 1: from a sufficiently complex system, you know. Um that maybe
Speaker 1: it's just a situation where chimpanzee intelligence and culture is
Speaker 1: just not reach the level to where spite an altruism
Speaker 1: immerge to do battle with each other. Yeah. Absolutely, Well again,
Speaker 1: I say, let's avoid the Planet of the Apes scenario.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want, uh, you know, I'd rather
Speaker 1: the dawn of the Planet of the Apes scenario, not
Speaker 1: not not the first one with Charlton Heston, but the
Speaker 1: more recent ones. You know, I don't want to teach
Speaker 1: these animals are are failings. Yeah, well, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to see him ride around on horses or shoot
Speaker 1: me at all Right, We're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then we'll be right back, all right. So the
Speaker 1: next bit of research we looked at this is this
Speaker 1: came from Patrick Forber of Toughs University and Roy Smeed
Speaker 1: of Northeastern and they applied game theory to the study
Speaker 1: of spite, designing a cute computer model of virtual players
Speaker 1: challenging each other to a single round of the Ultimatum game. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: as somebody who has played h M M O RPG before,
Speaker 1: or really any online gaming system, I'm going to imagine
Speaker 1: that they found that spite was pretty heavily dominant within
Speaker 1: a gaming community. Are there spiteful gamers? Oh god? It
Speaker 1: feels like it when you're playing it. Yeah, the people
Speaker 1: whom I don't forget what it's called. It's like they
Speaker 1: jump up and down on your corps after they've killed you.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that one. I guess that's not spiteful.
Speaker 1: They're not hurting themselves. But yeah, people will certainly do like. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about the costing online, right, as you
Speaker 1: have a lot of room to be spiteful without having
Speaker 1: to pay the cost of the spy. That is absolutely true. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's probably something we should keep in mind with
Speaker 1: the results of this study. Um, another spiteful gaming thing.
Speaker 1: I guess that rage quitting is spiteful behavior. Yes, to
Speaker 1: lose gracefully, I'm going to just leave the game. You
Speaker 1: don't get the like the point or whatever for your victory,
Speaker 1: but I don't have to sit here and watch you,
Speaker 1: you know, victorious over me. Yeah. The classic to you
Speaker 1: know who leroid Enkins is. Oh, I defer the name.
Speaker 1: So there is this. This is a nerdy world of
Speaker 1: warcraft thing from probably the mid two thousand's. He was
Speaker 1: He was made famous for this saying. Somebody recorded it.
Speaker 1: You can find it on YouTube. His name was Leary Jenkins.
Speaker 1: He was part of a raid group that was playing
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft and UH, rather than you know, let
Speaker 1: his team win, he ran in UH and purposely sabotaged
Speaker 1: the team's efforts to conquer this dungeon and got them
Speaker 1: all killed. And UH is known for yelling out his
Speaker 1: name as he did it, le Roy Jenkins, and runs
Speaker 1: into this thing and kills everybody. And you can hear
Speaker 1: all these guys over their little headsets getting angry at
Speaker 1: him for ruining their game. All right, well that's that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty spectacularly spike. Yeah, the Leroy Jenkins spite model.
Speaker 1: So ultimatum game. Uh. The way this plays out according
Speaker 1: to the rules, player A decides how a pot of
Speaker 1: money is going to be shared with player B. Okay,
Speaker 1: half and half. Say eight percent for A and twenty
Speaker 1: percent for B. You have B consented to the split.
Speaker 1: Both received the agreed upon portion, but if BE rejected
Speaker 1: the offer, neither player received anything. Okay, So I could
Speaker 1: say goes to me and one percent goes to you,
Speaker 1: and you would get that one percent if you agreed
Speaker 1: to it, or you would get nothing and I would
Speaker 1: get nothing if you did not agree to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a test of sort of of
Speaker 1: ego but also trust. And so after they carried out
Speaker 1: this game, the researchers then allowed the players to form
Speaker 1: into mock societies. And this is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 1: Like model you in here. Yeah, so the different sort
Speaker 1: of type individuals, you know, assembling into these groups. Groups
Speaker 1: that work up full of excessively spitefuble or selfish players
Speaker 1: quickly collapse. So you just have like a bunch of
Speaker 1: like the worst gamers in the world. Imagine trying to
Speaker 1: run a society together. It just completely fall apart because
Speaker 1: there's no structure there. Everybody is a massive jerk. It's
Speaker 1: like a trolling community. Yeah, the trolling community is just
Speaker 1: gonna be like cannibalism and madness within an hour. Right. Yeah. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you would have these rigidly fair minded societies and these
Speaker 1: work okay until you end up with one selfish invader
Speaker 1: and they just tear the whole thing apart. Really Okay,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, So just one person, one or two can
Speaker 1: destabilize the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, you have you know,
Speaker 1: one morelock wanders in your peaceful village and it just
Speaker 1: rips everything to shreds apart. Okay, all right, and then
Speaker 1: they found uh that flexible shares though, right, they were
Speaker 1: able to coexist with spiteful people. Yeah, this is where
Speaker 1: we see this interesting balance of altruism and spite uh,
Speaker 1: because the presence of spiteful individuals actually enhanced the rate
Speaker 1: of fair exchanges among the non spiteful, So they kind
Speaker 1: of end up balancing each other out. Yeah, so just fact.
Speaker 1: But this this requires your you know, community of people
Speaker 1: to be what we call flexible shares here, right, Um,
Speaker 1: they by their being spiteful people there, it inherently teaches
Speaker 1: them to be more altruistic. So again, this is like
Speaker 1: modeled behavior, even if it's like almost like a reverse psychology. Interesting, yeah, Patrick,
Speaker 1: forber in the study, he said it could be that
Speaker 1: Nichi was right about punishment, that it originated as spite
Speaker 1: and only later was turned into a mechanism from maintaining
Speaker 1: fairness and justice. This uh podcast is not the place
Speaker 1: for us to dive deep into this, but it also
Speaker 1: reminds me of the punishment theories of Michelle fauco Um
Speaker 1: and which I believe, you know, he was influenced by
Speaker 1: Nizzi in that respect. So yeah, punishment and altruism are
Speaker 1: all connected together. Yeah, I mean it gets into the
Speaker 1: question of what is what is a punishment for a crime? Like,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to do? Are you trying to
Speaker 1: just actually just drive home some sort of spiteful punishment
Speaker 1: into the individual You're trying to make a corrective action
Speaker 1: on society, make an example help that person. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: it in deterrence? Is it punishment? Is it rehabilitation? And
Speaker 1: then whatever it is, now, what did it evolve from that?
Speaker 1: Rehabilitation would be seen as the altruistic version of that
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, Yeah, and punt, whereas just pure punishment
Speaker 1: would be more on the spiteful end. When the office
Speaker 1: of that study also pointed out that this would make
Speaker 1: sense to this balance, it ends up being maintained because
Speaker 1: you're it's not only the lawful individuals in this society,
Speaker 1: the good people, non cheaters, that are going to contribute
Speaker 1: to the rule of law, but the cheaters are also
Speaker 1: going to because the rule breakers also have a vested
Speaker 1: interest in punishing other rule breakers. Yeah, it's like the
Speaker 1: whole scenario when you have you know, gangsters take over
Speaker 1: a neighborhood and some sort of you know, like a
Speaker 1: god Father type scenario. They're gonna cut down on the
Speaker 1: crime in their turf so they can carry out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember reading that and one of these articles they
Speaker 1: were that that was their example was that like the
Speaker 1: mafia is known for for protecting the neighborhood at the
Speaker 1: same time that it's criminalizing it. Interesting. So there's two
Speaker 1: researchers involved in this study, dB Croup and Peter Taylor. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it looks like what they did was they developed
Speaker 1: a new theoretical model of spite, like how we understand spite, right,
Speaker 1: and like how individuals enacted. Yeah, and their their findings
Speaker 1: where the first of all, individuals who appear very different
Speaker 1: from most others in a group will evolve to be
Speaker 1: altruistic towards similar partners and only slightful, slightfully spiteful to
Speaker 1: those who are dissimilar to them. So, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about like an outsider scenario. Yeah, Like I instantly think
Speaker 1: of like a high school high scenario. You know. So
Speaker 1: it's like you have the like the cool kids and
Speaker 1: the job kids, and the kids who fit into larger,
Speaker 1: um more accepted groups. Okay, and then you have you know,
Speaker 1: the geek, your crew you know, uh that that I
Speaker 1: was definitely a part of so in this too. So
Speaker 1: in this scenario, me and you at the geeky table,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be and we're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 1: altruism towards each other, and we're gonna have maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of spite towards the folks at the jock table,
Speaker 1: but not a lot. We're not going out of our
Speaker 1: way to you know, put things in their their lunch
Speaker 1: trays or whatever. Well. That what what I find fascinating
Speaker 1: about this aspect of the study, and there's more to
Speaker 1: it is it's sort of um debunks common thinking psychology
Speaker 1: about incidents like the Columbine shootings, right, and the idea
Speaker 1: that they were spiteful. They were outsiders who were enacting
Speaker 1: their spite upon the community that they felt like they
Speaker 1: didn't belong to. So the second part might play into
Speaker 1: that a little more. Yeah, the second part is that
Speaker 1: individuals who appear very similar to the rest of a
Speaker 1: group in other words, the people at the jock table, cetera,
Speaker 1: that the main population members, they will evolve to be
Speaker 1: only slightly altruistic to similar partners, but very spiteful too.
Speaker 1: Dissimilar individuals and then even go out of their way
Speaker 1: to hurt them. So in this scenario, so that explains
Speaker 1: all the times that I got beat up in high
Speaker 1: school that would that would that would fall into this
Speaker 1: because you have the the main population is going to
Speaker 1: go out of their way to be spiteful and even
Speaker 1: hurt individuals that that that look out of place. But
Speaker 1: on the other side, they're only being marginally altruistic to
Speaker 1: even their their their own kind. Yeah, yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: that's interesting. So this seems to connect to that um
Speaker 1: sort of basic psychological understanding of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about that like pyramid of
Speaker 1: there are various needs that we as human beings have
Speaker 1: to fulfill before we can sort of get to a
Speaker 1: point of self actualization. Right, and this seems very connected
Speaker 1: to the Maslow's idea of belonging. Right that like, if
Speaker 1: you feel like you belong to a group, and that
Speaker 1: group is an outsider group, then you're more likely to
Speaker 1: care for them, to be altruistic to them. Uh, but
Speaker 1: if your group is if you belong to a group
Speaker 1: that is I guess more or less popularized. Um, if
Speaker 1: you're less likely to feel that way. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: could also see where there's there's there's more of a
Speaker 1: necessity for that altruism in that outsider group because you
Speaker 1: need each other more survival attack, whereas if you're just
Speaker 1: one of the larger dominant power structure, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's just not as necessary more spread out even I guess,
Speaker 1: so it's certainly you know, I remarked by the way,
Speaker 1: I didn't get beat up that much in high school.
Speaker 1: But I remarked that it explains schoolyard bullying, which we
Speaker 1: have down here, but also explains things like racism and prejudice, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, definitely you can. You can take this study
Speaker 1: and apply to just about any scenario where one group
Speaker 1: is being spiteful to a small another smaller group, or
Speaker 1: or even look at you know, some of your more
Speaker 1: some of your examples of just really altruistic individuals and
Speaker 1: their potential outsider status. You know, let me just think
Speaker 1: about it, like who's who's weirder on the street, the
Speaker 1: guy who's walking around just being really nice to everybody,
Speaker 1: or the guy who's walking around scowling like that's Sadly,
Speaker 1: we often think it's the nice individual like, what is
Speaker 1: what's going on with that person? What's their game? The
Speaker 1: dude that's just being spiteful, you know, he's just another
Speaker 1: grumpy individual walking around the city. All right, So things
Speaker 1: I've learned about myself in this episode are that, even
Speaker 1: though I'm the guy in the streets scowling, I'm more
Speaker 1: likely to give a pizza to somebody if I won't
Speaker 1: get a pizza myself, right, provided they seem to be
Speaker 1: a member of your group, yeah, and are not out
Speaker 1: off Hitler. Okay, well I would get it. I'd still
Speaker 1: give Hitler pizza, yeah, yeah, but I'd be more are
Speaker 1: likely to give you know one of our listeners of pizza. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This research only had me pausing to think a lot
Speaker 1: about my actions and and some of the things that
Speaker 1: I've done that I've I can look back on and say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a bit of spite in doing that. Or or
Speaker 1: at times I'll sort of I'll catch myself engaging in
Speaker 1: sort of fantasy spite, you know, where I imagine myself
Speaker 1: being spiteful, but I don't actually do it because because
Speaker 1: the cost is too high. You know, I would look
Speaker 1: like a jerk, or I would just feel like a
Speaker 1: massive jerk. If I did that, and I can get
Speaker 1: the same sort of momentary satisfactory by just imagining that
Speaker 1: I did, That's a that makes it a uniquely human
Speaker 1: thing as well. Probably right, that we can vicariously, uh
Speaker 1: live out the pleasure of spite in our imaginations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like to go back to that chimp scen area we're
Speaker 1: in that you know, we can sit there and we
Speaker 1: can we could think to ourselves. You know, Hitler, I
Speaker 1: could just send that pizza to an empty room and
Speaker 1: you would totally deserve it. But me, I'm a really
Speaker 1: nice guy and I'm gonna send you that pizza anyway,
Speaker 1: and they canna high five yourself and you walk off
Speaker 1: and probably buy pizza somewhere. Well, so I want to know. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, this obviously brought up some issues for for
Speaker 1: both of us, thinking about how we've been spiteful in
Speaker 1: the past or maybe altruistic as well. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: from our listeners, you know, do you feel that these
Speaker 1: studies line up with your experiences of spite in your
Speaker 1: life or possibly altruism? Would you give Hitler the pizza?
Speaker 1: Uh or Gandhi for that matter. Let us know you
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler, and we're
Speaker 1: below the Mind on all those platforms, Or you can
Speaker 1: reach out to us on the mother chip, which is
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right. You'll
Speaker 1: find all the podcast episodes there, all the blog post,
Speaker 1: all the videos, links out to social media accounts, you
Speaker 1: name it, and please let us know about your experiences
Speaker 1: with spite and whether they lined up with what we
Speaker 1: talked about today by writing to us at blow the
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