Cruelty's rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators

Abstract

Cruelty is the deliberate infliction of physical or psychological pain on other living creatures, sometimes indifferently, but often with delight. Though cruelty is an overwhelming presence in the world, there is no neurobiological or psychological explanation for its ubiquity and reward value. This target article attempts to provide such explanations by describing three stages in the development of cruelty. Stage 1 is the development of the predatory adaptation from the Palaeozoic to the ethology of predation in canids, felids, and primates. Stage 2, through palaeontological and anthropological evidence, traces the emergence of the hunting adaptation in the Pliocene, its development in early hominids, and its emotional loading in surviving forager societies. This adaptation provides an explanation for the powerful emotions -high arousal and strong affect -evoked by the pain-blooddeath complex. Stage 3 is the emergence of cruelty about 1.5 million years ago as a hominid behavioural repertoire that promoted fitness through the maintenance of personal and social power. The resulting cultural elaborations of cruelty in war, in sacrificial rites, and as entertainment are examined to show the historical and cross-cultural stability of the uses of cruelty for punishment, amusement, and social control.Effective violence prevention must begin with perpetrators, not victims. If the upstream approaches to violence prevention advocated by the public-health model are to be effective, psychologists must be able to provide violence prevention workers with a fine-grained understanding of perpetrator gratifications. This is a distasteful task that will compel researchers to interact with torturers and abusers, and to acknowledge that their gratifications are rooted in a common human past. It is nonetheless an essential step in developing effective strategies for the primary prevention of violence.

Aggression, Pleasure, and Cognitive Dissonance

“…The moderate level of aggressiveness was the selected preference when participants were invited to make decisions. This relationship of pleasure with aggressiveness has been recently confirmed by other researchers, showing that aggressive behavior [9][10][11][12], and even cruelty [13], can be pleasurable.…”

The Pleasure of Being Aggressive in Male Incarcerated Criminals

“…The moderate level of aggressiveness was the selected preference when participants were invited to make decisions. This relationship of pleasure with aggressiveness has been recently confirmed by other researchers, showing that aggressive behavior (Haller & Kruk, 2006;Helfritz & Stanford, 2006;Meier, Robinson, & Wilkowski, 2006;Peters, Västfjäll, Gärling, & Slovic, 2006), and even cruelty (Nell, 2006), can be pleasurable. That research offers relevant evidence for the operation of hedonic considerations in decision-making about violence.…”

Archaeological, radiological, and biological evidence offer insight into Inca child sacrifice

“…This is implicit in comments made by the Spanish Jesuit missionary and writer Bernabé Cobo (1653) in relation to parents compelled to give up their children, namely that "it was a major offense to show any sadness," and that "they were obliged to do it with gestures of happiness and satisfaction, as if they were taking their children to bestow upon them a very important reward" (11). Emotional inurement-whether explicitly contrived or only implicitly apprehended by those in controlcould create needs that could be converted into allegiance to the imperial system (11)(12)(13).…”

“…Coca and alcohol were substances that induced altered states interpreted as sacred, and which could suggest to victims and those associated with them the proximity of the divine beings whose continued benevolence was underwritten by these rites (44). From a cross-cultural perspective, the psychologically deadening, disorienting, and mood-modifying effects of these psychoactive compounds on young victims, for whom any kind of informed consent to their own deaths cannot be unproblematically presumed, should not be downplayed (13).…”