From Hell's Heart: The Science of Spite

of when we started talking about doing this episode. There's a scene in Star Trek to the Wrath of Con and Con spoilers for a movie that's like thirty years old, UH, when Con is dying, but he decides that he's gonna, you know, take himself out along with uh the enterprise, and he recites the whole speech Captain Ahab speech from movie Dick, which you know, the two parallel pretty well together.

So I think of Con nunion singh when I think of spite, Okay, well yeah, I think I think Con is definitely a very spiteful care because ULTI millions of in a situation where he can't win and he could bow out gracefully, but CON's not going to do that. It's too much pride, there's too much ego there. He's laying it all on the line, So he'd rather he'd rather strike back and perish and get like just just to you know, raise the middle finger to Kirk rather

than than just go out. Yeah. This is definitely the core of trying to figure out spite, not not just like how it works psychologically in our human minds, but also like our definition of it when you go and

you look it up on the dictionary. It doesn't really include the encapsulate how we think of it, right, Yeah, because some of the studies that we get into, well, one in particular talks about it, talks about spit and says in general spike differs from aggression, which can be exercised at little risk to an aggressor, spike carries a cost, as if one were calculating that a loss is worthwhile if it takes a toll on one's opponent as well. But you don't necessarily see that in you know, your

standard Webster's dictionary, right, Yeah. So the idea here is that you are willing to hurt yourself at the expense of being able to hurt someone else, right, and that hurt is not necessarily physical. Like the most extreme example that comes to a lot of people's minds, I'm sure is something like a suicide bomber, you know where they're they're saying, I will die violently in this cause to cause harm to others. But then also something in spite

that we've all probably experienced on one side of the other. Uh, if you've ever taken your time pulling out of a parking spot because you don't like the look of that car or that driver that's waiting on it, maybe they're being a little rude. And so in that case, the cost is not nearly as high as losing your life, but you are willing to look a little bit like a jerk in order to make sure that person gets

what's coming to them. Yeah. Um, So it makes me think of like methods of conflict management, and there's there's several different ways that you can manage conflict, but this would be what's called the competitive method of conflict management, right, where you're basically competing against another person to win in conflict. Right, and in this situation, you're not even winning. It's a

it's a lose loose everybody loses. Like, actually, your whole reason, your whole goal here in leaving the parking lot is to leave the parking lot and presentably get where you're going next in the shortest amount of time, and it's required, So you're you're hurting your own objectives, You're you're looking like a jerk doing it. There's really no benefit other than you feel that you know that ego stroke and some sort of deep animalistic um pride in having, you know,

put one over on the next guy. It's not an effective method of problem solving, that's for sure, but it's something that I think is within all of us. I have to admit that as we were researching this, I was really digging deep inside myself trying to remember examples where I had been spite full and I couldn't. Yeah, and I'm sure I have been even that, even the mild stuff like driving around the only uh yeah, I'm I am an angry driver, but not a spiteful driver.

I so no, I can't think of it wouldn't be like that. But um I the only thing I could think of it as like a practical example of is if there's somebody who I personally don't like, I won't and I won't support their work, like whether it's a book that they wrote or a film that they produced or acted in or whatever. Uh even if people are like, you have to see this, it is the best thing ever you you know, it's going to change your life. It's it's the best storytelling, And I go, Nope, I don't.

I don't want to give that person my ten bucks. Well have been the cough there could be my own edification. You're in. You're messing. You're missing out on the potential joys of this product because of the if you will. Well. What it reminds me of is you ever read the police blotder in Creative Loafing here in Atlanta. I think that they have this in a lot of all weeklies around the world, but here in Atlanta are all weekly

does this thing where they take I don't know. Every week there's like maybe five or six little snippets out of the actual Atlanta Police Departments log uh and of just the craziest stories. And almost always every week there's one story that involves spite in some way somebody who's doing something illegal or something to hurt another person that ultimately ends up getting them arrested. Right, um, And they're

always completely whacked out crazy stories. Some of my favorites involved just like you know, people where half naked scrambling down the streets and screaming in the middle of the night. But that's not exactly spiteful, that's just you know, crazy. Yeah, And could you certainly see it showed up too at times with police encounters where someone decides that the best thing they can they can do during this encounter is to be spiteful to the officer. Yeah, right, Yeah, that's

an interesting thing that it brings out. Law enforcement seems to bring spite out in people and on both sides. And not not to imply there's there's there's never some spite from the police. No, no, absolutely, Um, so okay, let's let's have some fune with us for a second. So Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart. You know, for those of you out there, you know that Robert and I are are really into geeky stuff like this. So, uh, what is where spite fall? I'm thinking it's neutral evil,

it's not necessarily chaotic, there's there there's determination to it. Obviously, it doesn't follow a rule oriented uh you know practice. Yeah, I think lawful evils probably where most of your spite

is gonna fall. But but and in that, you know, we definitely have to think about some of the spiteful characters we've encountered in things like like when I was trying to think of some in addition to a ha and con Searcy Lanister comes to mind from Game of Thrones as being a very spiteful character who you know, she has some some key values, you know, the importance of her family and importance for her family, but she's often willing to jeopardize all of it out of spite

for uh an In in the Aura received Enemy. So if where would where would Searcy land in the Dungeon and dragons alignment charges? I guess you, yeah, I guess you would have to say she's lawful evil she because she works within the I guess system of rule. Right.

Uh yeah, that's interesting. Another one that came to mind, And this was a much harder one to nail down because there's you know a lot of a lot of his motivations are still up for discussion and continue to you know, to be an item of discussion among critics. But Iago in Shakespeare's a Fellow, Okay, yeah, I saw this. Give me a little refresher on this because it's been a while since I've read Othello. Well, basically Iago is the character it just works against Othello the whole time

and just you know, just really kind of ruthlessly. Um. But you never really have a clear sense why, Like there's not a situation where it's like, oh, Fellow killed my father or you know, generally it's a to try and figure out why Iago is so obsessed with taking down Othello, you have to you have to apply some some outside interpretations such as I think Kenneth Brana when he played Iago, he he had he approached it as if Iago had feelings for Othello, and so his like

his his deep rooted hatred came out of you know, inner conflict over his uh like he was burned somehow. Yeah. So Iago is a harder character to to nail down. But I think there's there's a certain amount of spite to what he does in the play. Yeah. Well, I you know, when I was researching this, one thing that I didn't realize was like a thing was building homes

out of spite. Apparently, like if you if you just search the word spite on Google, within at least two or three pages, you'll find galleries of homes that were built in spite of their neighbors. Uh, And I didn't realize this is a thing. It's like people are purposely building homes to annoy their neighbors that aren't necessarily practical

or functional homes that they themselves enjoy. Literally, you're talking just like mildly so because you're always hearing about like, oh, they're building a modern home and it's out of keeping with their traditional homes in the neighborhood. Yeah, I think it's more along those because then you also see those stories like the guy in England who had a giant shark like embedded in the roof of his house. I'm

sure that would fall under this. I'm thinking along the lines of like that house and Beetlejuice, you know, like like the the weird like postmodern art house that they had there. But in that case, you know, there was no neighborhood. In this. I think it would be like, you know, your nextra neighbors would would hate you because it would bring down the property values or something like that. But this is apparently, like like I found multiple galleries

of this, so apparently it's a phenomenon. You know, it brings to mind. Uh, I can't remember the character's name off hand, but the the individual that Kevin Spacey portrayed in Midnight in the Garden A good and evil. You know, I have never seen that. My wife loves that movie, but I still haven't New Orleans Resident, and uh, if I remember correctly, the individually plays, it's kind of an

eccentric kind of character. And they were filming some sort of historical piece in his neighborhood, and they covered the streets and dirt and you know, their horses standing around or whatever, and it's kind of a big inconvenience for everybody. And they were going to be shooting potentially with his house in the background, because it's one of these nice old homes. And so he he just draped a large Nazi flag stick and all right there on the front

porch out of spite. You know, it's like, you're gonna you're gonna film this neighborhood and film my house at the backdrop. Well, I'm gonna do this, which makes completely useless for your shoot and also brand Nazi to all of my neighbors. Wow, Okay, yeah, I mean that could work for sure. I So let's get into lake where this saying of because when we think of spite, it's always you know that that phrase to cut your nose off despite your face. So let's think of like where

this came from. What where where is this? Well, it apparently dates back to at least around the twelfth century. And uh, it's generally attributed to pious women who are just figuring themselves in order to protect the virginity against pirates, vikings, invading armies, etcetera. Basically just to to try and disfigure themselves so that they will be looked over when the assaults begin. Yeah, I read a little bit about this. This was not something I knew about before researching this episode.

These were mostly women. Uh. And this is a common phrase you'll hear me say during medieval times. Uh that, Um, you know, we're so religious that they wanted to preserve their virginity, right. And the idea, I mean, this isn't when we're talking disfiguring. It's not just like you know, they give themselves a scar. They're cutting off their own noses, literally cutting off their nose, uh, cutting off their cheeks, cutting off their upper lips. Uh. And some of these

people actually ended up becoming saints in some sense. So st Ebba was one that I found who inspired nuns to cut off their own noses and upper lips to prevent themselves from being raped. Um and there are a couple others in there as well. But yeah, that is a practice that I was unfamiliar with. Yeah. I was also reading that it also might be linked to medieval acts of spite, in which the nose is cut off

as a kind of punishment. Um And and it's sadly you see this kind of thing continue in the world today, you know, war torn regions of the world where uh, women are particular demise by having their their nose cut right, the mutilation is sort of a marking. Yeah. Yeah, And as graphic as that is, though, remember that because when later in the episode we will start to discuss the links between spite and and punishment in a in a lawful system. Yeah, it seems like there's a connection between

those things, and then altruism as well. It's it's it's like this coin where you've got spite on one side and altruism on the other, and it seems like they're connected. In human psychology, so it turns out that there are a lot of studies, at least at least four that we found for the for this episode on spite and sort of its origins and how it works within human beings and animals too, right, I mean, it's apparently, you know,

many researchers considered to be an understudied area. But but we were able to find some interesting papers about spite and where it comes from and what it means. Uh. The most basic place to start, of course, would be just to ask are humans the only spiteful creatures despite possible in any other animal on the planet. And I would think any cat owner would assume the danswer is no, Right, Well, yeah, yeah, you would. Certainly cats seem to do a lot of

things out of spite. Mine does as well. But but of course, anytime you're dealing with human are actually like how much are we projecting on them? Right with anther morphizing there, because you know, they're basically just doing a much of stupid stuff, and then we just assume will you do that to spite me? Why did you get crap on the wall? This is like watching videos of them on the internet so much just because they remind

us of our own frailties. Yeah, Sadly, the research we're looking at doesn't look at the spiteful cat that would have I would like to read a study looking at spite and felines, but uh in particular, this was a two thousand six study conducted at the Wolfgang Coler Primate Research Center and Lives of Germany by Max Playing Institute researchers. And uh, yeah, they're looking at chimpanzees, which of course is a great place to look because what seems like

the post. Before we get into what they found, let's describe the methodology here because it's a little I think it's a little complicated, right, so um, Dr Kenneth sorry, Dr Keith Jensen and his team, they presented the chips that they had in captivity with this choice. By the way, this all sounds like like an origin film for Planet

of the Apes, like it was a little scary. They gave them the choice to pull one of two ropes, and by pulling these ropes, they would either deliver food to another chim chimpanzee or deliver it to an empty room. And I'm assuming to that like all of the chimpanzees involved in this can see one another and see these empty rooms. In either case, the chimpanzee pulling the rope did not receive any food themselves, right, So there was they didn't get food themselves even though they were hungry.

So they had a choice to either give the food to the other chimp or send it to an empty room as a spiteful action towards the other chimp. And the chimp wants food, it's a hungry chimp. Yeah, So you can imagine yourself in that in a similar scenario. If you had your your most favorite meal in the world. Yeah, let's say it's I don't know, a deep dish pizza and it's right there, right there behind the glass. You

can't eat it. You can pull one rope and have it to land on a plate for another hungry individual you don't necessarily know and they can eat it, or out of spite, you can just deliver it to an empty room and watch it rot. If I can't eat it, then that chimp is definitely not eating, right, and you both will sit there, mouths watering and hungry and sad. Yeah, I mean this plays into the basic spite principle. If I can't have X, then nobody will have X. Right.

So what happened, Well, they expect that they were expecting to see some some spie here, But in half the cases, the chimp didn't pull either of the ropes. Yeah, that's interesting to me that they just decided to to be a nerd basically not bother. A quarter of the time they pull one rope, a quarter of the time they pull the other, but mostly they didn't even bother either.

They ended up not showing altruism by delivering the food to the hungry chimp, and they also didn't show spite by delivering it to the empty room, so they just didn't care. Yeah, what what would you do in this scenario? I don't think I'm I'm so against food wasting. I think if I couldn't have it, I would want it

to go to that individual. I can hardly I cannot have a hard time imagining a situation where I'd send the food to an Not to make myself sound like a pious person, because I'm certainly not, but I would do the same thing. I would rather see the other person eat it, And almost like on some level, I think that there's a biological satisfaction there. Well, you're not able to eat it, Well, let's throw everyone always throws out the whole time travel, the ludicrous time travel thing.

Would you go back in time to murder Hitler? Which, of course, there's all, there's all, there's so many problems with that that question. Uh, but let's put Hitler in this So a deep dish pizza, Hitler in the room, and then there's an empty room. Do you that you can't eat the pizza? Do you send it to Hitler and let him eat it? Or does it go to the empty room out of spite? Yeah, I'd still I'd still give Hitler a pizza. I mean, despite what he is,

you know, horrible atrocities, he's done. Guy deserves to. Yeah, we waste enough food in this country, right, let him eat the pizza. Then we'll worry about the other concerns later. So yeah, and this. But the interesting thing about the study is that not only does it cast light on spite is this particularly human emotion, but it also makes us considered altruism, which which likewise is a trait that's

largely attributed to humans. Now, granted, there are some some strong cases to be made for altruism and species, such as the dolphin, but we can only be certain about ourselves. We we are altruistic. We do well, we do a lot to help other people. Uh, but we're also spiteful, so there seems to be this definite connection between the two. Yeah, it certainly seems like a very human practice. Again, like

the two sides of the altruism spite coin. I mean, I know, I'm sure that there are many pet owners is out there right now that are thinking, well, I've had moments where I've been sad or angry or whatever, and my pet has come over and given me attention. Uh. And whether they were or not, you know, it felt like they were doing this out of altruism too, because they didn't want their owner to be sad. Uh, they

wanted to make them happier. Yeah. And of course there have been plenty of studies that or at least you know, there are plenty of arguments out there that break down altruism and say, well, is anything really altruistic? Are you ever really doing anything solely for the good of doing it, or you at the very least doing it to make yourself feel bad? Right? There must be some subjective, subjective

objective at hand. And the more you think about altruism in spite and then look back on the Dungeon and dragons um alignment chart, It does seem like, you know, certainly you can say lawful evil is where most of your really spiteful behavior would go, but realistically you're probably gonna see spite pop up in any given alignment, right, Yeah, I mean right. The D and D chart is always just like a silly way to kind of try to frame the world into it easily into nine easy to

understand philosophies of life. But yeah, I can imagine that there's scenarios in which Gandhi probably felt spiteful. Yeah, I think everybody's gonna have it off. If Gandhi's in a room and you're in a room and there's a pizza and you can pull it with a rope, do you give it to Gandhi or do you let it fall

into uh, the empty room? How was Gandhi? Is he fasting in this particular scenario, Because then I feel like a real Oh yeah, if I sent a pizza too, I would need to send it to the empty room as much as that way, But I think that it would show his resolve if you sent it to him and he still didn't need Okay, so we're helping him to make his statement. Okay, Well maybe so that leads us to the study that was done on the different

types of personalities and how they interact with spite. Right, Yeah, definitely. And they did not use the Dungeons and Dragon's alignment chart, but it's wortunate but that they did that. They did look at at a number of individuals and try and figure out, well, who what type of personalities are going

to contain the most spite. So this research is conducted by researchers from Washington State University and the University of British Columbia, and they attempted to measure spike from us with a test similar to those used for personality traits, right, and they came up with like a scale right, like

how they actually surveyed. So one thing I think is interesting about this this is this is my experience from going to graduate school makes me critical of almost every study, like they very much hammered it into our heads that like any study or presented with find holes in it immediately taken apart. And the thing that I that first struck me about this was that the people that they surveyed were all at universities. Yeah, this is a problem we we discussed in UM an episode from earlier this

year about about your studies. That's so often you're you're inevitably dealing with with a bunch of you know, waspy college students in these scenarios. Yeah, they're they're all. What this tells us is how spiteful academics and their and their students are not necessarily what the world is. It's not it's not a general population example here. But they developed this spitefulness scale. They surveyed people at two different universities, and it was online, right, so they were able to

um get some older participants in as well. So maybe yeah, maybe those people weren't involved with the university and they yeah, they're using the scale. They graded in them how much they agreed with seventeen different scenarios, such as, if my neighbor complained that I was playing my music too loud, then I might turn the music up even loud or just to irritate him or her, even if it meant I could get fined. So this is this is actually

another great spie. This is a real world example that I can relate to being the neighbor in this situation loud neighbor or with h well, I wouldn't call myself either. But I when I very first moved to Atlanta, there was a person who lived direct lee below me that played very, very loud dance music all night. Uh and um, you know it was I think maybe a week went by. My wife and I were like, all right, this is this is a little bit much. We thought maybe it

was like a one night thing. My wife went downstairs knocked on the door to to ask this guy if he would turn the music down, and he told his dog to sick her. Yeah, and luckily my wife is good with animals, so the dog just kind of jumped up and she paid it. But there's maybe snapped it snaps. My wife is also a lethal assassin. Uh. But yeah, I mean this guy was definitely playing his music at us out of spite. I mean, even after she had asked, didn't you turn off your music to to make his

music less enjoyable? I have to admit that there, Yes, this was Okay, here we go. This is one of my moments where I was spiteful. Yeah. At the time, I was playing because we had just moved here. I was playing all of my music through a four by twelve guitar amp that I had, which is very loud and yeah, I crank it up all right. Another one on the list. Just to give another example, I would rather know one get extra credit in a class if it meant that others would receive more credit than me.

That one's strange to me. Yeah, like that that one I feel like, because the other example is more like if you push me, I'm going to push back, right, even if we had both miserable, like if if if one if, I would rather as both be miserable than just me be miserable like that that one, I can I can see. This one is more like if I refuse to lose and I don't care what the cost is.

It's that competition thing again for sure. Yeah m hmm. Well, so the results of this test weren't particularly shocking where they like. They compared it to other personality tests that marked things like aggression, psychopathy, narcissism, self consciousness, self esteem. This one I found interesting. Machiavellianism, So how do you measure Machiavellianism is one thing I'd like to learn more about.

But what surprised me about it as well is that if you are Machiavellian, aren't you by nature inherently uh, manipulating planning so that you see benefits, so that you win well to to go back to Game of Thrones a little bit like little Finger, very machi vellian. Is he ever spiteful? Do we ever do things out of spite? Does he even include a little spite bonus item in

his actions? Oh? Wow, that's an interesting question. And I don't want to get into too much spoiler territory for people, although I mean it's everywhere at this point, but I can't really think of a particular example, can you not? Off hand? It seems like he's a chess player, that's for sure. It seems like maybe there's some unintentional spite, and it's like spide is just kind of a byproduct, like I'm going to get what I want. I'm gonna played the long game to get what I want, and

you're gonna lose when I win. But yeah, but how much he doesn't necessarily seem to go out of his way to to add extra hurt heisting on top of what he does, which is a compliment in the Game of Thrones world. Yeah, okay, well let's well, let's go into this for a second. Spoilers for Game of Thrones

season one and the first book. Uh. So when he, you know, makes his whole move for power in that first season, he uh gets ned Start killed, and even though that wasn't his intention, he was spiteful towards ned Stark because ned Stark married the woman he wanted to be married to, so it was it was a It didn't hurt him though, So I don't know that it was spite he won. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I wouldn't call it spite. Yeah, I don't think it was spie. Yeah.

Well that's interesting. I'm sure that somebody out there have an example for us of Little Fingers spitefulness. I real side note here I love over at Ion nine. They have this theory that all of Game of Thrones is just a chess game between Little Finger and Varis, and that it's just all about their machiavellian moves against one another. So so if there is spite in in in a in either of their stories, it would somehow impact the others. Now, coming back to this, uh this study, uh, just to

throw out where the spikes seemed to pool. In the study, they saw most spite in people among people who scored high in psychopathy, um, those who are particularly callous, unsympathetic, unemotional and they saw us a Spiefulness was also greater in people who scored high in narcissism and machiavellianism. So that's it. That's also interesting to think about because if they're unemotional, um, then what pleasure are they getting out

of the spieful action? Mhmm. You know, I wonder if it's people who are like pure, like like maybe we get into a kind of a false model with some of these fictional Machiavellian individuals, Like maybe nobody's really that Machiavelian and it's more about I I'm spiteful, and if I think about my own spite in a Mockavellian sense, that I'm not being spiteful, like you're just you're you're gonna lose against me and you're gonna pay the consequences

of that. But but spie is not the spearhead of it on my motion, It's not the fuel for the whole thing. Yeah, that's that's possible. Now, people with lots of guilt scored low, but those with shame scored higher. So that's an interesting to make the distiction distinction, because if if you're guilty, you did something bad, but if you're shameful, you are bad in terms of how we think about guilt and shame. Yeah, and and this is

also the study where it shut. They first came up with a conclusion that men score higher on the spite scale than women. Right, uh, And I like how it was phrased here the dark triad of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavilli the dark triad, so that even though they weren't exactly using the dungeons Dragon's alignment system, but using language that made me think of it. Yeah. Yeah. And then also children, well, this is another thing that they found

in this study. Children will often pick up on a situation that invites spite, but they won't necessarily act on it, right, but they realize what's going on when they had the opportunity for it. And yet at this same time, they found that older people are less likely to be spiteful than younger people. So on the children's side of it, I can I imagine it's a lot of it is that you have to you have to learn that spiteful, but hey, it's the one thing to recognize, well, this

isn't fair what has happened. But then to to to get to that point where you can actually act out spitefully because of it, Yeah, that's that's something you have to pick up. So this is all right. This has no basis in the studies that we read for for today's episode. But I'm thinking here that it's possible that spite and maybe also altruism are learned behaviors that have to be modeled, right, and that that is why human beings are more likely to have them, uh than chimpanzees.

For instance. The chimps don't have models that are showing them how to be spiteful. Maybe if you showed those chimpanzees the spiteful action of withholding a pizza from Hitler uh and then laughed about it with them a couple of times, then they would do it. They would be more likely to do it. Yeah. And it's as we'll we'll discuss in in the in the next section. Um, it seems that that altruism and spite kind of emerge

from a sufficiently complex system, you know. Um that maybe it's just a situation where chimpanzee intelligence and culture is just not reach the level to where spite an altruism immerge to do battle with each other. Yeah. Absolutely, Well again, I say, let's avoid the Planet of the Apes scenario. I don't I don't want, uh, you know, I'd rather the dawn of the Planet of the Apes scenario, not not not the first one with Charlton Heston, but the more recent ones. You know, I don't want to teach

these animals are are failings. Yeah, well, and I don't want to see him ride around on horses or shoot me at all Right, We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be right back, all right. So the next bit of research we looked at this is this came from Patrick Forber of Toughs University and Roy Smeed of Northeastern and they applied game theory to the study of spite, designing a cute computer model of virtual players

challenging each other to a single round of the Ultimatum game. Okay, well, as somebody who has played h M M O RPG before, or really any online gaming system, I'm going to imagine that they found that spite was pretty heavily dominant within a gaming community. Are there spiteful gamers? Oh god? It feels like it when you're playing it. Yeah, the people whom I don't forget what it's called. It's like they jump up and down on your corps after they've killed you.

I haven't heard of that one. I guess that's not spiteful. They're not hurting themselves. But yeah, people will certainly do like. Well, that's the thing about the costing online, right, as you have a lot of room to be spiteful without having to pay the cost of the spy. That is absolutely true. Right, So that's probably something we should keep in mind with the results of this study. Um, another spiteful gaming thing. I guess that rage quitting is spiteful behavior. Yes, to

lose gracefully, I'm going to just leave the game. You don't get the like the point or whatever for your victory, but I don't have to sit here and watch you, you know, victorious over me. Yeah. The classic to you know who leroid Enkins is. Oh, I defer the name. So there is this. This is a nerdy world of warcraft thing from probably the mid two thousand's. He was He was made famous for this saying. Somebody recorded it. You can find it on YouTube. His name was Leary Jenkins.

He was part of a raid group that was playing World of Warcraft and UH, rather than you know, let his team win, he ran in UH and purposely sabotaged the team's efforts to conquer this dungeon and got them all killed. And UH is known for yelling out his name as he did it, le Roy Jenkins, and runs into this thing and kills everybody. And you can hear all these guys over their little headsets getting angry at him for ruining their game. All right, well that's that's

that's pretty spectacularly spike. Yeah, the Leroy Jenkins spite model. So ultimatum game. Uh. The way this plays out according to the rules, player A decides how a pot of money is going to be shared with player B. Okay, half and half. Say eight percent for A and twenty percent for B. You have B consented to the split. Both received the agreed upon portion, but if BE rejected

the offer, neither player received anything. Okay, So I could say goes to me and one percent goes to you, and you would get that one percent if you agreed to it, or you would get nothing and I would get nothing if you did not agree to it. Yeah, it's kind of like a test of sort of of ego but also trust. And so after they carried out this game, the researchers then allowed the players to form into mock societies. And this is where it gets really interesting.

Like model you in here. Yeah, so the different sort of type individuals, you know, assembling into these groups. Groups that work up full of excessively spitefuble or selfish players quickly collapse. So you just have like a bunch of like the worst gamers in the world. Imagine trying to run a society together. It just completely fall apart because there's no structure there. Everybody is a massive jerk. It's like a trolling community. Yeah, the trolling community is just

gonna be like cannibalism and madness within an hour. Right. Yeah. Likewise, you would have these rigidly fair minded societies and these work okay until you end up with one selfish invader and they just tear the whole thing apart. Really Okay, that's interesting, So just one person, one or two can destabilize the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, you have you know, one morelock wanders in your peaceful village and it just

rips everything to shreds apart. Okay, all right, and then they found uh that flexible shares though, right, they were able to coexist with spiteful people. Yeah, this is where we see this interesting balance of altruism and spite uh, because the presence of spiteful individuals actually enhanced the rate of fair exchanges among the non spiteful, So they kind of end up balancing each other out. Yeah, so just fact.

But this this requires your you know, community of people to be what we call flexible shares here, right, Um, they by their being spiteful people there, it inherently teaches them to be more altruistic. So again, this is like modeled behavior, even if it's like almost like a reverse psychology. Interesting, yeah, Patrick, forber in the study, he said it could be that Nichi was right about punishment, that it originated as spite and only later was turned into a mechanism from maintaining

fairness and justice. This uh podcast is not the place for us to dive deep into this, but it also reminds me of the punishment theories of Michelle fauco Um and which I believe, you know, he was influenced by Nizzi in that respect. So yeah, punishment and altruism are all connected together. Yeah, I mean it gets into the question of what is what is a punishment for a crime? Like,

what are you trying to do? Are you trying to just actually just drive home some sort of spiteful punishment into the individual You're trying to make a corrective action on society, make an example help that person. Yeah, is it in deterrence? Is it punishment? Is it rehabilitation? And then whatever it is, now, what did it evolve from that? Rehabilitation would be seen as the altruistic version of that for sure. Yeah, Yeah, and punt, whereas just pure punishment

would be more on the spiteful end. When the office of that study also pointed out that this would make sense to this balance, it ends up being maintained because you're it's not only the lawful individuals in this society, the good people, non cheaters, that are going to contribute to the rule of law, but the cheaters are also going to because the rule breakers also have a vested

interest in punishing other rule breakers. Yeah, it's like the whole scenario when you have you know, gangsters take over a neighborhood and some sort of you know, like a god Father type scenario. They're gonna cut down on the crime in their turf so they can carry out there. Yeah, I remember reading that and one of these articles they were that that was their example was that like the mafia is known for for protecting the neighborhood at the

same time that it's criminalizing it. Interesting. So there's two researchers involved in this study, dB Croup and Peter Taylor. Uh, And it looks like what they did was they developed a new theoretical model of spite, like how we understand spite, right,

and like how individuals enacted. Yeah, and their their findings where the first of all, individuals who appear very different from most others in a group will evolve to be altruistic towards similar partners and only slightful, slightfully spiteful to those who are dissimilar to them. So, so we're talking about like an outsider scenario. Yeah, Like I instantly think

of like a high school high scenario. You know. So it's like you have the like the cool kids and the job kids, and the kids who fit into larger, um more accepted groups. Okay, and then you have you know, the geek, your crew you know, uh that that I was definitely a part of so in this too. So in this scenario, me and you at the geeky table, we're gonna be and we're gonna have a lot of altruism towards each other, and we're gonna have maybe a little bit of spite towards the folks at the jock table,

but not a lot. We're not going out of our way to you know, put things in their their lunch trays or whatever. Well. That what what I find fascinating about this aspect of the study, and there's more to it is it's sort of um debunks common thinking psychology about incidents like the Columbine shootings, right, and the idea that they were spiteful. They were outsiders who were enacting their spite upon the community that they felt like they didn't belong to. So the second part might play into

that a little more. Yeah, the second part is that individuals who appear very similar to the rest of a group in other words, the people at the jock table, cetera, that the main population members, they will evolve to be only slightly altruistic to similar partners, but very spiteful too. Dissimilar individuals and then even go out of their way

to hurt them. So in this scenario, so that explains all the times that I got beat up in high school that would that would that would fall into this because you have the the main population is going to go out of their way to be spiteful and even hurt individuals that that that look out of place. But on the other side, they're only being marginally altruistic to even their their their own kind. Yeah, yeah, they're they're

that's interesting. So this seems to connect to that um sort of basic psychological understanding of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know what I'm talking about that like pyramid of there are various needs that we as human beings have to fulfill before we can sort of get to a point of self actualization. Right, and this seems very connected to the Maslow's idea of belonging. Right that like, if you feel like you belong to a group, and that group is an outsider group, then you're more likely to

care for them, to be altruistic to them. Uh, but if your group is if you belong to a group that is I guess more or less popularized. Um, if

you're less likely to feel that way. Yeah, and I could also see where there's there's there's more of a necessity for that altruism in that outsider group because you need each other more survival attack, whereas if you're just one of the larger dominant power structure, you know what, it's just not as necessary more spread out even I guess, so it's certainly you know, I remarked by the way, I didn't get beat up that much in high school.

But I remarked that it explains schoolyard bullying, which we have down here, but also explains things like racism and prejudice, right, Yeah, I mean, definitely you can. You can take this study and apply to just about any scenario where one group is being spiteful to a small another smaller group, or or even look at you know, some of your more some of your examples of just really altruistic individuals and

their potential outsider status. You know, let me just think about it, like who's who's weirder on the street, the guy who's walking around just being really nice to everybody, or the guy who's walking around scowling like that's Sadly, we often think it's the nice individual like, what is what's going on with that person? What's their game? The dude that's just being spiteful, you know, he's just another

grumpy individual walking around the city. All right, So things I've learned about myself in this episode are that, even though I'm the guy in the streets scowling, I'm more likely to give a pizza to somebody if I won't get a pizza myself, right, provided they seem to be a member of your group, yeah, and are not out off Hitler. Okay, well I would get it. I'd still give Hitler pizza, yeah, yeah, but I'd be more are likely to give you know one of our listeners of pizza. Yeah.

This research only had me pausing to think a lot about my actions and and some of the things that I've done that I've I can look back on and say, well, there's a bit of spite in doing that. Or or at times I'll sort of I'll catch myself engaging in sort of fantasy spite, you know, where I imagine myself being spiteful, but I don't actually do it because because the cost is too high. You know, I would look like a jerk, or I would just feel like a

massive jerk. If I did that, and I can get the same sort of momentary satisfactory by just imagining that I did, That's a that makes it a uniquely human thing as well. Probably right, that we can vicariously, uh live out the pleasure of spite in our imaginations. Yeah, like to go back to that chimp scen area we're in that you know, we can sit there and we can we could think to ourselves. You know, Hitler, I could just send that pizza to an empty room and

you would totally deserve it. But me, I'm a really nice guy and I'm gonna send you that pizza anyway, and they canna high five yourself and you walk off and probably buy pizza somewhere. Well, so I want to know. Uh. You know, this obviously brought up some issues for for both of us, thinking about how we've been spiteful in the past or maybe altruistic as well. But I'm curious from our listeners, you know, do you feel that these studies line up with your experiences of spite in your

life or possibly altruism? Would you give Hitler the pizza? Uh or Gandhi for that matter. Let us know you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler, and we're below the Mind on all those platforms, Or you can reach out to us on the mother chip, which is

stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right. You'll find all the podcast episodes there, all the blog post, all the videos, links out to social media accounts, you name it, and please let us know about your experiences with spite and whether they lined up with what we talked about today by writing to us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff Works dot com