Summary and Commentary by Aidan Sunassee
January 28th 2026
Imagine someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others in a consensual, even caring context. It sounds like an oxymoron, huh? A prosocial sadist. Yet a 2021 research paper by Jennifer M. Erickson and Brad J. Sagarin explored exactly this paradox. They compared BDSM sadists – people in the kink community who derive pleasure from consensually hurting a willing partner – with everyday sadists – people who enjoy witnessing others’ pain in daily life. The findings challenge many assumptions about sadism, suggesting that not all “sadists” are cut from the same cloth. Still on board? Well, let’s go for it and walk through the background of sadism research, the study’s questions, how it was conducted, its main findings, and why that distinction is important. Along the way, we’ll clarify some technical terms so everyone from curious layfolk to seasoned psychologists and BDSM practitioners can follow along.
Background: From Pathological to Everyday Sadism
For much of the 20th century, any form of sadism – deriving pleasure from another’s pain – was seen as inherently pathological. Early psychiatric texts lumped consensual BDSM activities with non-consensual cruelty. For example, the World Health Organization’s 1997 ICD-10 classified sadomasochism as a paraphilic disorder without distinguishing consensual vs. non-consensual acts. Only recently have medical guidelines caught up: the ICD-11 (2018) and the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, since 2013) specify that coercive (non-consensual) sadism is disordered, whereas consensual BDSM play is not. In other words, tying up a willing partner for mutual fun is no longer automatically labeled a mental illness.
Parallel to this shift, psychologists began exploring subclinical sadism in the general population. We’re not talking about actively causing harm in this case, but rather, the everyday tendency to enjoy cruelty. In 2013, researchers introduced the term “everyday sadism” to describe ordinary people who take pleasure in inflicting or witnessing pain in mundane settings. Everyday sadists might, for instance, volunteer for a bug-killing task in a lab just for the thrill of it or enjoy trolling others on the internet because it’s “fun”. Unsurprisingly, these cruel streaks come with certain personality patterns. Everyday sadists tend to have lower empathy threshold and display higher traits of narcissism, as well as higher levels of Machiavellianism, and psychopathy than most. When you add sadism to the latter two, it becomes what is often described as the Dark Tetrad. Everyday sadism overlaps heavily with those other traits, meaning that a person who enjoys everyday acts of cruelty is often also narcissistic, Machiavellian, and/or psychopathic to some degree.
This brings us to a puzzling question: what about people who call themselves sadists in a BDSM context? These individuals consensually engage in behaviors like spanking, flogging, or humiliation with a partner who wants that experience. BDSM communities place a strong emphasis on consent, negotiation, and mutual satisfaction. Could it be that these “prosocial sadists” are fundamentally different from the everyday sadists who harass or harm others in daily life? Erickson and Sagarin set out to investigate this, which bring us to this second part.
The Research Questions: Sadism, Consent, and the BDSM Factor
The study by Erickson & Sagarin (2021) was driven by two main questions:
- 1. Does everyday sadism require a non-consenting victim? In other words, do people with sadistic tendencies only get enjoyment when the target isn’t willing, or can they also enjoy hurting someone who says “yes, I’m okay with it”? The researchers wanted to clarify if the very definition of everyday sadism should include acts where the “victim” gives permission. Prior research hadn’t tested whether sadistic people care about consent or not as the default assumption was that sadists likely prefer unwilling victims for maximum cruelty. The study’s first goal was to test that assumption.
- 2. Are BDSM sadists the same as everyday sadists? The second question focused on the BDSM community: Are self-identified BDSM sadists (people who say, for example, “I’m a sadist” in the context of kink play) exhibiting the same antisocial traits as everyday sadists? Or are they more similar to other BDSM practitioners who don’t identify as sadists (e.g. BDSM “tops” or dominants who enjoy being in charge but don’t specifically get off on hurting others)? If BDSM sadists were just like everyday sadists, we would expect them to have lower empathy, higher “dark” trait scores, and a penchant for non-consensual cruelty. Conversely, if BDSM sadists are prosocial – essentially a more socially acceptable manifestation of sadism – they might have fairly normal empathy and personality profiles, aligning more with the typical BDSM community (which studies have found to be as well-adjusted as the general population). The researchers also wondered if psychopathy (the trait most linked to antisocial behavior) might be a key differentiator – perhaps only the high-psychopathy individuals in the BDSM sadist group would show everyday-sadist tendencies.
In sum, the researchers were asking: Does enjoying others’ pain inherently make someone antisocial? Or can it be channeled in consensual way? And where do BDSM enthusiasts fit into that picture?
How the Study Was Conducted
To tackle these questions, Erickson and Sagarin designed a survey-based study with 532 adult participants. About half were BDSM practitioners and half were not, allowing a direct comparison between the kink community and the general population. Participants answered questionnaires measuring sadistic tendencies and various personality traits, but with an innovative twist: the sadism questions came in different versions regarding consent.
- Everyday Sadism Measures: The key measure was a questionnaire assessing endorsement of sadistic behaviors – for example, agreeing with statements like “I enjoy seeing people get hurt” or indicating how appealing certain cruel actions sound. For different randomly assigned participants, these items were worded in one of three ways:
- Non-consent explicit: The scenarios specifically stated that the target did not consent (e.g., “You enjoy hurting someone against their will”). This version emphasizes classic malicious sadism. Consent explicit: These items stated that the person on the receiving end had given consent (e.g., “You enjoy hurting someone who has agreed to it”). This tests whether sadistic folks still enjoy the act if the “victim” is a willing partner. Consent ambiguous (standard): These were the usual wording from previous scales, which did not clarify consent either way. Most traditional “everyday sadism” scales fall in this category – for instance, “I have fantasized about hurting others to see them suffer” – leaving it implicit that the suffering is likely non-consensual, but not stating it outright.
- Personality and Empathy Measures: All participants also filled out inventories of traits known to correlate with sadism. These included:
- Dark Triad traits: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (often measured with brief questionnaires like the “Dirty Dozen,” a 12-item Dark Triad scale).
- General Personality traits: Specifically, Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness from the HEXACO model. Low scores in these traits have been linked to antisocial behavior. (For example, low honesty-humility implies a lean towards exploitative tendencies.)
- Empathy: Both affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Affective empathy means emotionally feeling what someone else feels – e.g. flinching when you see someone in pain, or feeling distress at another’s suffering. Cognitive empathy means intellectually understanding someone’s perspective or emotions (even if you don’t feel them yourself). The study assessed these through subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (like “Empathic Concern” for affective empathy and possibly perspective-taking or related subscales for cognitive empathy).
- BDSM Sadists vs. Other Tops: Within the BDSM subgroup, participants were asked about their preferred BDSM roles and identities. The researchers specifically compared self-identified sadists (people who say “I’m a sadist” in BDSM context) with non-sadistic BDSM tops. The latter group might include dominants or “tops” who enjoy leading a scene or giving sensation, but do not personally identify as sadists (they might say their focus is on dominance, power exchange, or giving a partner what they want, rather than on the pain itself). Both groups engage in similar activities (tying up partners, spanking, etc.), which makes for a fair comparison – the difference is whether they embrace the label of sadist. The study looked at whether these two groups differed on the sadism questionnaires (under the consent and non-consent conditions) and on personality traits like empathy and psychopathy. If BDSM sadists were truly akin to everyday sadists, they should score higher on cruelty measures (especially in non-consent scenarios) and have darker trait profiles than their non-sadist peers.
It’s worth noting that participants were recruited from sources likely to yield a broad range of adults (including an MTurk worker/student sample for the non-BDSM group and presumably online forums or social media for BDSM practitioners). This helps improve generalizability, though it wasn’t a random sample of the whole population. With surveys completed, the team then analyzed how the consent framing affected sadism scores and how everything correlated with the personality measures.
Key Findings: Not All Sadists Are the Same
The results offer a nuanced picture of sadism when consent is in the mix. Here are the key findings, broken down by the research questions:
1. Everyday sadists enjoy seeing others in pain regardless of prior consent. The study found that people who scored high on everyday sadism got enjoyment from the idea of hurting others whether the “victim” consented or not. In the general (non-BDSM) sample, sadistic tendencies were just as evident in the consent-explicit scenarios as in the non-consent ones. In plainer terms, an everyday sadist doesn’t require their target to be screaming “No, stop!” to derive pleasure – even if the target said “Yes, you can do this to me,” the everyday sadist still finds it gratifying to inflict pain. This was a notable clarification which leads us to wonder whether psychologists should expand the concept of everyday sadism to include consensual sadistic acts as well. The enjoyment is driven by causing pain and dominance itself, not necessarily by the victim’s unwillingness.
2. BDSM sadists showed “prosocial” sadism – most are not everyday sadists. Perhaps the most important takeaway is that the majority of BDSM practitioners who identify as sadists did not exhibit the personality profile of everyday sadists. In fact, BDSM sadists as a group looked pretty similar to other BDSM tops on most measures of personality and empathy. They did not score significantly higher on antisocial traits like Machiavellianism or general psychopathy than their non-sadistic BDSM counterparts. And crucially, BDSM sadists did not endorse more sadistic behavior in scenarios where consent was absent – they were no more willing than other BDSM tops to hurt someone against their will. This suggests that what sets a BDSM sadist apart is not a desire to actually harm non-consenting people (which would be included in everyday sadism).
So what does distinguish a BDSM sadist? The study found one clear difference: BDSM sadists scored higher than non-sadistic BDSM tops only on the measure of sadistic enjoyment when the scenario was explicitly consensual, and specifically on items involving physical pain. In other words, when asked about hurting someone with their full consent, BDSM sadists said “yes, I’d enjoy that” more than other tops did, especially when the act involved inflicting pain. But when consent was not given, BDSM sadists and other tops were alike in rejecting or not endorsing those actions. And for non-physical forms of sadism (like psychological or vicarious enjoyment), the groups didn’t differ much either. This pattern fits the idea of prosocial sadism: BDSM sadists have a taste for inflicting pain, but only in the mutually agreed-upon, physical play context. They aren’t generally more cruel or mean in other aspects of life or fantasy than fellow kinksters, aside from that specific kink for consensual pain. To conclude all this ramble, the authors concluded that, most BDSM sadists demonstrate prosocial sadism, not everyday sadism.
3. The usual sadism correlations held true – even in the BDSM group. The researchers also confirmed that the standard personality correlations with sadism were present in both samples. Across BDSM practitioners and non-practitioners, higher levels of everyday sadism (people’s scores on the sadism questionnaires) were linked to lower empathy (especially affective empathy) and lower agreeableness and honesty-humility, alongside higher Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy). This was expected and basically tells us the measures were working. One interesting nuance: they had thought cognitive empathy (the ability to understand others’ feelings) might not be negatively related to sadism – perhaps a clever sadist could intellectually understand their victim’s pain but simply not care. However, cognitive empathy turned out to be lower in sadistic people as well, at least in the general sample. This suggests everyday sadists aren’t exactly hyper-demonized cunning social manipulators with high perspective-taking (as some movies love to make us think); rather, they might just lack empathy across the board. In the BDSM group, cognitive empathy was slightly different: it was only lower for those responding to the non-consensual scenarios. In consensual contexts, cognitive empathy wasn’t a distinguishing factor – perhaps because in a consensual play scenario, understanding your partner’s feelings is actually important to ensure the scene is going as intended.
4. Psychopathy hints at every sadism for a minority of BDSM practitioners. While the average BDSM sadist in this study was not an everyday sadist, the researchers did find that if a BDSM practitioner scored high on psychopathy, they were more likely to show everyday sadist tendencies. Specifically, among BDSM participants, those with higher psychopathic traits were the ones who showed greater enjoyment when thinking of sadistic behavior in the explicitly non-consensual conditions. In plain language: a kinky person who has a psychopathic traits might be the exception – they could be using BDSM as an outlet for genuine cruelty (which seems like a pretty solid outlet to me, assuming all involved are communicating clearly).
Conclusion
Overall, this research suggests that sadistic behavior is not monolithic – it can manifest in an antisocial way (everyday sadism, where someone enjoys harming others without consent) or in a prosocial way (BDSM sadism, where any “harm” is consensual and negotiated). Everyday sadists tend to have a darker personality profile (lower empathy and agreeableness, higher psychopathic traits) and will take pleasure in another’s suffering irrespective of consent. BDSM sadists, by contrast, appear to channel sadistic interests exclusively into consensual activities and do not exhibit the broad empathy deficits or antisocial tendencies that characterize everyday sadism. In fact, most BDSM practitioners who enjoy sadism show normative or even positive personality traits (e.g. typical compassion, high conscientiousness) and adhere strongly to rules of consent. The authors argue that sadism should be viewed as a dimensional trait that can have prosocial forms in addition to the well-known antisocial form.
Personal Note: On Not Pathologizing Kink or Sadistic Tendencies
Stepping aside from the objective summary, I want to emphasize the importance of not pathologizing either form of sadism described above. Consensual BDSM practitioners should not be seen as “sick” or inherently abusive – as the research shows, they typically have normal levels of empathy and moral traits, and they engage in ethical behavior with consent. Likewise, even individuals who discover they have sadistic fantasies or tendencies shouldn’t be automatically demonized. Having a certain fantasy or enjoyment does not doom a person to unethical actions. Empathy – especially cognitive empathy (the ability to understand another’s perspective) – is a skill that can be learned and strengthened over time, and people are capable of making conscious, ethical choices regardless of what they find pleasurable in fantasy. In short, enjoying the idea of cruelty does not equate to real-world cruelty. It’s important not to jump to pathologizing those inclinations; instead, we can recognize that with communication, consent, and empathy, even “sadistic” interests can be expressed in healthy, responsible ways.