Sadism is not limited to sexual and criminal acts; it can show up in the workplace.

Everyday sadism is defined by researchers as experiencing pleasure from someone else's pain.

When receiving reports of bullying and abuse, leadership's awareness of sadism is vital.

When the general populace hears the term “sadism,” they may believe it applies to sexual and criminal acts. Few are trained to identify sadistic behaviour in the workplace. Leaders are rarely educated to recognize that repetitive cruelty—aggressive, demeaning, and degrading—as potentially sadistic.

Studying sadism in the workplace, researchers Jill Lobbestael, Ghislane Slaoui, and Mario Gollwitzer depict the core feature of sadistic personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of “cruel, demeaning, and aggressive behaviour, for the purpose of amusement or obtaining pleasure from the suffering of others.”

When untrained, leaders may minimize the harm being done, or believe the justifications from the perpetrator, such as “I was trying to motivate, light a fire, galvanize action.” Leaders may ignore the possibility that the perpetrator is actually sadistic and harms others not to motivate, but to devastate. They aren’t trying to light a fire; they’re extinguishing someone’s spark and getting a jolt of pleasure from doing it.

When reports about bullying or abuse come in, perpetrators often respond with denial: “It never happened.” The one answer leaders never hear is: “I hurt my targets because I take pleasure from inflicting social, psychological, and/or physical pain. In short, I am sadistic.”

Failure to identify everyday sadism

In their 2023 article “Sadism and Personality Disorders,” Lobbestael, Slaoui, and Gollwitzer are clear: “Sadistic pleasure—the enjoyment of harm-infliction to others—can have devastating interpersonal and societal consequences.” Devastating is an extremely strong word that leaders should remember when they are assessing reports of workplace abuse.

That said, even experts might overlook the role of everyday sadism in abuse culture because as the authors of the “Sadism and Personality Disorders” article point out, “sadism was not included as a personality disorder diagnosis in later DSM versions. They explain that sadism was not included in later versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because it “was considered insufficiently distinct from antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders to warrant a stand-alone disorder.” However, others feel that the drive to take pleasure from pain is indeed a distinctive feature of sadism.

Inflicting pain to feel pleasure

Examining the relationship between aggression and sadism, researchers David Chester, Nathan DeWall, and Brian Enjaian established a distinct bond between sadism and aggressive behavior that remained reliable “after controlling for poor self-control, impulsivity, trait aggression, and the dark triad of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.”

Important for leaders to understand, Chester, DeWall, and Enjaian examined how the sadist experienced a rush of dopamine from aggressive actions, but this rewarding feeling of pleasure then dropped into a low or depressive phase. The researchers concluded that the influx, followed by a drop, offers insight into why perpetrators abuse over and over again. They keep seeking a high from abuse because it dissolves after the harm.

An employee who bullies under pressure or highly stressful conditions can be rehabilitated, as shown in the work of Laura Crawshaw. But an employee who is found to repeatedly bully targets, year after year, regardless of stress and pressure, should put leaders on high alert that they may be dealing with a sadist. Not only is the rehabilitation far more difficult, but it also requires a completely different approach.

In agreement with Chester, DeWall, and Enjaian, researcher Erin Buckels finds sadism to be a distinct disorder and she argues for workplaces to understand that the dark triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathology is actually a “Dark Tetrad” when we add in sadism. They may overlap, but the distinctions are also relevant.

Buckels finds that sadism is “positively associated with other malevolent traits (including aggression and the Dark Triad of personality: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism), and negatively associated with prosocial traits such as empathy.” Where sadism differs is in its influx of pleasure from seeing someone else suffer. Buckels sees sadism as “arguably the most interpersonally noxious trait of the Dark Tetrad.”

Everyday sadism at work

Buckels defines the sadistic personality as having “an enduring tendency to enjoy cruelty toward others.” She finds in her study “three overlapping, but distinct facets of sadism, covering enjoyment of physical violence, verbal aggression, and violent media consumption.” This is applicable information for leaders who are tasked with understanding the disorder and risk of employees who are reported on as abusive.

Drawing on Chester, DeWall, Enjaian and others’ research, Buckels notes that for the sadist the “motivation is appetitive and based in evolved reward structures in the brain.” She is clear that people “vary dramatically in their use of cruelty,” but when a leader receives reports of employees who “frequently exhibit” aggressive, demeaning, cruel conduct, they need to factor in that they “seem to enjoy it,” hence the irresistible repetition.

Bullying in the workplace can become much more clear and understandable to leaders when they apply Buckels’ definition of cruelty: “a voluntary behavior that causes foreseeable suffering to others.” When perpetrators deny, then say they were ignorant, then attack their victims with victim-blaming, it’s vital the leader can see through this barrage and apply the following measuring stick:

Was the behaviour empathic or not?

Was the behaviour voluntary?

Did the behaviour cause foreseeable suffering to others?

Was this a one off or high-stress moment, or is the behaviour repeated?

Buckels finds in her research that sadists tend to “underestimate others’ suffering and minimize culpability for harm.” Therefore, it’s not effective to ask their assessment of the harm done. Leaders must see through their denial and recognize that, although they won’t admit it, they do in fact take “enjoyment” from “verbally humiliating others,” as well as doing other acts to cause suffering.

Buckels’ research revealed a surprising insight into the way sadism all too often is not identified and not acted on effectively in workplaces. While the research shows we are quick to identify those in the Dark Tetrad, including sadism, we tend to muffle our internal detection system. While we may quickly recognize a lack of “trustworthiness” in abusive individuals, we tend to make excuses as well as defer to them. Leaders need to be wary of listening to perpetrators’ version of events, the excuses they make, the distractions, the blame they project onto targets. Those who take pleasure from harming others shouldn’t be trusted.

Buckels, E. (2018). The Psychology of Everyday Sadism. Dissertation. Faculty of Psychology. University of British Columbia.

Chester, D., DeWall, C., & Enjaian, B. (2018). "Sadism and Aggressive Behavior: Inflicting Pain to Feel Pleasure." Society for Personality and Social Psychology 45.8.

Crawshaw, L. (2023). Grow Your Spine and Manage Abrasive Leadership Behaviour. Executive Insight Press.

Lobbestael, J., Slaoui, G., & Gollwitzer, M. (2023). “Sadism and Personality Disorders.” Current Psychiatry Reports 25: 11.

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