August 4, 2015 • 45 mins
What are we to make of spite? As humans, we lash out to hurt our neighbor due to petty grudges and prejudices all the time. Yet we're also capable of such altruistic grace. How are these two opposites linked in the human condition and just how important is spite in the framework of civilization? Robert and Christian explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Sagan Christian.
What comes to mind when I mentioned the word spike?
When I mentioned spike is a uh is an aspect
(00:23):
of human behavior? Well, the very first thing I thought
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,
(00:45):
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.
(01:07):
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
(01:30):
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,
(01:53):
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
(02:16):
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
(02:39):
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
(03:02):
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
(03:24):
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,
(03:44):
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
(04:06):
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
(04:27):
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.
(04:49):
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
(05:09):
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
(05:30):
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.
(05:50):
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.
(06:12):
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,
(06:35):
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
(06:57):
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
(07:19):
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
(07:40):
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
(08:02):
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
(08:24):
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.
(08:44):
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
(09:05):
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
(09:26):
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
(09:47):
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
(10:09):
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
(10:30):
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
(10:52):
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
(11:17):
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,
(11:42):
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,
(12:04):
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
(12:26):
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
(12:50):
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
(13:11):
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
(13:31):
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
(13:54):
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
(14:15):
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
(14:37):
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
(14:57):
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
(15:20):
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
(15:40):
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
(16:02):
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
(16:22):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:04):
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
(17:26):
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.
(17:47):
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,
(18:10):
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
(18:30):
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,
(18:51):
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
(19:12):
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,
(19:32):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:15):
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,
(20:37):
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,
(20:59):
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,
(21:20):
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
(21:40):
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
(22:04):
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,
(22:25):
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
(22:46):
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,
(23:07):
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
(23:28):
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
(23:48):
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
(24:09):
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
(24:31):
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
(24:53):
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,
(25:17):
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
(25:39):
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
(26:00):
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
(26:22):
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
(26:44):
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
(27:04):
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,
(27:25):
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
(27:49):
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
(28:12):
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
(28:35):
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
(28:55):
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
(29:18):
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,
(29:39):
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
(29:59):
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.
(30:20):
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,
(30:43):
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,
(31:03):
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
(31:24):
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
(31:44):
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
(32:04):
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,
(32:27):
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
(32:49):
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
(33:09):
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
(33:33):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:14):
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
(34:36):
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
(34:58):
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
(35:19):
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
(35:40):
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.
(36:00):
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,
(36:28):
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
(36:51):
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
(37:15):
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
(37:38):
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
(37:59):
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,
(38:24):
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
(38:46):
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
(39:08):
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
(39:30):
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
(39:52):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:36):
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
(40:59):
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
(41:23):
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,
(41:44):
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
(42:08):
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
(42:30):
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
(42:51):
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,
(43:11):
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
(43:36):
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
(43:58):
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
(44:18):
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
(44:40):
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
(45:05):
this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Sagan Christian.
What comes to mind when I mentioned the word spike?
When I mentioned spike is a uh is an aspect
(00:23):
of human behavior? Well, the very first thing I thought
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,
(00:45):
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.
(01:07):
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
(01:30):
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,
(01:53):
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
(02:16):
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
(02:39):
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
(03:02):
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
(03:24):
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,
(03:44):
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
(04:06):
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
(04:27):
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.
(04:49):
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
(05:09):
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
(05:30):
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.
(05:50):
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.
(06:12):
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,
(06:35):
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
(06:57):
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
(07:19):
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
(07:40):
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
(08:02):
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
(08:24):
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.
(08:44):
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
(09:05):
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
(09:26):
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
(09:47):
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
(10:09):
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
(10:30):
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
(10:52):
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
(11:17):
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,
(11:42):
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,
(12:04):
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
(12:26):
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
(12:50):
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
(13:11):
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
(13:31):
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
(13:54):
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
(14:15):
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
(14:37):
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
(14:57):
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
(15:20):
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
(15:40):
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
(16:02):
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
(16:22):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:04):
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
(17:26):
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.
(17:47):
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,
(18:10):
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
(18:30):
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,
(18:51):
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
(19:12):
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,
(19:32):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:15):
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,
(20:37):
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,
(20:59):
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,
(21:20):
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
(21:40):
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
(22:04):
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,
(22:25):
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
(22:46):
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,
(23:07):
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
(23:28):
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
(23:48):
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
(24:09):
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
(24:31):
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
(24:53):
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,
(25:17):
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
(25:39):
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
(26:00):
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
(26:22):
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
(26:44):
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
(27:04):
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,
(27:25):
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
(27:49):
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
(28:12):
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
(28:35):
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
(28:55):
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
(29:18):
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,
(29:39):
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
(29:59):
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.
(30:20):
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,
(30:43):
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,
(31:03):
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
(31:24):
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
(31:44):
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
(32:04):
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,
(32:27):
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
(32:49):
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
(33:09):
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
(33:33):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:14):
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
(34:36):
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
(34:58):
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
(35:19):
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
(35:40):
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.
(36:00):
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,
(36:28):
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
(36:51):
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
(37:15):
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
(37:38):
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
(37:59):
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,
(38:24):
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
(38:46):
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
(39:08):
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
(39:30):
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
(39:52):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:36):
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
(40:59):
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
(41:23):
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,
(41:44):
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
(42:08):
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
(42:30):
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
(42:51):
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,
(43:11):
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
(43:36):
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
(43:58):
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
(44:18):
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
(44:40):
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
(45:05):
this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
Works dot com
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