What happens when you give a sadist a cup of bugs and a coffee grinder?

Are sadists all around us? Here, researchers tested people for “everyday sadism” — basically, whether some seemingly normal people actually harbor sadistic tendencies. First, the scientists gave participants (psychology undergraduates) a written test meant to identify sadistic personality traits. They then did two experiments. The first–and most hilarious– was a “bug-killing task” that involved three pill bugs named Muffin, Tootsie, and Ike (read on below the jump for the full description). The second was a computer game in which the participant was made to believe that he/she could ‘harm’ an innocent opponent by blasting them with loud white noise. The result? People with sadistic tendencies took pleasure in killing the bugs and harming their opponent, indicating that this trait should be incorporated into future evaluations of “socially aversive personalities”. RIP, Muffin.