![]() There was also a straightforward question of “Are you afraid of bugs” to exclude that as a motivating factor. One was the Sadistic Impulse Scale, which asks people to indicate how strongly statements like “Hurting people is exciting” reflect their attitudes. To evaluate why some people opted for extermination over cleaning toilets, several personality tests were given. Those who chose sanitation or cold were off the hook, and ultimately didn’t have to do anything (although a toilet plunger and cleaning supplies were actually in the room). Extermination assistants had to hand the pill bugs in cups to the experimenter, but didn’t have to actually work the coffee grinder, just watch and listen. (I swear, someone did this study just so they could include “No bugs were harmed in this experiment” in their paper). Their task was to drop the pill bug in the grinder and push down to get it working sound effects were provided to mimic the crunching of a bug, even though the grinder was rigged so the pill bugs were never in any danger. Volunteers who chose the extermination job were given a modified coffee grinder and three live pill bugs, each in a pretty paper cup labeled with whimsical names such as “Muffin”. Volunteers, believing themselves to be in a study investigating how personality relates to “tolerance for challenging jobs”, were asked to choose between four possible career paths: extermination, where they would be asked to kill bugs extermination assistant, where they wouldn’t have to kill themselves but would have to help sanitation, where they would have to clean toilets and a proxy for any outdoor job in the winter, where they would stick their arm in a bath of ice water.ĭoes it take a sadistic impulse to agree to put a pill bug through a coffee grinder? Stock photo by DK Images. I’ll focus on Experiment 1, which is where the exterminators come in. ![]() The authors are probably right that the tendency for some “normal” people to have more sadistic tendencies has not been studied enough unfortunately, they seem to become more focused on showing the sex appeal of their research than on sticking to careful conclusion about what their studies actually show. The topic of the article is certainly compelling: the prevalence of horror films, violent video games, and super-slow-motion instant replay of every injury in major sporting events suggest what the researchers call “everyday sadism”, a degree of pleasure in cruelty that goes beyond mere schadenfreude but not quite to the extreme of being a psychological disorder. Despite the best efforts of one overdramatized article from Psychological Science, though, I am not willing to declare all exterminators sadists. ![]() I have been greatly relieved that people have chosen such career paths and are so available to handle wasp nests in my attic, and unable to fathom why anyone would opt to spend their time getting up close and personal with stinging insects, snakes, and who knows what else, even if only briefly. I admit, I have sometimes wondered what leads people into the career euphemistically we might euphemistically call “pest control” or more realistically declare “extermination”.
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