Blame Trolling on “Everyday Sadism,” How to Sleep Better During Lockdown, and a Breakthrough in Random Number Generation
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2020
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why “everyday sadism” might help explain trolling and bullying; why our quality of sleep is worse during lockdown (and how to fix it); and a breakthrough random number generation algorithm that could help researchers analyze complex systems. Plus: Cody nerds out about Games Done Quick and video game speed runs!
Blame "everyday sadism" for trolling, bullying, and violent crime by Kelsey Donk
- Foulkes, L. (2020) Ever taken pleasure in another’s pain? That’s ‘everyday sadism’ | Psyche Ideas. https://psyche.co/ideas/ever-taken-pleasure-in-anothers-pain-thats-everyday-sadism
- Tran, U. S., Bertl, B., Kossmeier, M., Pietschnig, J., Stieger, S., & Voracek, M. (2018). “I’ll teach you differences”: Taxometric analysis of the Dark Triad, trait sadism, and the Dark Core of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 126, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.01.015
- Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2201–2209. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613490749
- van Geel, M., Goemans, A., Toprak, F., & Vedder, P. (2017). Which personality traits are related to traditional bullying and cyberbullying? A study with the Big Five, Dark Triad and sadism. Personality and Individual Differences, 106, 231–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.10.063
Our sleep during lockdown is more regular, but lower quality (and there's a fix) by Kelsey Donk
- Our sleep during lockdown: Longer and more regular, but worse. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/uob-osd061220.php
- Blume C, Schmidt MH, Cajochen C. (2020). Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on human sleep and rest-activity rhythms. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.021
New MIT algorithm can simulate a roll of loaded dice — and that could help analyze complex systems by Grant Currin
- Nadis, S. (2020, May 28). Algorithm quickly simulates a roll of loaded dice. MIT News. http://news.mit.edu/2020/algorithm-simulates-roll-loaded-dice-0528
- Saad, Feras A, Freer, C. E., Rinard, M. C., & Mansinghka, Vikash K. (2020). The Fast Loaded Dice Roller: A Near-Optimal Exact Sampler for Discrete Probability Distributions. ArXiv.org. https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03830
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/blame-trolling-on-everyday-sadism-how-to-sleep-better-during-lockdown-and-a-breakthrough-in-random-number-generation
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily. |
| 0:04.7 | From Curiosity.com. |
| 0:05.9 | I'm Cody Gough. |
| 0:06.9 | And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about a psychological tendency that might explain trolling and bullying, |
| 0:12.6 | why our quality of sleep is worse during lockdown |
| 0:15.2 | and how to fix it, |
| 0:16.4 | and a breakthrough from computer scientists |
| 0:18.6 | that could help researchers predict the future |
| 0:20.7 | more accurately than ever. |
| 0:22.7 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:25.2 | Psychologists may have come up with an explanation for what motivates trolling, |
| 0:29.6 | bullying, and violence crime. |
| 0:32.0 | And believe it or not, it has to do with sadism. Now the word sadism might |
| 0:36.6 | make you think of serial killers or criminals who torture people for pleasure and |
| 0:41.2 | sure that's what we see in horror films and hear about in true crime |
| 0:45.3 | podcasts. But psychologists now recognize a milder version of sadism that lives in many of us that scientists call everyday sadism. |
| 0:55.0 | Everyday sadism is the capacity many people have |
| 0:58.0 | to feel pleasure from other people's pain and suffering. |
| 1:01.0 | Just less than someone with clinically diagnosed sadism. |
| 1:05.6 | And it's not as rare as you might think. |
| 1:08.1 | For example, you might have cheered on a fight in the school yard when you were a kid. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Warner Bros. Discovery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Warner Bros. Discovery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

