The impact of couples' conflicts on everyday sadists' relationship satisfaction

Abstract

IntroductionEveryday sadism, defined as an individual who obtains pleasure through hurting others verbally, physically, or vicariously, is emerging as an important construct in psychopathology research, with researchers trying to understand specific behaviors (i.e., low agreeableness, callousness, and aggression) of individuals with sadistic tendencies, particularly in regard to relationships. The current study explored the associations between everyday sadism and couples' conflicts within their relationship and examined whether conflict level mediated the relations between sadistic traits and relationship satisfaction. More specifically, we hypothesized higher sadistic tendencies and more conflict to predict an increase in relationship satisfaction. MethodsParticipants were 163 individuals recruited from the online web-source Mechanical Amazon Turk (MTurk) (57.1 % men, Mage = 32.83). They completed surveys on sadistic tendencies, the amount of conflicts within their romantic relationship, and their relationship satisfaction. ResultsResults indicated that everyday sadism has a negative relationship with sadistic individuals' relationship satisfaction. Multiple mediation models demonstrated that overall sadism is indirectly related to relationship satisfaction via the effect of couples' conflict. Additionally, couples' conflicts partially mediated the relationship between verbal sadistic tendencies, had no mediated effect on physical sadistic tendencies, and was fully mediated by vicarious sadistic tendencies and relationship satisfaction. DiscussionFindings provide insight into how everyday sadist's behaviors and relationship conflict affect relationship satisfaction. Specifically, the interrelations of relationship conflicts and an individual's subtype(s) of sadistic tendencies (i.e. overall, verbal, and vicarious sadism) account for the underlying connection between these personality traits and individuals with sadistic tendencies' way of finding satisfaction within their relationships.