oooh interesting...i do have one argument though.
Participants who chose bug killing had the highest scores on a scale measuring sadistic impulses, just as the researchers predicted. The more sadistic the participant was, the more likely he or she was to choose bug killing over the other options, even when their scores on Dark Triad measures, fear of bugs, and sensitivity to disgust were taken into account.
Participants with high levels of sadism who chose to kill bugs reported taking significantly greater pleasure in the task than those who chose another task, and their pleasure seemed to correlate with the number of bugs they killed, suggesting that sadistic behavior may hold some sort of reward value for those participants.
i can't understand how they came to their conclusions with that part of their study. most people consider bugs, especially something like pill bugs as used in the experiment to be dirty gross pests. there is no personality association. tossing bugs into a grinder is far different than smashing them with your hand and has a different psychological impact. like using a magnifying glass to burn ants vs picking them up and crushing them with your fingers. the magnifying glass is "cool" and less messy. same goes for the grinder, especially when you don't have to see the bug being obliterated. i would bet good money that if they had used an animal that displayed some level of individual personality, like mice or cats, the results would have been different.
anyone with a fear or aversion to something is going to gain some measure of pleasure in being allowed to destroy whatever it is that instills those feelings in them. the amount of pleasure they feel is going to correllate to the level of fear or aversion they have and the number of times they are allowed to destroy the object of their fears.
then again, maybe i'm just a sadistic lunatic that would have turned their study on its ears...
