Spite? Yes, It Sometimes Can Make Right
Spite . Sometimes it's delicious, like when your neighbor yells at you for your son accidentally kicking his soccer ball onto her lawn. And then you see a dog owner stop in her yard and -- well, you get the picture. Now researchers are finding that spite is good, and that it may actually help us engage in a cooperative spirit and fair play. According to Natalie Angier, " The new research on spite transcends older notions that we are savage, selfish brutes at heart, as well as more recent suggestions that humans are inherently affiliative creatures yearning to love and connect. Instead, it concludes that vice and virtue, like the two sides of a V, may be inextricably linked." Studies found that men were generally more spiteful than women and young adults more spiteful than older ones, and that spitefulness generally co-existed side by side with traits like callousness, Machiavellianism and poor self-esteem — but not with agreeableness, conscientiousness or ...