In an unsettling research, psychologists from Berlin and Hamburg, Germany, discovered that persons with psychopathic and sadistic qualities are more likely to be interested in fire.
The researchers intended to look at the connection between the “dark tetrad” of personality traits – Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism – and a fascination with fire and lighting fires.
“Fire setting is a huge concern for society, costing many human lives and incurring enormous property damage,” the researchers wrote in their paper, citing wildfires and the Notre-Dame fire.
“One important risk factor of fire setting observed in forensic samples is fire interest. However, less is known about the relationship of fire interest and fire setting to other variables such as personality traits in subclinical samples.”
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The researchers enrolled 222 students in the study and evaluated them on dark tetrad characteristics. They also examined the individuals’ interest in fire and lighting flames. On a scale of “totally dreadful or most distressing conceivable” to “wonderful, extremely thrilling, or very nice,” participants were asked to assess their enjoyment of fire-related activities such as “seeing an average coal fire in an ordinary house” and “seeing a hotel on fire on the TV news.”
Based on previous research, the researchers anticipated that qualities associated with psychopaths (such as thrill-seeking and impulsivity) would be linked to a heightened interest in fire. The findings confirmed a link between psychopathic tendencies and an interest in starting and monitoring flames.
“Our results for psychopathy provide further evidence for the close relation of impulsivity and fire setting,” the team wrote in their discussion. “Psychopathy showed the strongest relation of the three Dark Triad traits [Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism] to fire interest and fire setting.”
Sadism was also positively correlated with an interest in fire and fire setting. However, there was a difference between the types of sadists; physical or direct sadists (who enjoy inflicting cruelty) and vicarious sadists (people who enjoy watching cruelty).
“We found higher correlations of physical and vicarious sadism with fire interest compared to fire setting,” the team wrote. “For vicarious sadism, where the difference showed itself most clearly, this could be explained by the fact that watching a fire may already satisfy sadistic needs…while the act of setting the fire is of less importance.”
“The other constructs of the Dark Tetrad and sensation seeking do not seem to play an important role in the prediction of fire setting and fire interest beyond psychopathy and sadism,” they added.
The study was published in Frontiers In Psychology.
