Spitefulness: Personality Trait, Threat Response, or Social Strategy?
By Amanda LaMela
Spite runs on peculiar logic: I will accept a loss if yours is bigger. Maybe you keep arguing long after you are exhausted because ending the conversation would feel like letting the other person win. Perhaps you sacrifice your own convenience to make someone who hurt you feel uncomfortable. The cost may be time, money, reputation, closeness, or peace of mind. The desired payoff is that the other person pays too.
Psychological research defines “spite” more narrowly than everyday conversation does. Spite involves willingly incurring a cost to harm someone else (Pineda et al., 2024; Zeigler-Hill & Noser, 2018). Resentment, competitiveness, revenge fantasies, or the desire to succeed partly to make someone jealous do not automatically qualify. If the behavior mainly benefits you or advances your goals, another behavioral description may fit better. Furthermore, healthy boundaries are not spiteful. A boundary limits another person’s access to you. Spite centers around the other person’s loss, even when pursuing it creates a loss for you.
Research offers differing explanations for spiteful behavior. This article explores three distinct perspectives. Pineda and colleagues (2024) locate spite in personality. Rodgers and Dahling (2018) explore how individuals regulate themselves when their goals feel threatened. Finally, Kurokawa (2024) examines the social conditions that embolden spiteful patterns.
Construct 1: Spite as a personality pattern
Personality traits describe tendencies, rather than permanent scripts. Someone higher in a trait is more likely to respond in a certain way across situations, but context and choice still matter. Pineda and colleagues (2024) studied the Spitefulness Scale in 758 adults. Spitefulness formed a coherent, measurable dimension and was positively related to Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, sadism, and (interestingly enough) internet trolling. It was also negatively related to several broad personality qualities, such as strong associations with lower honesty-humility and agreeableness. The findings place spitefulness near the antagonistic side of personality, which includes hostility, exploitation, low empathy, and lack of remorse.
Zeigler-Hill and Noser (2018) supported this perspective using the DSM-5 alternative model of personality traits. Across a large college sample and a community sample, spitefulness was consistently associated with antagonism and disinhibition. People who reported more spite also tended to report more aggressive or domineering interpersonal tendencies, poor restraint, and more impulsive behavior. This lens is useful when the same costly, retaliatory pattern appears repeatedly across relationships and over time.
Construct 2: Spite as a response to threat
Rodgers and Dahling (2018) asked a different question: How is spite connected to the way people pursue goals and react to obstacles? In a study of 310 college students, spitefulness was associated with a stronger prevention focus, greater impulsivity, and a weaker approach temperament.
A prevention focus directs attention toward safety, responsibilities, possible losses, and outcomes a person wants to avoid. An approach temperament, by contrast, directs attention toward potential rewards and opportunities. Rodgers and Dahling’s findings suggest that spite may become more tempting when someone is focused on protecting themselves from a perceived threat, such as disrespect, unfairness, humiliation, rejection, or loss of control. Impulsivity then shortens the distance between “I feel threatened” and “I need to make them pay.” When attention is fixed on preventing a loss, healthier alternatives may become harder to recognize. By strengthening your approach temperament, you are more likely to engage in behaviors that repair the relationship, step away from unhealthy dynamics, or choose a response that better serves your long-term interests.
Construct 3: Spite as a social strategy
Kurokawa (2024) moves even further away from the idea that spite lives exclusively within the individual. He asks, “Under what social conditions do self-defeating spiteful behaviors continue?” To explore this, he created a mathematical model in which players interact repeatedly. A spiteful action harms the other player but also carries a personal cost. The model examines how behavior changes depending on how often the players meet, whether they know how the other person previously behaved, and how the personal cost of spite compares with the harm it causes.
The results suggest that repeated interaction can allow spite to persist. When players could see what the other person had done, the most successful pattern was “anti-retaliatory”. In this scenario, players act spitefully after the other player had been acting neutrally, but refrain from spite after the other player had acted spitefully. When that information was unavailable, players sometimes relied on their own previous behavior, continuing to act as they had before. Spite was more likely to survive when interactions continued over time and when its personal cost was relatively small. When players had no useful information about one another, non-spiteful behavior became more successful.
Applied cautiously to human relationships, the model illustrates why an apparently self-defeating behavior might continue. In an ongoing relationship or social group, accepting a short-term cost to punish someone can communicate, “Mistreating me will cost you too.” That message may discourage future exploitation, establish a reputation for retaliating, or pressure others to behave more fairly. Zeigler-Hill and Noser (2018) raise a similar possibility. People may treat someone more carefully if they expect that person to punish unfair behavior, even at a personal cost.
Kurokawa’s study is a mathematical model. He does not argue that spite is a productive or healthy interpersonal strategy. Rather, he suggests that social environments can sometimes reward costly retaliation, encouraging a negative pattern to continue even when no one consciously plans for it. If an organization or social group only respects those who retaliate, the most courageous and tactful move is to limit their access to you.
How these explanations fit together
The three constructs fit together as a sequence. A personality disposition may lower the threshold for spite. A perceived threat may supply the spark, and impulsivity may speed up the reaction. The surrounding relationship or group then determines what happens next. If retaliation restores status, deters mistreatment, or makes others more cautious, the pattern may be reinforced. If spiteful behaviors result in isolation, escalating conflict, or a cost that outweighs any protection, it may fade.
The balance will look different from person to person. One individual may show a broad pattern of antagonism across many settings. Another may rarely feel spiteful except when a particular relationship activates shame or powerlessness. Others may have learned in a competitive family, workplace, or social group that costly retaliation is how people prove they cannot be pushed around. The outward behaviors might look similar but serve different psychological purposes.
Navigating spiteful impulses
A spiteful impulse can offer valuable information about your needs and emotions. It may signal that something feels unfair, demeaning, or unsafe. Examining that information does not require you to pursue your spiteful urges. Therapy can help you understand what these impulses are trying to accomplish, calculate their full cost, and develop alternative responses that protect your dignity.
References
Kurokawa, S. (2024). Persistence in repeated games encourages the evolution of spite. Theoretical Population Biology, 158, 109–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tpb.2024.05.001
Pineda, D., Rico-Bordera, P., Ballester-Pascual, M., Piqueras, J. A., & Galán, M. (2024). How spiteful are we? Validation of the Spitefulness Scale in Spaniards. Aggressive Behavior, 50, e70008. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.70008
Rodgers, C., & Dahling, J. J. (2018). Self-regulatory correlates of spitefulness. Personality and Individual Differences, 123, 257–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.11.020
Zeigler-Hill, V., & Noser, A. E. (2018). Characterizing spitefulness in terms of the DSM-5 model of pathological personality traits. Current Psychology, 37, 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9484-5
