Harming someone while also harming oneself may seem the antithesis of humans’ genius for cooperation but it has upsides The corpse of love is rarely cold – and it may be spite that keeps it warm. Take ...

According to a medieval legend from around 870 CE, the most famous saying about spite has a historical antecedent. The story goes that, as Viking raiders closed in on their monastery in Scotland, St.

Ah, spite: An emotion that causes us to act in ways that doesn’t do us any favors—and, in fact, might even cause us to suffer—but yet, somehow, still feels so good. Perhaps that’s why so many ...

I started writing because there was a time in my life when it looked like I would never be able to communicate clearly. In my early years, my older sister was often the only one who could understand ...

Spite seems to be a uniquely human phenomenon, but examining interactions among organisms you’d never peg as vengeful is giving scientists some insight into how the rather nasty behavior arose. It’s ...

Spite is a state of mind almost the opposite of compassion: While compassion is the motivation to act to reduce suffering when it is recognized, spite is the urge to act to hurt another irrespective ...

Spite runs deep. We find it in our oldest stories. It is there in the myths of Ancient Greece. Medea kills her children, just to spite her unfaithful husband, Jason. Achilles refuses to help his Greek ...

Conspiracy theories are driven by a surprising factor, according to British psychologists — spitefulness. There are already three established motivations for conspiracy thinking: epistemic motives, or ...