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.

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 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 ...

What it’s about: Since the beginning of time, many of humanity’s accomplishments—classic songs, the moon landing, the Great Wall—were created out of spite. Naturally, our most important emotion has ...