Take Pains to Sidestep Sadism

For purposes of their study about people’s motivations to watch mixed martial arts matches, researchers at University of Lausanne and University of Monaco describe MMA as a full-contact combat sport which differs from traditional martial arts and combat sports in that it allows fighters to use a wide variety of techniques, including striking and grappling.
     The researchers surveyed about 800 North Americans who were aware of MMA fights. The respondents replied to 36 items covering a range of factors involved in desire to watch the matches.
     Results of analyses of the data indicate that deriving pleasure from seeing others’ pain is one motivation. For some audience segments, witnessing violence seems to be a bigger draw than the usual attraction in competitive sports from uncertainty about who will prevail in the match.
     This is an example of sadism—deriving pleasure from the suffering of others. In my email exchange about the study with Tommy K. Quansah, the principal researcher, he emphasized, “We are speaking about entertainment-based or benign forms of sadism, not clinical or antisocial behavior.”
     Sadism’s cousin is schadenfreude--delight when seeing others’ ambitions being crushed. Among researchers, schadenfreude has been attributed to envy, to raw hostility, and to the sort of emotion tunnel vision which keeps us from acknowledging the pain caused to the others.
     There are times when schadenfreude is considered acceptable. Researchers at University of Georgia point out how viewers of NCAA football, ATP men’s tennis, and WTA women’s tennis games can feel fine about cheering wildly when the fan’s favored team or player crushes the competition.
     However, in marketing MMA, an encouragement or even open tolerance of sadism would be problematic. Early in MMA history, it was argued that it was too barbaric to be considered a sport, and MMA was banned in all but three American states. Only after rules were changed to protect fighters were the bans lifted.
     Dr. Quansah wrote me, “Viewers can empathize with what fighters go through physically. This emotional engagement can lead to complex reactions that are not necessarily cruel in nature. The pleasure some people feel may come from the intensity of the experience or the resilience of the fighters, not just the harm.” He and his fellow researchers propose that media materials marketing MMA highlight these intensity and resilience aspects.
     That advice could generalize to fostering viewership of boxing, football, and ice hockey matches, for instance.

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Image at top of post based on photo by Victor Moragriega from Pexels