Spite

About this book

"Have you ever purposely slowed down while driving in order to punish the person tailgating you? Maybe it inconvenienced you, but didn't it feel good? This is spite: hurting ourselves so that we can hurt someone else. Spite seems perfectly needless, evolutionarily speaking. Scientists have long struggled to understand why it exists at all. Unlike cooperation, selfishness, or altruism, spite is a zero-sum game. When Warren Buffet invested in a failing textile company, the owners attempted to squeeze him for more money. He vindictively bought the whole outfit, fired upper management, and kept the mills running for years, during which time they continued to hemorrhage money. It ultimately cost Buffett $200 billion to make his point. The conventional way to understand spite like this is as a lapse of our better judgment. That conventional thinking is wrong. In Spite, neuropsychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones argues that spite is our primal impulse for fairness. Prioritizing the punishment of bad behavior over our own immediate self-interests is a fundamental way that we, and all animals, promote good behavior. Spite is nothing less than one of the natural seeds of morality. From the protest voters who swing elections, to the man who erected a giant sculpture of a middle finger next to the house he lost in his divorce, Spite offers an insightful and often delicious trip through how spite shapes our lives. When we think about what makes us human, we often look for things that make us seem noble: cooperation, foresight, creativity. But the evidence is clear: spite works. It is our in…

Themes & subjects