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Review
Is malice a real emotion?
6Dagon
3JBlack
8RHollerith
4Viliam
2ChristianKl
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60
I'm not sure it classifies as an emotion (nor does stupidity, for that matter), but it probably does exist as a motivation for some human acts, with the relevant emotion usually being anger.
I don't think your distinction (harm for its own sake, distinct from harm with a motivation) is real, unless you think there are un-caused actions in other realms, or you discount some motivations (like anger or hatred) as "not valid" for some reason.
30
Yes, it is a real emotion. I have felt it on some rare occasions. I do not act on it, though on such occasions I cannot rule out the possibility that it may influence me in less direct ways.
I don't know what you mean by "best way to interpret it". What sort of interpretation are you looking for? For example, what are your best ways of interpreting other emotions?
Malice is a real emotion, and it is a bad sign (but not a particularly strong sign) if a person has never felt it.
Yes, letting malice have a large influence on your behavior is a severe character flaw, that is true, but that does not mean that never having felt malice or being incapable of acting out of malice is healthy.
Actually, it is probably rare for a person never to act out of malice: it is probably much more common for a person to just be unaware of his or her malicious motivations.
The healthy organization is to be tempted to act maliciously now and then, but to be good at perceiving when that is happening and to ignore or to choose to resist the temptation most of the time (out of a desire to be a good person).
I expect people to disagree with this answer.
1it is probably much more common for a person to just be unaware of his or her malicious motivations.
These things are so difficult to figure out. Each of us lives in a "bubble" of their own brain; we probably also choose our friends based on psychological compatibility; some emotions are culturally acceptable to express and some are not; some things are culturally acceptable to believe about others and some are not; and adding the possibility of not being aware of one's own feelings on top of that... how can people ever come to a conclusion about these things?
People are likely to err a lot in both directions. On one hand, it is tempting to think that members of the outgroup spend their entire days thinking about how to hurt us, when it is psychologically more likely that they spend 99% of their time focusing on themselves, just like we (at least the more sane among us) do. On the other hand, in the egalitarian society, it is a taboo to consider too seriously the thought that someone might be psychologically different, despite that we know as a fact that there are many kinds of neurodivergence and mental illness.
Also, it is not obvious that when people use the same word, they mean the same thing. Even with a definition like "an actual intention to do the particular kind of harm", but why exactly? Could be as a revenge (for actual or imaginary transgressions). Could be because I want to get something good as a result (not just theft, but also things like hurting a competitor). Could be something that is difficult to explain ("I just hate his face"), which probably has some evolutionary reason, but having an adaptation to do X is different from wanting to do X (including unconsciously). Is there another obvious option that I missed here?
Then we could argue exact definitions, like "it is not actually malice, if the motivation was to get some benefit out of it"; but of course if we go in that direction too far, no X is ever actually X, because it is always causally connected to something.
Mind-body dualism does not exist. Emotions show themselves in the body and can be perceptible to other people.
If you want to understand better how other people feel and are motivated doing a lot of Circling where people express what they feel is a good step to expose yourself to relevant information.
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