Benign Masochism: I like to indulge myself. If there’s a strange smell, I’ll go and take nostril-full to see just how much it can freak me out. If I’m watching a depressing movie and feel a crying jag coming. I’ll think of other sad things so the sorrow can hit with full force.
These reactions are considered ‘masochistic’ by many. A masochist is someone who derives pleasure, sexual and otherwise, from feeling any kind of physical or mental pain.
If I’m dreading a stomach drop while on a roller coaster. I’ll scream or throw my arms out so the feeling is maximized.
While the term may incite mostly sexual associations, there is a certain kind of masochism that most of us indulge in through our individual quirks; one that shows wanting to feel a negative emotion in small doses is not necessarily a bad thing: benign masochism.
Benign masochism is defined as “enjoying initially negative experiences that the body (brain) falsely interprets as threatening,” according to “Glad to Be Sad,” a paper that explores the theory, published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making.
In it, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Paul Rozin coined the term, explaining it more fully as “this realization that the body has been fooled, and that there is no real danger, leads to pleasure derived from ‘mind over body.’”
Researchers say benign masochism stems from the pleasure derived when a combination of positive and negative feelings are felt in response to a threat that is considered benign. Such as a spicy pepper, a sad song, a funky smell, or a horror movie.
Benign Masochism:
For something to be deemed benign masochism. The activity at hand needs to incite so little negative emotion as to be tolerable; if the negative emotion reaches or surpasses into intolerable, it won’t be worthy of being indulged in, researchers say.
In the paper, Rozin and colleagues identified 29 activities. Related to sadness, fear, disgust — that would incite pleasure, or a “hedonic reversal” in people. These included watching sad movies or listening to sad music, eating spicy foods, pinching pimples, going on roller coasters, getting a deep tissue massage, or being physically exhausted.
