Picking Pain

How to become a masochist

What causes masochistic behavior? University of Southern California Psychologist Gary Frieden, 25, thinks he knows the answer: low selfesteem. In a series of tests on college students, he found that lowering self-esteem leads normal people to choose suffering and painful tasks.

Frieden told 40 students they were helping out in a "Patty Hearst simulation" and could choose a simple task (listening to a propaganda tape) or a more humiliating and painful one (being blindfolded and bound, and given electric shocks). All students were given personality tests. Those whose self-esteem was bolstered by praise for their performance chose the tape. But students who were derided (sample comment: "It's clear you really don't have very good social skills") overwhelmingly chose to be bound and shocked.

In another study, Frieden managed to delude some students into thinking they were masochists. Asked to choose between the tape and the shock, they picked the shock by a significant margin. Three-quarters of the shock group even agreed to eat a dead worm Frieden dangled in front of them. The reason, he thinks, is that they were anxious to learn if they were indeed masochists. In general, Frieden concludes, it is surprisingly easy to push normal people toward masochism. Says he: "When feeling bad about themselves, people actively choose to suffer." The good news is that none of the students received an electric shock or dined on worm. Frieden stopped the test when the newborn masochists made their choice.

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