You probably know that one friend. The one who skips the mild sauce, skips the medium, and goes straight for the wings that come with a waiver to sign. You think they’re just trying to impress the table. According to a 2013 study, ‘Glad to be sad, and other examples of benign masochism,' by the University of Pennsylvania that surveyed 243 college students and 147 adults recruited online, there's a real, documented pattern behind this. The researchers coined a name for it: benign masochism.
The science has a name: benign masochism
Benign masochism, according to Rozin and his co-authors, is liking something that your body initially perceives as a threat, once your brain has determined that you are safe. In their 2013 paper, the researchers identified 29 different everyday activities that followed this same pattern, grouped into categories such as fear, sadness, disgust, and physical strain.
Spicy food sits alongside things like sad movies, roller coasters, deep-tissue massages, and the ache of a hard workout. In the same study, they found that people like to push these experiences as far as they can without crossing the line. Their preferred level of intensity is just below the point where it stops being fun and becomes truly unbearable.
The detail the researchers point to again and again is safety. According to Rozin and his co-authors, what makes this work is something they call a "protective frame," borrowed from psychologist Michael Apter's research on play: a kind of mental distancing from a potential threat, where part of you registers the danger signal while another part stays aware you're safe.
A ghost pepper wing works on that same principle; your mouth is burning, but your brain also knows you're sitting in a restaurant, not in danger. The enjoyment is in the space between “feels scary” and “is actually fine.” But the study notes a limit to this: not every unpleasant sensation becomes pleasure this way. Nausea, for example, rarely does, because your body is not convinced that it is really safe.
