The Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies (VAST) and Comprehensive Assessment of Sadistic Tendencies (CAST) originated with a research group at the University of British Columbia during the years 2006-2013. To facilitate empirical research, the sadism research group accepted the challenge of measuring individual differences in sadism via questionnaire. The history of the measures tells a story of increasing granularity. After hypothesizing a pleasure-seeking motivation for aggressive media consumption, the data confirmed a strong link between sadistic behavioral tendencies and entertainment preferences, but with sufficient evidence to separate the constructs into direct and vicarious components. That two-factor instrument was published under the title VAST. A third variant, verbal sadism, is then considered to capture pleasure from another form of cruelty that is arguably just as commonplace as physical or vicarious cruelty. Under the title CAST, that three-factor instrument has accumulated widespread research interest. This chapter presents the version, CAST-12, that shows sufficient psychometric properties to warrant its use by other researchers. Its construct validity has been supported in terms of structural, concurrent, and predictive validity. These results are nevertheless preliminary, and a broader research program is now underway.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)