One of the ruling sentiments in everyday life is empathy. No doubt that empathy is a virtue; we are on our toes to draw on the suffering of others, especially when it concerns individuals closer to us, like family or significant others. But people are empathy misers too because prosociality often comes at a cost— mental and emotional resources are effortful to employ in every situation. At the same time, human nature is vastly twisted. There are instances in which it creates opposing feelings of pure empathy, i.e, it seeks to gain joy when observing others’ misfortunes. A common example of this is the “Funny Fail Video” compilation that has garnered more than 40K views in less than 24 hours while I was writing this article. Why is it that people sit back and enjoy seeing the mishaps and the visible distress that others go through?
The feeling that describes this state of joy at others’ misfortune is derived from the German term ‘Schadenfreude’. Although there is no English equivalent to the term, it literally translates to “harm joy”. The fact that people take malicious joy and pleasure in others’ state of adversity or misfortune might sound bewildering. However, contemporary psychological perspectives have identified a number of conditions for the occurrence of this emotion. The first viewpoint suggests that people stand to gain from others’ suffering, and pleasure is an after-effect of that gain. If the traffic from the Southbound direction is not moving, and we are going towards the North, we might feel psychologically at ease knowing that it is not us, but others who are braving the heavy traffic (difficulty). This ease (gain) is brought about through a positive self-assessment via downward social comparison. Simply put, we somehow feel better, even superior, if the conditions of others are worse than us. Experimental manipulations that induce self-evaluation threats to the participants inflame their feelings of schadenfreude. In fact, when opportunities for boosting positive self-views were present through affirmation, feelings of Schadenfreude diminished in low-achievers. Schadenfreude, therefore, has a self-protecting function.
The second viewpoint rests on a deservingness principle. The suffering of others is pleasing because we might perceive their condition as justified or warranted for example, through their own actions. We feel immensely satisfied if others are treated in a ‘fair’ manner, no matter what the circumstance. This happens commonly in courtrooms where the audience (public) often feels gratified when the culprit is served their just desserts in terms of punishment for their crimes and offenses.
The third notion describing the appearance of Schadenfreude in interpersonal relationships is connected to feelings of envy. A major distinction between envy and Schadenfreude is the stance for oneself vis-à-vis social comparison. In Schadenfreude, the person is untroubled, rather gleeful, at the negative circumstance of the other – the comparison is downward (“Thank God! I am saved from this misfortune”). Envy, however, arises as a complex, frustrating, unhappy emotion via upward social comparison when we seem to lack what others already have (Oh God! Why am I not as successful as her?). Thus, when the payoff to the self is less than the other (for example, when people win money, but still less relative to the opponent), they experience feelings of envy. In order to reduce these feelings of inferiority, malicious envy triggers action tendencies to disparage others and Schadenfreude is one mechanism to fulfill this task. This has been corroborated by neurological evidence that attests similar patterns of activations in the ventral striatum [part of the brain linked to immediate reward gratification] to situations of both wins and losses if the opponent had a relatively greater profit. In fact, Schadenfreude is such a competitive emotion that people don’t think twice to sacrifice their own rewards in order to decline others' winnings. An envious person may also hinge on the first two explanations to evince feelings of Schadenfreude towards the envied person. If the latter suffers a setback, the former may become overjoyed and gain personally through satisfying yet malicious feelings. Perceptions of deservingness, dislike for the others and feelings of inferiority in general, have been implicated in the envy-schadenfreude dynamic.
Schadenfreude is not just an interpersonal feeling. It can also be posited as an intergroup emotion in an intergroup context, however, quite different from the positively valenced feelings of pride or gloating. When misfortune befalls an apparent outgroup, their situation is a matter of pleasure for the in-group members. The joy is underpinned by subliminal rivalry and competition, rather than direct, explicit hostility. For example, bad news concerning outgroups such as the downfall of the oppositional government induces feelings of Schadenfreude based on affective in-group identification. There are also exuberant reactions of sports team fans to the loss of their rival teams, something we also saw recently at the FIFA world cup, again an instance of group-level Schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude and Sadism
It is also pertinent to draw a contrast between Schadenfreude and the related term Sadism. Schadenfreude entails a feeling, an emotional state to seek intrinsic enjoyment at the misfortune befalling others. Sadism is a behavioral extension of this joy to the extreme, the grisly pleasure obtained through the most vicIous acts like abuse and torture. The difference also underlies the nature of the subject under which the two can be studied — Schadenfreude is a domain of social psychology as a phenomenon and Sadism can be encapsulated within the study of individual differences as a personality trait. A critical ingredient in experiencing Schadenfreude is the person’s passivity; they are not directly or violently offending the competitor, rather they are observing from afar and seeking pleasure in the minor misfortune as though it is an unsolicited gift of fate. Sadists, on the other hand, target the person deliberately and indiscriminately, inflicting substantial harm and damage. Precisely, the distinction lies in observing versus causing since there is a psycho-physical distance in Schadenfreude that is blurred out in sadism.
Since it is uncommon to experience empathy in both sadism and Schadenfreude, it suggests that the two are not entirely distinct. Empirical demonstrations show that individuals with greater sadistic personality traits experience higher schadenfreude towards cyclists who had severe accidents than those who sustained minor injuries. Studies also suggest a link between the Dark Triad, i.e. Narcissism, Psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and the Schadenfreude experience. In particular, psychopathic traits have been correlated with peculiar facial expressions (coded through intensive smile patterns) associated with Schadenfreude experience. It has also been implicated in predicting feelings of Schadenfreude towards mourners. This is perhaps because both Dark Triad and Schadenfreude have been found to have sweeping deficits in empathetic behavior and in fact, comprise profound callous emotions. Some researchers have also put Dark Triad and sadism together to classify it as a “Dark Tetrad” of personality. Because there are underlying overlaps between sadism and Schadenfreude, there have been suggestions to incorporate Schadenfreude as a part of the constellation of Dark Tetrad.
There is indeed potential for further research to investigate Schadenfreude both as a subjective and objective emotion. At the same time, researchers should also disentangle the links between Schadenfreude in normal people and how it overlaps with those carrying sadistic and dark tendencies.
Zarnab Zahoor
