Schadenfreude

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Schadenfreude (disambiguation).

painting
Return to the Convent, by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868. The painting depicts a group of monks laughing while a lone monk struggles with a donkey.
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Emotions

Schadenfreude (/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/; German: [ˈʃaːdn̩ˌfʁɔʏ̯də] ⓘ; lit.Tooltip literal translation "harm-joy") is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another. It is a loanword from German. Schadenfreude has been detected in children as young as 24 months and may be an important social emotion establishing "inequity aversion".[1]

Etymology

Schadenfreude is a term borrowed from German. It is a compound of Schaden ("damage/harm") and Freude ("joy"). The German word was first mentioned in English texts in 1852 and 1867, and first used in English running text in 1895.[2] In German, it was first attested in the 1740s.[3] The earliest seems to be Christoph Starke, "Synopsis bibliothecae exegeticae in Vetus Testamentum," Leipzig, 1750. Although common nouns normally are not capitalized in English, schadenfreude sometimes is, following the German convention.[citation needed]

Psychological causes

Researchers have found that there are three driving forces behind schadenfreude – aggression, rivalry, and justice.[4]

Self-esteem has a negative relationship with the frequency and intensity of schadenfreude experienced by an individual; individuals with lower self-esteem tend to experience schadenfreude more frequently and intensely.[5]

It is hypothesized that this inverse relationship is mediated through the human psychological inclination to define and protect their self- and in-group- identity or self-conception.[5] Specifically, for someone with high self-esteem, seeing another person fail may still bring them a small (but effectively negligible) surge of confidence because the observer's high self-esteem significantly lowers the threat they believe the visibly-failing human poses to their status or identity. Since this confident individual perceives that, regardless of circumstances, the successes and failures of the other person will have little impact on their own status or well-being, they have very little emotional investment in how the other person fares, be it positive or negative.

Conversely, for someone with low self-esteem, someone who is more successful poses a threat to their sense of self, and seeing this person fall can be a source of comfort because they perceive a relative improvement in their internal or in-group standing.[6]

  • Aggression-based schadenfreude primarily involves group identity. The joy of observing the suffering of others comes from the observer's feeling that the other's failure represents an improvement or validation of their own group's (in-group) status in relation to external (out-groups) groups (see In-group and out-group). This is, essentially, schadenfreude based on group versus group status.
  • Rivalry-based schadenfreude is individualistic and related to interpersonal competition. It arises from a desire to stand out from and out-perform one's peers. This is schadenfreude based on another person's misfortune eliciting pleasure because the observer now feels better about their personal identity and self-worth, instead of their group identity.
  • Justice-based schadenfreude comes from seeing that behavior seen as immoral or "bad" is punished. It is the pleasure associated with seeing a "bad" person being harmed or receiving retribution. Schadenfreude is experienced here because it makes people feel that fairness has been restored for a previously un-punished wrong, and is a type of moral emotion.

Synonyms

Schadenfreude has equivalents in many other languages (such as: in Dutch leedvermaak, Swedish skadeglädje, Danish skadefro, and Slovak škodoradosť) but no commonly-used precise English single-word equivalent. There are other ways to express the concept in English.

Epicaricacy is a seldom-used direct equivalent,[7] borrowed from Greek epichairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία, first attested in Aristotle[8]) from ἐπί epi 'upon', χαρά chara 'joy', and κακόν kakon 'evil'.[9][10][11][12]

Tall poppy syndrome is a cultural[13] phenomenon where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticized because they have been classified as better than their peers. This is similar to "begrudgery", the resentment or envy of the success of a peer. If someone were to feel joy by the victim's fall from grace, they would be experiencing schadenfreude.

Roman holiday is a metaphor from Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, where a gladiator in ancient Rome expects to be "butchered to make a Roman holiday" while the audience would take pleasure from watching his suffering. The term suggests debauchery and disorder in addition to sadistic enjoyment.[14]

Morose delectation (Latin: delectatio morosa), meaning "the habit of dwelling with enjoyment on evil thoughts",[15] was considered by the medieval church to be a sin.[16][17] French writer Pierre Klossowski maintained that the appeal of sadism is morose delectation.[18][19]

"Gloating" is an English word of similar meaning, where "gloat" means "to observe or think about something with triumphant and often malicious satisfaction, gratification, or delight" (e.g., to gloat over an enemy's misfortune).[20] Gloating is different from schadenfreude in that it does not necessarily require malice (one may gloat to a friend without ill intent about having defeated him in a game), and that it describes an action rather than a state of mind (one typically gloats to the subject of the misfortune or to a third party). Also, unlike schadenfreude, where the focus is on another's misfortune, gloating often brings to mind inappropriately celebrating or bragging about one's own good fortune without any particular focus on the misfortune of others.

Permutations of the concept of pleasure at another's unhappiness are: pleasure at another's happiness, displeasure at another's happiness, and displeasure at another's unhappiness. Words for these concepts are sometimes cited as antonyms to schadenfreude, as each is the opposite in some way.

There is no common English term for pleasure at another's happiness (i.e.; vicarious joy), though terms like 'celebrate', 'cheer', 'congratulate', 'applaud', 'rejoice' or 'kudos' often describe a shared or reciprocal form of pleasure. The pseudo-German coinage freudenfreude is occasionally used in English.[21][22][23][24] The Hebrew slang term firgun refers to happiness at another's accomplishment.[25]

Displeasure at another's happiness is involved in envy, and perhaps in jealousy.[citation needed] The pseudo-German coinage "freudenschade" similarly means sorrow at another's success.[26] The correct form would be Freudenschaden, since the pseudo-German coinage incorrectly assumes the n in Schadenfreude to be an interfix and the adjective schade ("unfortunate") a noun.

Displeasure at another's good fortune is Gluckschmerz, a pseudo-German word coined in 1985 as a joke by the pseudonymous Wanda Tinasky; the correct German form would be Glücksschmerz.[27][28] It has since been used in academic contexts.[29]

Displeasure at another's unhappiness is sympathy, pity, or compassion.[citation needed]

Sadism gives pleasure through the infliction of pain, whereas schadenfreude is pleasure on observing misfortune and in particular, the fact that the other somehow deserved the misfortune.[30]

Neologisms and variants

The word schadenfreude had been blended with other words to form neologisms as early as 1993, when Lincoln Caplan, in his book Skadden: Power, Money, and the Rise of a Legal Empire, used the word Skaddenfreude to describe the delight that competitors of Skadden Arps took in its troubles of the early 1990s.[31] Others include spitzenfreude, coined by The Economist to refer to the fall of Eliot Spitzer,[32] and Schadenford, coined by Toronto Life in regard to Canadian politician Rob Ford.[33]

Literary usage and philosophical analysis

The Biblical Book of Proverbs mentions an emotion similar to schadenfreude: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him." (Proverbs 24:17–18, King James Version).

In East Asia, the emotion of feeling joy from seeing the hardship of others was described as early as late 4th century BCE. The phrase Xing zai le huo (Chinese: 幸災樂禍) first appeared separately as xing zai (幸災), meaning the feeling of joy from seeing the hardship of others,[34] and le huo (樂禍), meaning the happiness derived from the unfortunate situation of others,[35] in the ancient Chinese text Zuo zhuan (左傳). The chengyu xing zai le huo (幸災樂禍) is still used among Chinese speakers.[34]

In Japanese, the saying hito no fukō wa mitsu no aji (人の不幸は蜜の味, lit. 'another's misfortune is sweet as honey') exemplifies schadenfreude.[36]

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle used epikhairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία in Greek) as part of a triad of terms, in which epikhairekakia stands as the opposite of phthonos (φθόνος), and nemesis (νέμεσις) occupies the mean. Nemesis is "a painful response to another's undeserved good fortune", while phthonos is a painful response to any good fortune of another, deserved or not. The epikhairekakos (ἐπιχαιρέκακος) person takes pleasure in another's ill fortune.[37][38]

Lucretius characterises the emotion in an extended simile in De rerum natura: Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem, "It is pleasant to watch from the land the great struggle of someone else in a sea rendered great by turbulent winds." The abbreviated Latin tag suave mare magno recalled the passage to generations familiar with the Latin classics.[39]

Caesarius of Heisterbach regards "delight in the adversity of a neighbour" as one of the "daughters of envy... which follows anger" in his Dialogue on Miracles.[40]

During the seventeenth century, Robert Burton wrote:

Out of these two [the concupiscible and irascible powers] arise those mixed affections and passions of anger, which is a desire of revenge; hatred, which is inveterate anger; zeal, which is offended with him who hurts that he loves; and ἐπιχαιρεκακία, a compound affection of joy and hate, when we rejoice at other men's mischief, and are grieved at their prosperity; pride, self-love, emulation, envy, shame, [etc.], of which elsewhere.

— The Anatomy of Melancholy[41]

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer mentioned schadenfreude as the most evil sin of human feeling, famously saying "To feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is diabolic."[42][43]

The song "Schadenfreude" in the musical Avenue Q, is a comedic exploration of the general public's relationship with the emotion.[44]

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People describes schadenfreude as a universal, even wholesome reaction that cannot be helped. "There is a German psychological term, Schadenfreude, which refers to the embarrassing reaction of relief we feel when something bad happens to someone else instead of to us." He gives examples and writes, "[People] don't wish their friends ill, but they can't help feeling an embarrassing spasm of gratitude that [the bad thing] happened to someone else and not to them."[45]

Susan Sontag's book Regarding the Pain of Others, published in 2003, is a study of the issue of how the pain and misfortune of some people affects others, namely whether war photography and war paintings may be helpful as anti-war tools, or whether they only serve some sense of schadenfreude in some viewers.[citation needed]

Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined schadenfreude as "... largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another, which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate."[46]

Schadenfreude is steadily becoming a more popular word according to Google.[47]

Scientific studies

A New York Times article in 2002 cited a number of scientific studies of schadenfreude, which it defined as "delighting in others' misfortune". Many such studies are based on social comparison theory, the idea that when people around us have bad luck, we look better to ourselves. Other researchers have found that people with low self-esteem are more likely to feel schadenfreude than are those who have high self-esteem.[48]

A 2003 study examined intergroup schadenfreude within the context of sports, specifically an international football (soccer) competition. The study focused on the German and Dutch football teams and their fans. The results of this study indicated that the emotion of schadenfreude is very sensitive to circumstances that make it more or less legitimate to feel such malicious pleasure toward a sports rival.[49]

A 2011 study by Cikara and colleagues using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examined schadenfreude among Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fans, and found that fans showed increased activation in brain areas correlated with self-reported pleasure (ventral striatum) when observing the rival team experience a negative outcome (e.g., a strikeout).[50] By contrast, fans exhibited increased activation in the anterior cingulate and insula when viewing their own team experience a negative outcome.

A 2006 experiment about "justice served" suggests that men, but not women, enjoy seeing "bad people" suffer. The study was designed to measure empathy by watching which brain centers are stimulated when subjects observed via fMRI see someone experiencing physical pain. Researchers expected that the brain's empathy center of subjects would show more stimulation when those seen as "good" got an electric shock, than would occur if the shock was given to someone the subject had reason to consider "bad". This was indeed the case, but for male subjects, the brain's pleasure centers also lit up when someone got a shock that the male thought was "well-deserved".[51]

Brain-scanning studies show that schadenfreude is correlated with envy in subjects. Strong feelings of envy activated physical pain nodes in the brain's dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; the brain's reward centers, such as the ventral striatum, were activated by news that other people who were envied had suffered misfortune. The magnitude of the brain's schadenfreude response could even be predicted from the strength of the previous envy response.[52][53]

A study conducted in 2009 provides evidence for people's capacity to feel schadenfreude in response to negative events in politics.[54] The study was designed to determine whether or not there was a possibility that events containing objective misfortunes might produce schadenfreude. It was reported in the study that the likelihood of experiencing feelings of schadenfreude depends upon whether an individual's own party or the opposing party is suffering harm. This study suggests that the domain of politics is prime territory for feelings of schadenfreude, especially for those who identify strongly with their political party.

In 2014, research in the form of an online survey analyzed the relationship between schadenfreude and 'Dark Triad' traits (i.e. narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). The findings showed that those respondents who had higher levels of Dark Triad traits also had higher levels of schadenfreude, engaged in greater anti-social activities and had greater interests in sensationalism.[55]

See also

References

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  2. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1982, s.v.
  3. ^ Google Books (the 1659 and 1700 dates are incorrect)
  4. ^ Wang, Shensheng; Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Rochat, Philippe (1 January 2019). "Schadenfreude deconstructed and reconstructed: A tripartite motivational model". New Ideas in Psychology. 52: 1–11. doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2018.09.002. ISSN 0732-118X. S2CID 149802251.
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  6. ^ Hendricks, Scotty (25 November 2018). "3 types of Schadenfreude and when you feel them". Big Think.
  7. ^ Byrne, Josefa H. (1984). Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words. Pocket. ISBN 978-0-671-49782-8.
  8. ^ Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon s.v. Archived October 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Bailey, Nathan (1737). Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  10. ^ Bailey, Nathan (1751). Dictionarium Britannicum. London.
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  12. ^ Novobatzky, Peter; Shea, Ammon (1955). Depraved and Insulting English. Harvest Books. ISBN 978-0-15-601149-5.
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  14. ^ "Roman holiday – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 25 April 2007. Retrieved 23 March 2010.
  15. ^ definition of morose delectation Archived April 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Oxford English Dictionary
  16. ^ Prima Secundae Partis, Q. 74 Archived July 2, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and Revised Edition, 1920; Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Online Edition Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Knight.
  17. ^ Chapter 6 Proposing the Story of the World Archived August 27, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Richard John Neuhaus, Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth, Basic Books, 2006.
  18. ^ Heterodox Religion and Post-Atheism: Bataille / Klossowski/ Foucault Archived April 26, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Jones Irwin, ISSN 1393-614X Minerva – An Internet Journal of Philosophy Vol. 10 2006.
  19. ^ Klossowski, Pierre. 1991. Sade, My Neighbour, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Illinois. Northwestern University Press.
  20. ^ "Gloat". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. "Gloat | Definition of Gloat by Merriam-Webster". Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link).
  21. ^ Thayer, Nancy (2005). The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again. Random House Publishing Group. p. 264. ISBN 978-0-345-46918-2.
  22. ^ Portmann, John (2002). When Bad Things Happen to Other People. Routledge. p. 187. ISBN 978-1-134-00172-9.
  23. ^ Chambliss, Catherine; Hartl, Amy (2016). Empathy Rules: Depression, Schadenfreude and Freudenfreude Research on Depression Risk Factors and Treatment. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. ISBN 978-1-5361-0000-6.
  24. ^ Fraga, Juli (25 November 2022). "The Opposite of Schadenfreude Is Freudenfreude. Here's How to Cultivate It". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
  25. ^ Kordova, Shoshana (25 August 2014). "Word of the Day / Firgun: The Art of Tooting Someone Else's Horn". Haaretz.
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  28. ^ Rosenbaum, Ron (2000). The Secret Parts of Fortune. Random House. p. 645. ISBN 0375503382.
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  31. ^ Caplan, Lincoln (1994). "Skaddenfreude". Skadden: Power, Money, and the Rise of a Legal Empire. Macmillan. pp. 231–238. ISBN 978-0-374-52424-1.
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  36. ^ https://forbesjapan.com/articles/detail/67527
  37. ^ Pedrick, Victoria; Oberhelman, Steven M. (2006). The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-65306-8.
  38. ^ Nicomachean Ethics, 2.7.1108b1-10
  39. ^ Patrick O'Brian's usage of the tag in his Aubrey-Maturin historical novels is reflected in Dean King's companion lexicon A Sea of Words (3rd ed.2000).
  40. ^ Dialogus miraculorum, IV, 23.
  41. ^ Robert Burton (1621). The Anatomy of Melancholy. t. 1, sect. 1, memb. 2, subsect. 8.
  42. ^ Arthur Schopenhauer (1860). Grudlage der Moral. Brockhaus. p. 200.
  43. ^ Rudolf Lüthe (2017). Heitere Aufklärung: Philosophische Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Komik, Skepsis und Humor. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-3-643-13895-8.
  44. ^ "Natalie Venetia Belcon & Rick Lyon – Schadenfreude" – via genius.com.
  45. ^ Kushner, Harold S. (2004). "There is a German psychological term, Schadenfreude". When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Anchor Books. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-4000-3472-7.
  46. ^ Cited in Portmann, John (2000). When bad things happen to other people. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-92335-4.[page needed]
  47. ^ https://www.wordgenius.com/all-words/schadenfreude WordGenius.com August 13, 2019
  48. ^ St. John, Warren (24 August 2002). "Sorrow So Sweet: A Guilty Pleasure in Another's Woe". The New York Times.
  49. ^ Leach, Colin Wayne; Spears, Russell; Branscombe, Nyla R.; Doosje, Bertjan (2003). "Malicious pleasure: Schadenfreude at the suffering of another group". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 84 (5): 932–943. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.932. hdl:1808/248. ISSN 1939-1315. PMID 12757139.
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  51. ^ Singer, Tania; Seymour, Ben; O'Doherty, John P.; Stephan, Klaas E.; Dolan, Raymond J.; Frith, Chris D. (18 January 2006). "Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others". Nature. 439 (7075): 466–469. Bibcode:2006Natur.439..466S. doi:10.1038/nature04271. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 2636868. PMID 16421576. For a lay summary, see "When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women Don't)". The New York Times. 19 January 2006.
  52. ^ Takahashi, H.; Kato, M.; Matsuura, M.; Mobbs, D.; Suhara, T.; Okubo, Y. (13 February 2009). "When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude". Science. 323 (5916): 937–9. Bibcode:2009Sci...323..937T. doi:10.1126/science.1165604. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 19213918. S2CID 26678804.
  53. ^ Angier, Natalie (17 February 2009). "In Pain and Joy of Envy, the Brain May Play a Role". The New York Times.
  54. ^ Combs, David J.Y.; Powell, Caitlin A.J.; Schurtz, David Ryan; Smith, Richard H. (July 2009). "Politics, schadenfreude, and ingroup identification: The sometimes happy thing about a poor economy and death". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 45 (4): 635–646. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.009. ISSN 0022-1031.
  55. ^ James, Samantha; Kavanagh, Phillip S.; Jonason, Peter K.; Chonody, Jill M.; Scrutton, Hayley E. (1 October 2014). "The Dark Triad, schadenfreude, and sensational interests: Dark personalities, dark emotions, and dark behaviors". Personality and Individual Differences. 68: 211–216. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.04.020. ISSN 0191-8869.

Further reading

  • Smith, Richard H. (2013). The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-973454-2.
  • Smith, Tiffany Watt (2018). Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune. Little, Brown Spark. ISBN 978-0316470308.
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