Schadenfreude
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Schadenfreude (
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.
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
Morose delectation (
"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.
Related emotions or concepts
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
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.
Displeasure at another's happiness is involved in envy, and perhaps in jealousy. The pseudo-German coinage "freudenschade" similarly means sorrow at another's success.[29][unreliable source?][30] 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.[31][32] It has since been used in academic contexts.[33]
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.[34]
Neologisms and variants
The word schadenfreude had been
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
In the
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.[42]
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.[43]
During the
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 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."[45][46]
The song "Schadenfreude" in the musical Avenue Q, is a comedic exploration of the general public's relationship with the emotion.[47]
Rabbi
Schadenfreude is steadily becoming a more popular word according to Google.[50]
Scientific studies
A
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.[52]
A 2011 study by Cikara and colleagues using
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".[54]
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.[55][56]
A study conducted in 2009 provides evidence for people's capacity to feel schadenfreude in response to negative events in politics.[57] 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 '
See also
- Edgelord
- Katagelasticism, a psychological condition in which a person excessively enjoys laughing at others
- Masochism
- Revenge
- Slapstick
- Vicarious embarrassment
- List of German expressions in English
References
- PMID 24988446.
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1982, s.v.
- ^ Google Books (the 1659 and 1700 dates are incorrect)
- S2CID 149802251.
- ^ PMID 22142213.
- ^ Hendricks, Scotty (25 November 2018). "3 types of Schadenfreude and when you feel them". Big Think.
- ISBN 978-0-671-49782-8.
- ^ Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon s.v. Archived October 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Bailey, Nathan (1737). Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
- ^ Bailey, Nathan (1751). Dictionarium Britannicum. London.
- ISBN 978-0-8065-2926-4.
- ISBN 978-0-15-601149-5.
- .
- ^ "Roman holiday – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 25 April 2007. Retrieved 23 March 2010.
- ^ definition of morose delectation Archived April 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Oxford English Dictionary
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Klossowski, Pierre. 1991. Sade, My Neighbour, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Illinois. Northwestern University Press.
- ^ "Gloat". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. "Gloat | Definition of Gloat by Merriam-Webster". Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
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- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
- ^ Zader, Joshua (6 December 2005). "The Upside of Shadenfreude". Mudita Journal. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016.
- ^ Sirtumble (6 February 2005). "Are you Schadenfreude or Mudita?". One of Six Billion... Archived from the original on 11 March 2016.
- ^ Regan, Nell (16 September 2011). "[untitled]". Iowa City Public Library Presentations. Archived from the original on 8 June 2020.
- ^ Kordova, Shoshana (25 August 2014). "Word of the Day / Firgun: The Art of Tooting Someone Else's Horn". Haaretz.
- ^ "Yahoo Groups "worthless word for the day is ... freudenschade"". Groups.yahoo.com. Archived from the original on 12 July 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2010.
- ^ Sivanandam, Navin (28 April 2006). "Freudenschade". The Stanford Daily. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008.
- ^ Cohen, Ben (12 June 2015). "Schadenfreude Is in the Zeitgeist, but Is There an Opposite Term?". The Wall Street Journal.
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- ^ "The hypocrites' club". The Economist.
- ^ Kives, Bartley (26 May 2013). "May 2013: When the Ford jokes stop". Winnipeg Free Press.
- ^ a b 中華民國教育部. "幸災樂禍". dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/cbdic/search.htm (in Chinese). Retrieved 7 March 2021.
- ^ 中華民國教育部. "樂禍". dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/cbdic/search.htm (in Chinese). Retrieved 7 March 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-226-65306-8.
- ^ Nicomachean Ethics, 2.7.1108b1-10
- ^ 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).
- ^ Dialogus miraculorum, IV, 23.
- ^ Robert Burton (1621). The Anatomy of Melancholy. t. 1, sect. 1, memb. 2, subsect. 8.
- ^ Arthur Schopenhauer (1860). Grudlage der Moral. Brockhaus. p. 200.
- ISBN 978-3-643-13895-8.
- ^ "Natalie Venetia Belcon & Rick Lyon – Schadenfreude" – via genius.com.
- ISBN 978-1-4000-3472-7.
- ISBN 978-0-415-92335-4.[page needed]
- ^ https://www.wordgenius.com/all-words/schadenfreude WordGenius.com August 13, 2019
- ^ St. John, Warren (24 August 2002). "Sorrow So Sweet: A Guilty Pleasure in Another's Woe". The New York Times.
- PMID 12757139.
- PMID 21270447.
- 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.
- S2CID 26678804.
- ^ Angier, Natalie (17 February 2009). "In Pain and Joy of Envy, the Brain May Play a Role". The New York Times.
- ISSN 0022-1031.
- 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.
External links
- The dictionary definition of schadenfreude at Wiktionary
- The dictionary definition of Schadenfreude at Wiktionary