Ripples of contempt: aversive responses to others (mis)fortunes

The bittersweet smell of success: Malicious online responses to others achievements

“…Observing the success of a disliked, or perceived as a rival high achievers, was found to spark more unpleasant feelings compared to observing the success of an regular entity ( Feather, 2008 ; Hornik et al, 2021a ). Humans may be primed to constantly develop anti-big-business attitude, and to experience gluckschmerz when they face success.…”

“…As Gore Vidal once put it, “Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.” The real value in studying gluckschmerz may lie in its effect on dissemination of negative information over the electronic media ( Hornik, 2018 ; Massin, 2018 ). Our work centers on recent anecdotes evidence and scholars suggestions (e.g., Cecconi et al, 2020 ; Hornik et al, 2021a ) that some NeWOM transmitters might be driven by this inherently malicious sentiment, which might account for some of the strong negative rhetoric found in WOM communication.…”

“…Second, as research on the drivers of WOM is less developed than research on its outcomes ( Söderlund and Rosengren, 2007 ), and as the majority of relevant studies to date have focused on positive WOM (e.g., Shen and Sengupta, 2018 ; Talwar et al, 2019 ), the current study extends the investigation of this subject by exploring a neglected possible determinant of online firestorms and adding to the “negativity bias” discussion (e.g., Norris, 2021 ). Third, even though the effects and process of social sharing of emotions have been explored in conventional media, little is known about social sharing of emotions in the electronic media (e.g., Hornik et al, 2021a ). While gluckschmerz has been referred to in the popular press and recently in psychology, it has received modest attention in the social and management literature.…”

High achievers, Schadenfreude and Gluckschmerz in New Zealanders and Chinese

“…Indeed, the present data imply that levels of online support would reflect group membership. However, other studies have clearly demonstrated relationships between Schadenfreude and online negativity (Hornik et al, 2021a, Hornik et al, 2021bHornik et al, 2015;Hornik et al, 2019).…”

“…A variety of scales are under development to examine malicious sentiments towards others' achievements (e.g. Hornik et al, 2021a ; Hornik et al, , 2021b ; Marques et al, 2022 ). However, the present study used the Tall Poppy Scale (Feather, 1989 ) as it has been validated cross‐culturally (Feather, 1998 ).…”