The Impact of Deservingness on Schadenfreude and Sympathy: Further Evidence

Dijk, Wilco W. van; Ouwerkerk, J.W.; Goslinga, Sjoerd

doi:10.3200/socp.149.3.390-392

Cited by 42 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…undeserved advantages lead to more schadenfreude, deserved ones to less (Feather & Nairn, 2005;Van Dijk et al, 2009). We found this both as an effect of a manipulation of deservedness (Study 2) and in the regression analyses (in three out of four samples).…”

Section: Schadenfreudementioning

confidence: 55%

“…Deservedness of the misfortune is an important predictor of schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is evoked when another's misfortune is perceived as deserved (Feather, 1999;Feather, 2006;Feather & Sherman, 2002;Feather et al, 2013;Van Dijk et al, 2009;Van Dijk, Ouwerkerk, Goslinga, & Nieweg, 2005). For example, Van Dijk et al (2009) found that participants experienced more schadenfreude toward high achievers with undeserved achievements as opposed to those with deserved achievements, which was mediated by perceived deservedness of the misfortune.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

When envy leads to schadenfreude

Ven

Hoogland

Smith

et al. 2014

Cognition and Emotion

Self Cite

120

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous research has yielded inconsistent findings concerning the relationship between envy and schadenfreude. Three studies examined whether the distinction between benign and malicious envy can resolve this inconsistency. We found that malicious envy is related to schadenfreude, while benign envy is not. This result held both in the Netherlands where benign and malicious envy are indicated by separate words (Study 1: Sample A, N = 139; Sample B, N = 150), and in the USA where a single word is used to denote both types (Study 2, N = 180; Study 3, N = 349). Moreover, the effect of malicious envy on schadenfreude was independent of other antecedents of schadenfreude (such as feelings of inferiority, disliking the target person, anger, and perceived deservedness). These findings improve our understanding of the antecedents of schadenfreude and help reconcile seemingly contradictory findings on the relationship between envy and schadenfreude.

show abstract

Section: Schadenfreudementioning

confidence: 55%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

When envy leads to schadenfreude

Ven

Hoogland

Smith

et al. 2014

Cognition and Emotion

Self Cite

120

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These perspectives emphasize that people do not always view harm in a negative light. Rather, people often view harm as morally justified, even obligatory (Rai & Fiske, 2012); and in some cases they derive pleasure from harming others -especially outgroup members with whom they are in conflict (Cikara & Fiske, 2012), or who are deemed undeserving of beneficence (Van Dijk, Ouwerkerk, & Goslinga, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of episodic simulation in motivating commonplace harms

A¹,

Gaesser²,

Cushman³

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Every day, people make decisions that involve potential harm to others. Though these decisions are central to our moral lives, little is known about how they are influenced by a key psychological process: episodic simulation. Several psychological theories predict that imagining harming others, which people typically find aversive, would dissuade them from harming. Here, however, we find the opposite: Imagining harming others increases the perceived likelihood of performing that harm in the future. This effect arises because people spontaneously construct moral justifications for the harm, which engender positive feelings about harming. Our results contribute to a growing body of evidence that harming others is often cast in a positive light.

show abstract

“…Typical tasks require imagining one’s own reactions upon learning that someone with higher social status or opposite political views has lost his/her job [ 6 , 7 ], or when reading that your least favorite sport team has been defeated [ 8 – 10 ]. These studies have shown that schadenfreude is modulated by the deservingness of the other’s misfortune [ 11 – 13 ], the resentment [ 14 ] and envy [ 2 , 6 , 15 – 17 ] toward the person or group that failed, and one’s positive self-evaluation [ 15 , 16 , 18 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Schadenfreude is higher in real-life situations compared to hypothetical scenarios

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Schadenfreude (i.e., the pleasure derived from another’s misfortune) has been widely studied by having participants imagine how they would feel in hypothetical scenarios describing another person’s pain or misfortune. However, research on affective forecasting shows that self-judgments of emotions are inaccurate in hypothetical situations. Here we show a study in which we first presented a hypothetical schadenfreude situation and few months later, due to an exceptional circumstance, the situation turned out to happen in reality. This fortuitous circumstance allowed us to compare people’s imagined emotional reactions with their actual feelings. Results showed that schadenfreude was higher in the real situation than in the hypothetical one. More importantly, participants used different proxies to predict their emotional reaction: while out-group dislike served as a proxy of schadenfreude in both types of scenario, the degree of in-group identification also increased schadenfreude in those who had experienced the real event, arguably a mechanism to promote positive self-evaluation. These results highlight the importance of assessing schadenfreude in the heat of the moment.

show abstract

The Impact of Deservingness on Schadenfreude and Sympathy: Further Evidence

Cited by 42 publications

References 7 publications

When envy leads to schadenfreude

When envy leads to schadenfreude

The role of episodic simulation in motivating commonplace harms

Schadenfreude is higher in real-life situations compared to hypothetical scenarios

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About