Schadenfreude: Contexts in Which Men and Women FeelPleasure in Response to Others' Misfortune

Bethany Franklin, Carly Murray, and Arianna Brown Faculty Mentor: April Bleske-Rechek, Psychology

Background• “Schadenfreude” is a German word

used to represent a feeling of pleasure in response to another person’s misfortune.1

• Systematic research suggests that schadenfreude is felt most often toward same-sex peers who are disliked or whose previous good fortune is perceived as undeserved.3, 3, 4

• Nearly all of the existing studies on schadenfreude have been experimental manipulations involving hypothetical academic misfortune among college students.

• One objective of the current research is to determine whether people experience schadenfreude in contexts outside of academics; a second is to investigate whether men and women differ in their perceptions of which misfortunes elicit the most pleasure.Method

Participants• Participants in both phases of this

research were students at UWEC who voluntarily completed questionnaires during allotted class time.

Phase 1• After receiving a definition of

schadenfreude, participants shared a situation in which they felt pleasure in response to another person’s misfortune and a situation in which they suspected someone else felt pleasure in response to their own misfortune. For each situation, participants reported the sex of, and their relationship to, the other person.

Phase 2• The nominations we gathered in

Phase 1 clustered into 10 domains, such as mating misfortune, attractiveness misfortune, financial misfortune, etc. We developed three “template” items for each domain, and used them to craft three 10-item sets, in which each set included one item from each of the 10 domains.

• On the questionnaire, participants first were asked to imagine a member of the same sex and age whose misfortune would give them some pleasure.

• Participants then read the 10 items in each set and ranked the items from 1 to 10, with “1” representing the situation that would give them the most pleasure and “10” representing the situation that would give them the least pleasure.

Discussion

References1Feather, N. T. (1989). Attitudes towards

the high achiever: The fall of the tall poppy. Australian Journal of Psychology, 41, 239-267.

2van Dijk, W. W., Ouwerkerk, J. W., Goslinga, S., Nieweg, M., & Gallucci, M. (2006). When people fall from grace: Reconsidering the role of envy in schadenfreude. Emotion, 6, 156-160.

3Hareli, S., & Weiner, B. (2002). Dislike and envy as antecedents and another’s misfortune. Motivation and Emotion, 26, 257-277.

4Feather, N. T., & Nairn, K. (2005). Resentment, envy, schadenfreude, and sympathy: Effects of own and other’s deserved or undeserved status. Australian Journal of Psychology, 57, 87-102.

5DelPriore, D. J., Hill, S. E., & Buss, D. M. (2012). Envy: Functional specificity and sex-differentiated design features. Personality and Individual Differences, 53, 317-322.

Acknowledgments• We thank all the instructors who

devoted class time to our research efforts, and to their students for providing their experiences and perceptions.

• This research is supported by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at UWEC.

Phase I Results: Act Nomination of Circumstances that Elicit Schadenfreude

Phase II Results: Ranking of Circumstances that Elicit More and Less Schadenfreude

• The common targets of participants’ schadenfreude were similar to participants’ reports of who they thought experienced schadenfreude toward them. However, men’s and women’s targets differed. ↓

• Some situations were nominated more frequently than others, and more frequently by one sex than by the other. Below are men’s and women’s most commonly reported situations. ↓

Men’s Most Commonly Nominated Domains% Domain Sample Nomination19 Social Embarrassment Someone I was playing tennis with hit himself in the face with his

racket.15 Academic A classmate who is really smart got a lower test score than me.

13 Getting Punished/Criticized

A kid on my floor got caught with drugs in his room.

11 Not Getting Your Way* A vegetarian I know was informed she ate meat when she thought she had eaten tofu.

9 Life Getting Harder * One of my friends cheated on his girlfriend and ended up getting that other girl pregnant.

9 Athletic/Physical I beat my teammate in a race.

*We did not include the domains “Not Getting Your Way” and “Life Getting Harder” in Phase 2 due to the widely varying nominations included in those domains.

Women’s Most Commonly Nominated Domains% Domain Sample Nomination21 Academic A classmate was caught cheating and given a 0 on the exam.

12 Mating My friend’s boyfriend broke up with her.

12 Athletic/Physical A tough competitor messed up her dance during a competition.

9 Getting Punished/Criticized

My brother got a speeding ticket.

9 Occupational My friend did was not offered a job she interviewed for.

7 Life Getting Harder* She had an unexpected pregnancy and was unsure of who the father was.

*We did not include the domain “Life Getting Harder” in Phase 2 due to the widely varying nominations included in that domain.

45%

4%18%

33%

Targets of Women's Schadenfreude:

FriendStrangerAcquaintanceOther (Coworker, Ex-Best Friend, etc.)

35%

32%

15%

18%

Targets of Men's Schadenfreude:

Friend

Stranger

Acquaintance

Other (Coworker, Ex-Best Friend, etc.)

Social Em-barrassment

Attractiveness Criticize Mating Occupational Small Group Academic Status Financial Athletic0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

Men Women

Num

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(of

3)

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moung m

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d=.28 d=-.30 d=.18 d=-.34 d=.29 d=-.20 d=-.13 d=.35 d=-.06 d=-.14

She received a negative performance evaluation at work. (occupational)

She did not get into the program/institution that she wanted to. (academic)

She could no longer afford her expensive lifestyle. (financial)

She gained 20 pounds of unwanted weight. (attractiveness)

Someone she was interested in chose another woman over her. (mating)

She was punished for not working hard enough. (getting punished/criticized)

She embarrassed herself in front of a large group of people. (social embarrassment)

She was injured and had to sit out for the rest of the season. (athletic/physical)

Her close friends stopped inviting her to hang out. (small group belonging)

She was asked to not renew her term as a committee director. (status)

The Ranking Task: Sample 10-item set of misfortunes that participants ranked from 1 “most pleasing” to 10

“least pleasing.”

The Results: Some types of misfortunes elicited more pleasure than others, and some types of misfortunes elicited more pleasure among members of one sex than the other sex.

Note. These items are from a female form. Men’s items were written with male pronouns.

This graph displays the number of times, out of three ranking tasks, that each domain showed up in men’s and women’s top three most pleasing circumstances. As displayed in the graph, men more often than women ranked social embarrassment, occupational misfortune, and status misfortune as among their top three most pleasing circumstances. Women more often than men ranked attractiveness misfortune and mating misfortune as among their top three most pleasing circumstances. For both sexes, another person’s academic misfortune appears to be just one of many domains that inspires schadenfreude.Error bars reflect ±2 standard errors of the mean. d values reflect the magnitude of the sex difference for that domain.

• Following the logic of intrasexual competition and previous research on the specific contexts in which men and women experience envy5, we had expected that women would rank a same-sex other’s decreased attractiveness as more pleasing than men would and that men would rank a same-sex other’s status and occupational misfortune as more pleasing than women would. We had predicted a sex difference in ranking of financial misfortune as well, but the sexes did not differ in their response to that misfortune.

• Notably, many men but no women in Phase I had nominated socially embarrassing circumstances as eliciting schadenfreude; but in Phase II both men and women ranked such circumstances as among their most pleasure-evoking. And although in Phase I neither sex mentioned mating misfortunes very often, in Phase II both sexes and especially women ranked such misfortunes among their top three. We aim to further explore these effects in future studies.