Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude - the evil companion of envy...?

Schadenfreude - the evil companion of envy...?

There is no English equivalent for the German word schadenfreude, which loosely translated means taking immense pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.  But this delight in others’ suffering has never been more apparent.

Be it the ‘Hairy Angel’ howling for her cat, Amy Winehouse poisoning herself with alcohol and applying to become a resident of a Caribbean island or an eminent judge being turned over by his rent boy lover in the News of the World, we seem to lap it up.

How we love to watch someone who has got that bit uppity suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, How we “tut” and “snigger” but why when pity or compassion might seem the appropriate response?

Scientific studies based on social comparison theory, suggest that schadenfreude results from the feeling that when others suffer bad luck we look better and many researchers consider that people with low self-esteem are more likely to feel schadenfreude than those with high self-esteem.

But as those with a poor sense of self worth are more prone to drug or alcohol abuse perhaps they should think twice before celebrating the sad decline of someone like Amy Winehouse.

Brain-scanning studies also show that schadenfreude is associated with envy. Strong feelings of envy activated physical pain nodes in the brain which in turn fired up the brain's reward centres by news that the people envied had suffered misfortune. The magnitude of the brain's schadenfreude response could even be predicted from the strength of the previous envy response.

Perhaps then it all comes down to jealousy and those raining on someone else’s parade will only be standing there with them under the same umbrella?


Patricia McLoughlin

 

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Wed, 06/24/2009 - 11:56 — Anonymous

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