Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude (ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə; ˈʃaːdn̩ˌfʁɔʏ̯də; () 'harm-joy') is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. It is a borrowed word from German, with no direct translation, that originated in the 18th century. Schadenfreude has been detected in children as young as 24 months and may be an important social emotion establishing "inequity aversion". 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. In German, it was first attested in the 1740s. The earliest seems to be Christoph Starke, Synopsis bibliothecae exegeticae in Vetus Testamentum. Leipzig 1750. Although common nouns normally are not capitalised in English, schadenfreude sometimes is capitalised following the German convention. Researchers have found that there are three driving forces behind schadenfreude – aggression, rivalry, and justice. 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. 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. 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.