Taming the donkey by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868
Schadenfreude
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Look up schadenfreude in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Schadenfreude Listeni/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/ (German: [ˈʃaːdənˌfʁɔʏdə]) is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.[1] This word is a loanword from German, and is also borrowed in some other languages. It has been calqued[citation needed] in Danish and Norwegian as skadefryd, in Swedish as skadeglädje, in Finnish as vahingonilo, in Dutch as leedvermaak and in Ukrainian, Russian and Bulgarian as ‘злорадство’ (zlo’radstvo).
Contents
1 Linguistic analysis
1.1 Spelling and etymology
1.2 English equivalents
1.3 Related words
1.4 Neologisms and variants
2 Literary usage and philosophical analysis
3 Scientific studies
4 See also
5 References
Linguistic analysis
Spelling and etymology
Taming the donkey by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868
Though normally not capitalized in English, the term schadenfreude is sometimes capitalized to mimic German-language convention as German nouns are always capitalized.
The corresponding German adjective is schadenfroh. The word derives from Schaden (damage, harm) and Freude (joy). Schaden derives from the Middle High German schade, from the Old High German scado, and is a cognate with English scathe. Freude comes from the Middle High German freude, from the Old High German frewida, and is a cognate with the (usually archaic) English word frith. A distinction exists between “secret schadenfreude” (a private feeling) and “open schadenfreude” (Hohn, a German word that roughly translates to scorn—outright public derision).
English equivalents
Little-used English words synonymous with schadenfreude derive from the Greek word, epichairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία).[2][3] Nathan Bailey’s 18th-century Universal Etymological English Dictionary, for example, contains an entry for epicharikaky that gives its etymology as a compound of ἐπί epi (upon), χαρά chara (joy), and κακόν kakon (evil).[4][5] A popular modern collection of rare words, however, gives its spelling as epicaricacy.[6]
An English expression with a similar meaning is Roman holiday, a metaphor from the poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by George Gordon, Lord Byron, where a gladiator in Ancient Rome expects to be “butcher’d to make a Roman holiday” while the audience would take pleasure from watching his suffering. The term suggests debauchery and disorder in addition to sadistic enjoyment.[7]
Another phrase with a meaning similar to Schadenfreude is “morose delectation” (“delectatio morosa” in Latin), meaning, “The habit of dwelling with enjoyment on evil thoughts.”[8] The medieval church taught that morose delectation was a sin.[9][10] French writer Pierre Klossowski maintained that the appeal of sadism is morose delectation.[11][12]
An English word of similar meaning is gloating, where gloat means “to observe or think about something with triumphant and often malicious satisfaction, gratification, or delight” (gloat over an enemy’s misfortune).[13] Gloating is differentiated from Schadenfreude in that it does not necessarily require malice (one may gloat to a friend about having defeated him in a game without ill intent) and that it describes an action rather than a state of mind (one typically gloats to the subject of the misfortune or to a third party).
Related words
The Buddhist concept of mudita, “sympathetic joy” or “happiness in another’s good fortune,” is cited as an example of the opposite of schadenfreude.[14][15] Alternatively, envy, which is unhappiness in another’s good fortune, could be considered the counterpart of schadenfreude. Completing the quartet is “unhappiness at another’s misfortune”—which can be called sympathy, pity, or compassion.
The transposed variant “freudenschade” has been invented in English to mean sorrow at another person’s success.[16][17]
The term compersion, taking joy in the joy of loved ones, is generally considered an antonym of schadenfreude.
Neologisms and variants
Neologisms and portmanteau words were coined from the word as early as 1993, when Lincoln Caplan, in his book Skadden: Power, Money, and the Rise of a Legal Empire,[18] used the word Skaddenfreude to describe the delight that competitors of Skadden Arps took in its troubles of the early 1990s. Others include spitzenfreude, coined by The Economist to refer to the fall of Eliot Spitzer[19] and Schadenford, coined by Toronto Life in regards to Canadian politician Rob Ford.[20]
Literary usage and philosophical analysis
The Book of Proverbs mentions an emotion similar to schadenfreude: “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.” (Proverbs 24:17–18, King James Version).
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle used epikhairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία in Greek) as part of a triad of terms, in which epikhairekakia stands as the opposite of phthonos (φθόνος), and nemesis (νέμεσις) occupies the mean. Nemesis is “a painful response to another’s undeserved good fortune,” while phthonos is a painful response to any good fortune, deserved or not. The epikhairekakos (ἐπιχαιρέκακος) person takes pleasure in another’s ill fortune.[21][22]
Lucretius characterises the emotion in an extended simile in De rerum natura: Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem, “It is pleasant to watch from the land the great struggle of someone else in a sea rendered great by turbulent winds”. The abbreviated Latin tag suave mare magno recalled the passage to generations familiar with the Latin classics.[23]
Caesarius of Heisterbach speaks of “delight in the adversity of a neighbour” as one of the “daughters of envy … which follows anger” in his Dialogue on Miracles.[24]
During the 17th century, Robert Burton wrote in his work The Anatomy of Melancholy, “Out of these two [the concupiscible and irascible powers] arise those mixed affections and passions of anger, which is a desire of revenge; hatred, which is inveterate anger; zeal, which is offended with him who hurts that he loves; and ἐπιχαιρεκακία, a compound affection of joy and hate, when we rejoice at other men’s mischief, and are grieved at their prosperity; pride, self-love, emulation, envy, shame, &c., of which elsewhere.”[25]
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer mentioned schadenfreude as the most evil sin of human feeling, famously saying “To feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is devilish.”[26]
Susan Sontag’s book Regarding the Pain of Others, published in 2003, is a study of the issue of how the pain and misfortune of some affects others, namely whether war photography and war paintings may be helpful as anti-war tools or, whether they only serve some sense of schadenfreude in some viewers.
Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined schadenfreude as “…largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.”[27]
Scientific studies
A New York Times article in 2002 cited a number of scientific studies of schadenfreude, which it defined as, “delighting in others’ misfortune.” Many such studies are based on social comparison theory, the idea that when people around us have bad luck, we look better to ourselves. Other researchers have found that people with low self-esteem are more likely to feel schadenfreude than are people who have high self-esteem.[28]
A 2003 study examined intergroup schadenfreude within the context of sports, specifically an international football (soccer) competition. The study focused on the German and Dutch football teams and their fans. The results of this study indicated that the emotion of schadenfreude is very sensitive to circumstances that make it more or less legitimate to feel such malicious pleasure towards a sports rival.[29]
A 2006 experiment about justice served suggests that men, but not women, enjoy seeing bad people suffer. The study was designed to measure empathy, by watching which brain centers are stimulated when subjects inside an fMRI observe someone experiencing physical pain. Researchers expected that the brain’s empathy center of subjects would show more stimulation when those seen as good got an electric shock than would occur if the shock was given to someone the subject had reason to consider bad. This was indeed the case, but for male subjects, the brain’s pleasure centers also lit up when someone got a shock that the male thought was well-deserved. This is however is not exactly a test about schadenfreude because it is not isolated examples of joy in other peoples suffering.[30]
Brain-scanning studies show that schadenfreude is correlated with envy in subjects. Strong feelings of envy activated physical pain nodes in the brain’s dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; the brain’s reward centers, such as the ventral striatum, were activated 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.[31][32]
A 2009 study indicates that the hormone oxytocin may be involved in the feeling of schadenfreude.[33] In that study, it was reported that when participants in a game of chance were pitted against a player they considered arrogant, inhaling oxytocin through the nose enhanced their feelings of schadenfreude when their opponent lost as well as their feelings of envy when their opponent won.
A study conducted in 2009 by Combs et al. provides evidence for people’s capacity to feel schadenfreude in response to negative events in politics.[34] The study was designed to determine whether or not there was a possibility that events containing objective misfortunes might produce schadenfreude. It was reported in the study that the likelihood of experiencing feelings of schadenfreude depends upon whether an individual’s own party or the opposing party is suffering harm. This study suggests that the domain of politics is prime territory for feelings of schadenfreude, especially for those who identify strongly with their political party.
See also
Bullying
Gallows humor
Griefer
Mudita, the appreciation of the success (rather than the suffering) of others
Retributive justice
Revenge
Sadism
Slapstick comedy
Victim blaming
Troll (Internet)
Theruine 