Happiness as an additional antecedent of schadenfreude

Abstract

The current study examined whether dispositionally happy individuals feel less happiness when another person experiences a misfortune. Happy individuals are known to be less vulnerable to upward comparison information. In addition, schadenfreude is elicited by upward comparison targets (e.g. high achievers and tall poppies). Thus, it was assumed that happiness would decrease schadenfreude. The lower level of hostile feelings in happy individuals, which are elicited by threats to one’s person and inferiority heightened when confronted with a high achiever, was hypothesized to decrease schadenfreude. Studies 1 and 2 were conducted with scenario experiments, and the hypotheses were supported in both studies. Regression analyses revealed a significant direct effect of happiness on a reduction in schadenfreude. How not feeling schadenfreude when witness another person’s misfortune helps people maintain and/or increase their happiness is discussed.

Keywords:

• Schadenfreude
• happiness
• upward comparison
• self-esteem

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my supervisor, Kaori Karasawa for her patient guidance and useful critiques of this research work. Takaaki Hashimoto and other lab members helped on the use of Japanese in the questionnaires. Sang-Hong Shim provided insightful comments on the manuscript. I also thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which greatly improved clarity from the earlier version of this manuscript.