Ep 30: Do You Get Pleasure From Another’s Misfortune

Maybe you first heard the word schadenfreude in a 90’s Simpsons episode or maybe it was in a recent Ted Lasso episode where Coach Lasso declared his locker room a schadenfreude free zone.

Or maybe this is the first you are hearing of it. Either way, I bet you have experienced this tough emotion.

Schadenfreude is the compound of the German words schaden, meaning harm and freude meaning joy. The German language is known for accurately capturing nuanced emotions, often with compound words that make the meaning very clear. The definition of schadenfreude simply means pleasure or joy derived from someone else's suffering or misfortune.

Brené Brown says that “Taking pleasure in someone else's failings, even if that person is someone we really dislike, can violate our values and lead to feelings of guilt and shame. but, make no mistake, it's seductive, especially when we're sucked into groupthink.”

This emotion is so tough to talk about because it can bring up guilt and shame within ourselves. We saw this collective schadenfreude a lot during covid between the vaccinated and anti-vaxxers. Someone who is vaccinated who got happy when someone who was not vaccinated got sick with covid, that's schadenfreude. Not a pretty emotion.

I think we’ve all had moments of schadenfreude and some of us more than others because schadenfreude has trait-like properties which means that some people have a tendency to take greater pleasure in others misfortune than others do.

Sports can bring this emotion a lot. It's a tied game and the other team's leading scorer fouls out of the game. We celebrate their misfortune because we think it makes our chances of winning higher, that's schadenfreude.

What's the opposite of schadenfreude? It’s freudenfreude, the enjoyment of another's success. It is also a subset of empathy. And it's a really powerful connection tool.

In an intervention designed by researchers to increase freudenfreude they coined 2 new terms to describe behaviors that were very effective:

Shoy: intentionally sharing the joy of someone relating a success story by showing interest and asking follow-up questions
Bragitude: intentionally tying words of gratitude toward the listener following discussion of personal successes

Resources: