Schadenfreude

Brothers and sisters: Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet, " and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)

Paul in his letter to Romans provides us with Jesus in a nutshell.  After pondering this part of Romans, I conclude we all have demons which we should exorcize – expel with great haste.  For example, most of us do evil to our neighbor through social media gossip and harm.  Or we believe and spread conspiracy theories.  

Alarmingly, most of us are guilty of schadenfreude (sha-den-froy-da).  I hadn’t thought about this word until I was reminded of its meaning and use through the Journal of Political Psychology. From this journal I’ve read:

(begin) Schadenfreude 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. It is a term borrowed from German. It is a compound of Schaden ("damage/harm") and Freude ("joy"). 

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.

Conversely, for someone with low self-esteem, someone who is more successful poses a threat to their sense of self, and seeing this person fall can be a source of comfort because they perceive a relative improvement in their internal or in-group standing. 

Aggression-based schadenfreude primarily involves group identity. The joy of observing the suffering of others comes from the observer's feeling that the other's failure represents an improvement or validation of their own group's (in-group) status in relation to external (out-groups. This is, essentially, schadenfreude based on group versus group status.

Rivalry-based schadenfreude is individualistic and related to interpersonal competition. It arises from a desire to stand out from and out-perform one's peers. This is schadenfreude based on another person's misfortune eliciting pleasure because the observer now feels better about their personal identity and self-worth, instead of their group identity.

Justice-based schadenfreude comes from seeing that behavior seen as immoral or "bad" is punished. It is the pleasure associated with seeing a "bad" person being harmed or receiving retribution. Schadenfreude is experienced here because it makes people feel that fairness has been restored for a previously un-punished wrong and is a type of moral emotion. (end)

I suspect schadenfreude prevails throughout our nation and in our families especially divided through justice-based schadenfreude. Whatever happened to: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself?"  We should be with liebefreude (lee-bah-froy-da).  Joy comes through love.

Deacon David Pierce