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Your faithful writer,
Dr. Daniel Smith

The Germans have a knack for coining words that describe fundamental human emotions. Perhaps it’s the particular way that they combine words.

For example, Lebensabschnittpartner (life — until death — partner) is the German word for ‘life partner’.

That one is a bit clunky, but there are other examples of long German words that express deep philosophical and psychological notions:

• Weltschmerz (world — pain): feeling the pain of the world on your shoulders

• Bildungsroman (formative education — novel): a novel that details the psychological development of the principal character

• Fernweh (distance — pain): the yearning desire to go on a long-distance journey

I could go on and on about cool German words, but today’s newsletter is focused on a particularly insightful one: schadenfreude.

What is Schadenfreude?

The term can also refer to a sense of self-satisfaction derived from the failures or troubles experienced by others.

Some psychologists who study schadenfreude have argued that the feeling is made up of three distinct emotions: aggression, rivalry, and justice.

Aggression-based schadenfreude relates to threats to group identity, i.e. the person enjoy the suffering of another person who is seen as part of an “out-group” whose interests are opposed to those of the “in-group” that the schadenfreude-feeler is a member of.

Rivalry-based schadenfreude is more personal, i.e. feeling satisfied because the athlete on your high school sports team who plays the same position as you got injured.

And justice-based schadenfreude relates to a sense of “justice” being achieved through something bad happening to another person, i.e. “he’s had all his opportunities handed to him, he deserved to have that happen to him.”

Some studies have found that people with lower self-esteem reported experiencing schadenfreude more frequently and intensely.

Those researchers found that the “misfortunes of others can evoke schadenfreude because they provide people with an opportunity to protect or enhance their self-views.”

It’s safe to assume that we experience schadenfreude because we can interpret a bad thing happening to another person as something that affirms our own identity or self-worth.

Just as with many other negative emotions, we can try to use our understanding of it to try to improve ourselves. Or we can just be like Nelson from the Simpsons and embrace the schadenfreude. Auf wiedersehen.

ART OF THE DAY

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Yours,
Dan