Essay Example on Schadenfreude: Joy in Others' Pain and Misfortune

Introduction

The experience of pleasure or joy, and also self-satisfaction, which is as a result leaning as well as witnessing any trouble, humiliation or also failures of the pain of others, is known as schadenfreude. It is an emotion that is complex where rather than instead of having sympathy towards someone bad luck or misfortunes, schadenfreude will evoke the joyful feelings which take desire partaking seeing or watching somebody fail. The kind of emotion is believed to be more displayed to the children compared to the adults. It does not mean that adults do not experience this emotion. The adults as well as experience this feeling, although, generally, they end up concealing it.

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How and why do we experience schadenfreude?

Schadenfreude is said to be driven by social comparison, a good example, consider your friend purchasing new goods like a sports car. The next day, it happens that it was picked up by a tornado hence throwing it to the next stage. You will feel the schadenfreude since your rival has returned to his prior, which is an equal level of social standing. It is part of a human being to laugh at each other misfortunes. There is that part of human being brain which gets turned on when we are rewarded at someone else's expense. The research has shown that there are three main driving forces which are behind schadenfreude. These include aggression, rivalry, as well as justice (Greenier, 2018). Other studies have proven that self-esteem can have negative relations, especially with frequency, as well as the intensity of schadenfreude that is experienced by every person. Those individuals with high self-esteem are said to experience schadenfreude with less intensity motion or less frequently.

What are the benefits and controversies with schadenfreude?

There are some benefits of schadenfreude. Schadenfreude gives individuals gleeful moments for pleasure. Binding the society together can be from the result of finding fun frim other individual's misfortunes. It may seem isolating or divisive, but it shows that we are not alone in our disappointments. Besides, once an individual is having any challenge, and the other takes it as a joke, they will feel contented. From your frustrations, someone else can make you laugh hence making you avoid getting some additional stress or the depression. There are also some disadvantages of schadenfreude (Lange & Boecker, 2019). Some individuals are always severe in every matter. Once such people get frustrated, they may seem not to be interested in anyone or anything. Such people mostly dislike jokes, especially when they are upset about something. The emotion of schadenfreude can make them get irritated once showed to them hence leading to committing some evil crimes. It is acceptable that the excitement can be applied in some cases, especially to some specific people.

Think about yourself. Have you ever experienced schadenfreude? Describe the situation and explain your feelings at that time. What do you think when you reflect on this experience now?

I remember a case where my friend accompanied me to purchase my personal computer. After we had reached the electronic shop, we bought the PC nad ended back in our resides. On reaching, we realized that the machine was not working. Although they claimed that they sold a working device to us, we had to contact the seller, and they could not accept our plight and claims. My friend took it as a joke and treated this as fun. It made me feel wrath towards her. In that situation, you are at first frustrated by the actions your friends do. In the end, you also find yourself just contended from the way your friends treats you. When I think of the experience, I just laugh up to date since I took it as a joke according to how those around me treated this matter.

References

Greenier, K. D. (2018). The relationship between personality and schadenfreude in hypothetical versus live situations. Psychological reports, 121(3), 445-458. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0033294117745562

Lange, J., & Boecker, L. (2019). Schadenfreude as social-functional dominance regulator. Emotion, 19(3), 489. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-22779-001