This material is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical, psychological, or psychotherapeutic advice. If you are experiencing an acute psychological condition or need professional support, please contact a doctor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or crisis service.
A colleague who has dismissed your work for months gives a failed presentation. Someone who lectures everyone else makes a visible mistake. A rival loses. For a moment, you feel lighter; then shame arrives: “Why does another person’s pain feel good?” This experience is called schadenfreude—pleasure, relief, or quiet satisfaction in response to another person’s misfortune.
Schadenfreude does not describe a whole person. It arises in a particular situation and may carry several meanings: comparison, reduced threat, restored fairness, accumulated resentment, or victory for one’s group. The useful task is to identify what became easier and decide what to do next. A feeling appears before a moral choice; responsibility begins with the behaviour we choose.
Social comparison changes the meaning of another person’s outcome, but it does not determine our next action.
What is schadenfreude?
Psychological research uses the term for a positive emotional response to someone else’s setback. Its intensity depends on more than the event itself. It matters who suffered, what the relationship was, whether the outcome seems deserved, whether the domain is important to us, and whether the event changes a balance of status or power.
The same news can evoke compassion for a friend, indifference toward a stranger, and relief about someone perceived as a threat. “It felt good” therefore does not explain the response. Context does.
Schadenfreude, joy, and relief
Joy usually concerns a desired event in one’s own life. Relief appears when a threat or tension recedes. Schadenfreude includes another person’s setback as an important part of the positive experience. These feelings often mix. When a competitor does not get a role, someone may welcome their own renewed chance, feel less threatened, and enjoy the competitor’s defeat at the same time.
Why another person’s fall can feel relieving
Social comparison helps us evaluate our position, yet it also makes other people’s outcomes part of our internal coordinates. Experiments suggest that a relative gain can feel rewarding even when the absolute outcome is poor. A person loses, but another participant loses more, so the distance between them changes in the person’s favour.
This does not mean that the brain is “wired for cruelty.” Such studies describe group patterns under laboratory conditions, not a moral test for an individual. They show how quickly people evaluate outcomes relative to others.
A threat to self-evaluation
Schadenfreude may become stronger when another person’s advantage touches an important part of identity. A random musician’s mistake may mean little to an accountant, while the failure of a colleague with the same speciality can briefly restore a sense of equality. A useful question is: which vulnerability did that person’s advantage keep active in me?
Resentment and accumulated powerlessness
When someone has endured humiliation and could not respond, an offender’s fall may feel like balance returning. That experience is different from choosing to prolong the humiliation, circulate the mistake, or withhold necessary help. Relief signals accumulated pain; the next action shapes the consequences.
Fairness or revenge
Satisfaction with the consequences of unfair conduct is not identical to enjoying suffering. If fraud is exposed, a decision is reversed, and accountability becomes real, relief may concern a restored process. The boundary shifts when repairing harm no longer matters and the main wish is to see the person humiliated as deeply as possible.
Four checking questions
- What specific rule, boundary, or procedure was restored?
- Is stopping the harm enough, or do I want additional humiliation?
- Would I accept the same consequences for someone I liked?
- Which action protects the value without adding unnecessary suffering?
The answers may not sound admirable. Their purpose is clarity at a moment when a moral argument can easily conceal revenge.
Envy and schadenfreude are not linked in one simple way
Envy appears around another person’s advantage; schadenfreude appears around their setback. A meta-analysis found a stronger relationship when envy included a wish to reduce the other person’s advantage. The pain of comparison and a motivation to improve oneself showed a much weaker relationship with schadenfreude.
It is therefore too broad to conclude, “If I enjoyed this, I must have secretly envied them all along.” Competition, resentment, fairness judgments, group identity, and changing status threat are also possible. The article on envy examines the pain of another person’s advantage more directly.
When a group turns pain into a spectacle
In sport, politics, workplace competition, and online conflict, another person’s failure can become proof that “our side” has won. Jokes, memes, and mutual approval amplify the response. People may post what they would never say face to face because responsibility feels dispersed across the group.
Studies of intergroup competition connect pleasure at a rival’s loss with greater willingness to behave aggressively. This does not mean that every fan celebrating a team’s defeat will become violent. A practical marker is simpler: do we still see a person, or have we turned them into a target whose pain no longer has limits?
Pause before reposting
Before sharing someone’s fall, ask whether you are adding important information or merely increasing the audience for humiliation. Are the name, image, and details necessary? Is the video verified? A short pause can separate an emotional response from a digital trace that is difficult to remove.
Why shame obstructs understanding
“A decent person would never feel this” pushes the reaction out of awareness. It does not necessarily disappear; it may acquire a defence: “They deserved it,” “It is only humour,” or “Everyone thinks this.” A more accurate position is quieter: I noticed pleasure; I want to understand its components; not every impulse will become an action.
Self-observation is not permission for cruelty. It allows responsibility to rest on facts: what I felt, what I thought, what I did, and what followed.
Practice: separate the response into five parts
Choose one episode and write it down without a global judgment.
- Event. What exactly happened to the other person?
- First response. Where did relief, a smile, or activation appear in the body?
- Meaning. What story appeared immediately: “justice won,” “I am no longer worse,” or “now they will feel what I felt”?
- Need or value. Was safety, recognition, equality, a boundary, or permission to be angry missing?
- Action. What could support that value without adding humiliation?
For example, a colleague who claimed your ideas fails to defend the project. You feel relief and think, “Now everyone will see.” The need is recognised authorship. A useful action is to document your contribution and propose a transparent allocation of roles, rather than circulate a recording of the failed presentation.
The Emotions Journal EQ helps separate the event, feeling, impulse, and choice.
How to act after another person’s mistake
You do not have to perform immediate compassion while you are angry. It is enough to avoid increasing harm. You can pause, decline to join the mockery, respond only to the practical consequence, and return to the conversation later.
If the person harmed you
Helping does not require abandoning a boundary. You can refrain from celebrating the fall while also refusing to rescue someone from proportionate consequences, reopen an unsafe relationship, or conceal the harm they caused. Compassion without limits may restore the old system; boundaries without humiliation keep accountability in place.
If you already joined the humiliation
Repair begins with concrete steps: remove the post, stop forwarding it, acknowledge your participation, apologise without demanding immediate forgiveness, and change how you respond next time. Self-punishment does not restore another person’s dignity; responsible action can reduce some of the damage.
Schadenfreude in close relationships
Someone may feel satisfied when a partner is late after an argument about punctuality, or when a child receives a poor grade after ignoring advice. Behind “I told you so” may be an exhausted wish to be heard. A lesson built around humiliation, however, weakens trust.
A more precise response might be: “Part of me feels vindicated because my concern was confirmed. I do not want to use your mistake against you. Let us decide what to do about the consequence.” Such openness belongs in a safe relationship; sometimes private acknowledgement is wiser than complete emotional disclosure.
When professional support may help
Consider psychological or psychotherapeutic support if fantasies about another person’s fall occupy a large part of the day, become stalking, sabotage, or cruelty, if you repeatedly seek humiliating content, or cannot stop aggressive behaviour. Work may focus on resentment, shame, competition, traumatic experience, and ways to restore boundaries without causing harm.
If you may physically harm someone, create distance from the person and available means, involve a trusted adult, and contact a local emergency or crisis service. Safety is the first goal in that situation.
A MriyaRun tool
The Emotions Journal EQ helps separate the event, emotion, thought, bodily response, impulse, and chosen action. This is useful when the word “schadenfreude” feels like one large moral verdict. When another person’s success remains the centre of the experience, continue with the article on envy, hidden pain, and social comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Does schadenfreude mean I am a bad person?
One emotional episode does not define a personality. Context, repetition, and behaviour matter. Understanding the reaction and refusing to increase harm is more useful than issuing a final verdict about yourself.
Is it acceptable to enjoy fair consequences?
Relief when harm stops is understandable. Ask what satisfies you: the restored boundary or the person’s added suffering. The distinction helps keep consequences proportionate.
Does schadenfreude always come from envy?
No. Envy is one pathway, especially when it includes a wish to reduce another person’s advantage. Resentment, competition, status threat, group identity, and judgments of deservingness may also contribute.
Should I confess schadenfreude to the person?
Not necessarily. Consider the purpose and likely effect. Honest conversation can deepen a safe relationship, but it can also place the burden of your reaction on the person who was hurt. Stopping harmful behaviour and repairing damage are more important.
What if other people gloat over my mistake?
Do not debate their character. Name the behaviour and boundary: “Do not share that video,” or “I will not continue in this tone.” Preserve evidence of online harassment, restrict access, and seek support if the humiliation is repeated or includes threats.
Sources
- Lange J., Weidman A. C., Crusius J. The painful duality of envy: integrative theory and meta-analysis of envy and schadenfreude.
- Dvash J. et al. The envious brain: the neural basis of social comparison.
- Luo Y. et al. Social comparison in the brain: a coordinate-based meta-analysis.
- Cikara M., Fiske S. T. Stereotypes and Schadenfreude: responses to outgroup misfortunes.
- Cikara M. et al. Social identity, intergroup competition and responses to rivals’ harm.