The Mental Mechanism And Impact Factors Of Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is a common psychological phenomenon, but psychologists have not given the precise definition of it, and the mental mechanism of it has not been revealed. According to the roles of cognitive process and emotional process in schadenfreude, this paper classifies schadenfreude into situation-reactive schadenfreude and attitude-projective schadenfreude. The first one meas that, in the misfortune which without serious consequence, people would feel pleasure if the situation is funny. The second one meas that, if the misfortune conforms to the observer's expectation after cognizing about the relevant factors of the misfortune, the observer would feel pleasure.This paper includes three experiments. The first one used two different films to compare 80 subjects' response to them. The results support the definition of situation-reactive schadenfreude. Because of the instinct of pursuiting happiness, people have the expectation of situation-reative schadenfreude.The second experiment asked the subjects to take part in a game on computer. The results showed that, the subjects who hoped that the antagonist would lose all the marks, felt more happiness. So the cognitive process is the key link of attitude-projective schadenfreude.The third experiment divided the 120 subjects into three groups, and let each group read a kind of story, then, compared their answers to the story. The results showed that observers tend to attribute the misfortune to the subjective reasons. If observers have good impression of the people who meet misfortune, they will feel more sympathy than pleasure. If observers have bad impression, the situation is the opposite. The aftermath of the misfortune also impact the degree of observers' feeling.