Do you secretly feel good when others stumble? 5 ways to make peace with this very human emotion
If you’ve ever experienced pleasure from people’s failures, well, join the rest of us. Here’s how to manage and make the most of your schadenfreude, says cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith.
I have a confession. Okay, several. I love daytime TV. I smoke, even though I officially gave it up years ago. I’m often late, and I usually lie about why. And sometimes I feel good when others feel bad.
There’s no word for this grubby delight in English, so we use the German word schadenfreude (pronounced SHAH-den-froy-da) — schaden means damage or harm, and freude means joy or pleasure. Damage-joy.
Today schadenfreude is all around us. It’s in the way we do politics, treat celebrities, even in YouTube fail videos. I’m a cultural historian who focuses on emotions, and studying schadenfreude has made me realize how large a role it plays in our lives. I’ve become so much more attuned to it now. When I feel twinge of excitement at someone else’s misery, I try to catch it like a spider under a glass to peer at it more closely before I settle, inevitably, into that familiar sour aftertaste of self-disgust.
What, if anything, ought one to do with schadenfreude? I’m not a psychologist or a moralist, and I’m certainly not a self-help guru. But after spending so much time reflecting on it, I’ve — more or less — made my peace. Here is how you can reframe your understanding of schadenfreude.
