'Schadenfreude': Do you Take Pleasure in the Suffering of Others?

It might not come as much surprise that some people take immense pleasure from the suffering of others, a term commonly referred to as "Schadenfreude" by psychologists. 

A recent study discusses just how this feeling originates and suggests the attitudes and feelings behind such an issue.

This research originated from an incident that came when researcher Mina Cikara wore a Boston Rex Sox hat in a Yankees game, and many individuals at the event began hurling insults at her.

Researchers measured the electric activity of cheek muscles in which they found that people had a broader smile when someone they envy met misfortune or discomfort.

"We were interested in the conditions under which people fail to empathize with one another and how, for some of those people, they experience happiness at another's expense," Cikar who is now an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a statement.

The second experiment had colleagues use functional MRI (fMRI) and self-reporting in order to discover whether participants were willing to inflict harm on certain groups.

"People were willing to hurt an envy target, saying, 'Yes, let's shock her,'" Cikara added. "We found that surprising because we weren't certain participants would self report that."

Study authors also suggested various scenarios in which they countered the stereotype of a certain individual that included a banker advising clients pro-bono.

"We need to remember this in terms of everyday situations. If you think about the way workplaces and organizations are set up, for example, it raises an interesting question: Is competition the best way to get your employees to produce? It's possible, in some circumstances, that competition is good. In other ways, people might be preoccupied with bringing other people down, and that's not what an organization wants," Cikara concluded according to Nature World News.

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.