Real-life schadenfreude events: No correlation with personality traits

The Relationship Between Personality and Schadenfreude in Hypothetical Versus Live Situations. Keegan D. Greenier. Psychological Reports, https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294117745562

Abstract: This study sought to investigate how individual differences are related to schadenfreude (pleasure derived from another’s misfortune) by replicating past findings and extending them to additional personality traits. Because most past research on schadenfreude has relied heavily on the use of reactions to hypothetical scenarios, an attempt was made to demonstrate external validity by also including a reaction to a live event (confederate misfortune). For the scenarios, schadenfreude was positively correlated with the Dark Triad and just world beliefs; negatively correlated with empathy and agreeableness; and uncorrelated with dispositional envy, self-esteem, or the remaining Big Five traits. For the live event, no personality traits were correlated with schadenfreude, suggesting responses to hypothetical situations may not be representative of real-life schadenfreude events.

Keywords Schadenfreude, empathy, Dark Triad, agreeableness, just world beliefs, envy, self-esteem, five-factor model