Do you rub your hands in glee if an acquaintance fails to land their dream job? Or chuckle when someone spills their coffee down their white shirt? If so, then it could be because you’ve got low self-esteem, according to researchers.
Enjoying someone else’s misfortune is known as schadenfreude and scientists from Leiden University in the Netherlands say that the lower your self-esteem, the more you’ll experience it.
‘If somebody enjoys the misfortune of others, then there's something in that misfortune that is good for the person,’ said study researcher Wilco W van Dijk.
Van Dijk and his colleagues drew their conclusions after testing 70 undergraduates by asking them to read two interviews, reports LiveScience.
The first was about an ambitious student who was aiming to secure a dream job. The second was a chat with his supervisor who revealed that his academic success had been extremely patchy and that he wouldn't be offered the role.
The volunteers were then given various statements and asked to what degree they agreed with them.
Their responses would measure their susceptibility to schadenfreude.
The statements included ‘I enjoy[ed] what happened to Marleen/Mark’ and ‘I couldn’t resist a little smile.’
Self-esteem levels had been worked out in a separate test before this stage of the experiment and the results show that those with a low opinion of themselves were happiest at learning of the student’s misfortune.
To add even more veracity to the study those with low self-esteem were tested again after they’d been given some short and intense positive thinking exercises – and their schadnfreude levels dropped.
Van Dijk told LiveScience: ‘I think when you have low self-esteem, you will do almost anything to feel better, and when you're confronted with the misfortune of others you'll feel schadenfreude.
‘In this study, if we give people something to affirm their self, then what we found is they have less schadenfreude - they don't need the misfortune of others to feel better anymore.’如果你认识的一个人没能获得梦想的工作，你是否洋洋自得呢？或者在某人把咖啡溅到白衬衫上时，你是否暗自发笑？研究人员说，如果是这样，那是因为你感到自卑。
因为别人的不幸而快乐就是指幸灾乐祸。来自荷兰莱顿大学的科学家说，你越自卑，就越会幸灾乐祸。
研究人员维尔科•W•凡·迪吉克说：“如果某人因别人的不幸而感到高兴，那么别人遭受的不幸当中一定包含有利于这个人的地方。”
据“生活科学网站”报道，凡·迪吉克和他的同事在测试了70个大学本科生之后得出了这一结论。他们让本科生阅读两份访谈录。
第一份访谈是关于一个想获得梦想工作的野心勃勃的学生。第二份访谈是该学生和导师间的谈话，谈话揭示出他的学业成绩起伏很大，他将不能获得想要的工作。
研究人员向志愿者们展示了各种言论，并问他们在多大程度上同意这些言论。
从他们的反应可衡量出他们幸灾乐祸的程度。
这些言论包括“我对马琳/马克遭遇的事情感到高兴”和“我忍不住感到一丝窃喜”。
在进行这一实验前，已经通过单独测试测量出他们自尊心的强弱。结果显示，那些自卑的人在知道该学生的不幸后是最高兴的。
为了增强这一研究的真实性，研究人员在让那些自卑的人做了一些简短、强度大的正面思维训练后，又对他们做了一次测试，这次他们的幸灾乐祸程度下降了。
凡·迪吉克告诉“生活科学网站”说：“我认为当你自卑时，你几乎会做任何能让你感觉好起来的事情，因此在你知道他人遭遇不幸时，你会幸灾乐祸。”
“在这一研究中，如果我们向人们提供一些能让他们肯定自己的东西，我们就会发现他们就不会那么幸灾乐祸——他们不再需要用他人的不幸来让自己感觉好一些。”