OT: Schadenfreude Article - People study this
If your interested in a discussion on schadenfreude
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/28/bad_things_should_happen_to_bad_people/
Non-political source material..http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199734542/?tag=saloncom08-20
Please remove the politics angle, most of this discussion is sports related, Salon decided to add in some political aspects to get clicks (Rush pic etc..)
An excerpt:
It may seem that our emotions follow from a narrow focus on our own team’s winning or losing. But the logic of Tajfel’s research suggests that it takes two groups to tango. The British boys in Tajfel’s studies favored their own group, but they also discriminated against the outgroup. The thrill of winning means that we have won and a competitor has lost. Interestingly, this can mean that winning away from home feels better than winning at home. This accentuates that the rival is now a “loser.” St. John noted this when describing how he felt while leaving Florida’s stadium, the “Swamp,” after Alabama had beaten Florida. Whereas the visiting Alabama fans seemed drawn together by the high of the victory, the losing Florida fans seemed to separate from each other, like wounded animals needing isolation. Away from the noise of the stadium, they could remove the now ridiculous-looking paint that they had applied fastidiously to their faces before the game. For a moment, St. John felt pity for these miserable creatures. But only for a moment, because when he received a hateful look from one of them, he belted out the Alabama victory cry, “Rammer, Jammer, Yellow Hammer,” with wild, unself-conscious abandon.
I don't think I'm even going to waste a click on it. A picture of Rush in an article purporting to be about sports. Oh sure, sign me up, I'll help.
one hell of a band!
It discusses schadenfreude in the context of sports rivalries. It's both relevant and interesting.
For a slightly different perspective...
Here's a sumamry of a study done in The Netherlands regarding the conditions under which people are likely to experience schadenfreude. They used academics as a vehicle, but I think the results might be generally applicable - this is a December 2011 article from LiveScience.com (LINK).
What they did here is have 70 students read a story about a student likely to land a great position, then a story from the student's supervisor about a severe academic setback for the student and assessed the results.
"Those with low self-esteem (assessed at the study's start) were both more likely to be threatened by the overachieving student, and to experience schadenfreude. However, the researchers found that regardless of self-esteem, those who felt more threatened by this student also felt more schadenfreude. The researchers thought that perhaps the reason for this was that schadenfreude was self-affirming for these "threatened" individuals."
Then they gave about half of the study group a self-affirmation boost and then asked those people to repeat the readings. That group was then less likely to take pleasure in the mishaps of the student.
If there is a tie-in perhaps between this and the article that the OP posted, it is in the discussion of how self-esteem is affected by group affiliation. I think that is definitely observable in sports sometimes. I would wager - and the author does touch on it - that fans who have a fair amount of self-affirmation (via winning perhaps, or the perceived strength of a rivalry) probably don't experience quite same level of schadenfreude in the defeat of other teams, although personal empathy certainly plays a role.
If you want serious psychoanalytical discussion of "schadenfreude" I'd suggest visiting an amateur psychologist message board or at least a Germanophile website.
Not that anyone cares here, but the author is a psychologist who published a book on this topic. There is discussion of politics in the last third of the article, but it doesn't seem to be slanted in one way or another. Believe it or not it's possible to discuss politics from a purely academic standpoint.
Either way, it's completely reasonable by the OP to ask people to look at the sports-related portions of the essay (which is at least 2/3rds of it) and ignore the rest. Especially when the "rest" isn't even controversial.
100% agree. I was not familiar with the magazine so I looked up their most current issue on line. One only needs to look at their table of contents to know which side of the political fence this periodical falls on and it definitely falls upon it hard.
It's just an exerpt from a book written by a psychology professor. The complete book is linked in the OP.
So I suppose the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are also off-limits? I just don't understand the notion that just because something is published in a publication with a poltical lean automatically means it's not worth reading, or that the article itself is even political.
It's clear that anyone who has issues with this post hasn't even attempted to read the essay, which is an excerpt from a book published by an academic.
There is no way the OP can be construed as being in violation of board policy since 1) the post itself isn't political (it's about sports and schadenfreude, two topics we hold dear) and 2) even the political part of the essay is an academic discussion.
It'd be tragic (and a little ironic) if a perfectly innocuous OP, calling for a bit of intellectual discussion on schadenfreude in sports, got locked because posters made it about poltiics and refused to actually read the damn thing and have an interesting discussion. Truly would be demonstrative of where this board has gone since the haloscan days.
Either way, it's completely reasonable by the OP to ask people to look at the sports-related portions of the essay (which is at least 2/3rds of it) and ignore the rest. Especially when the "rest" isn't even controversial.
I wasn't aware that the policy had changed. I can promise some interesting articles we can discuss portions of while ignoring the rest. I believe I'll start with a couple of articles by Ted Nugent. He's a sportsman, after all.
I agree. I too have wavered a bit into a fuzzy political area on this blog and was roundly chastised. While at first it stung, and I felt misunderstood, in hindsight I had to agree. I can get plenty of politics from other sources. Here, I just want Michigan sports and sports-related fun.
This interesting article makes many good points but the conclusion at the end is a bit simplistic. Eg “ schadenfreude, as natural as it is to feel, may be a kind of gateway drug, closing the door on compassion and encouraging darker emotions and actions.”
However, such so-called "darker" emotions have a bright side. For instance, we may have such emotions if we find that a rival has been cheating. We like to see opposing players, coaches, and teams "pay for" this cheating. If they get punished by the NCAA , the conference or the media, others may be a bit less likely to cheat in the future. That, in turn, can lead to better outcomes for the world of college football as a whole. In this sense, such "dark" emotions have pro-social effects. Indeed, antisocial personalities are impaired in part because they do not show the biologic evidence of reactivity to punishment (either to themselves or their competitors).
I've always thought the idea of schadenfreude is kind of sad. I think stuff like "Haaa go read their board it's hilarious they're so pisssseddd!!!' says more about you than those people.