Open AccessThere Is No Joy like Malicious Joy: Schadenfreude in Young Children
Author(s) -
Simone G. ShamayTsoory,
Dorin Ahronberg-Kirschenbaum,
Nirit BaumingerZviely
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0100233
Subject(s) - jealousy , inequity aversion , psychology , pleasure , misfortune , social psychology , developmental psychology , inequality , neuroscience , philosophy , mathematics , mathematical analysis , linguistics , narrative
Human emotions are strongly shaped by the tendency to compare the relative state of oneself to others. Although social comparison based emotions such as jealousy and schadenfreude (pleasure in the other misfortune) are important social emotions, little is known about their developmental origins. To examine if schadenfreude develops as a response to inequity aversion, we assessed the reactions of children to the termination of unequal and equal triadic situations. We demonstrate that children as early as 24 months show signs of schadenfreude following the termination of an unequal situation. Although both conditions involved the same amount of gains, the children displayed greater positive expressions following the disruption of the unequal as compared to the equal condition, indicating that inequity aversion can be observed earlier than reported before. These results support an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion and indicate that schadenfreude has evolved as a response to unfairness.