Taking Pleasure at Another's Misfortune: The Implicit Schadenfreude of Disaster Spectators

Abstract

Implicit Schadenfreude of disaster spectators, with augmentation of implicit self-esteem and higher reward responsiveness as indicators, and the influence of insecurity and masculinity was explored in two studies. Both studies were conducted under conditions without any clearly legitimizing factors. Experimental (priming with disaster video) and control (priming with neutral video) groups were compared using the Implicit Association Test in Study 1, the results of which showed augmentation of implicit self-esteem in the experimental group. In Study 2, participants who read and believed a fabricated news report of fire disaster via a local area network website showed higher reward responsiveness in a reward-based signal-detection task. Other results showed that insecurity negatively predicted the augmentation of implicit self-esteem and reward responsiveness, while masculinity only negatively predicted the augmentation of implicit self-esteem.

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