Disentangling sadism from schadenfreude as traits using latent construct modeling

Sadism represents a predisposition towards enjoying the suffering that an individual causes to others. This conceptualization of Sadism has clear overlap with schadenfreude—finding pleasure in others’ suffering. However, the relationship between trait Sadism and trait schadenfreude has gone understudied. Using exploratory and confirmatory latent construct modeling with a cross-sectional and diverse sample of 314 undergraduate participants, we found that the bi-factor model of Sadism and schadenfreude that best fit the data articulated Sadism as a sub-facet of schadenfreude. However, an EFA did not find the same relationship, and instead suggested a four-factor solution that split harm-enjoying traits into higher order Sadism and schadenfreude domains that each had lower-order facets—including a malicious component of schadenfreude that most closely abutted Sadism. Future research should seek to identify the mechanisms that translate a passive, schadenfreudic disposition into actual acts of Sadistic aggression.