Watching the misfortunes of others: Immoral behavior but not responsibility leads to schadenfreude about fail video clips.

This study investigated the effects of content characteristics and personality traits on the emotion of schadenfreude—pleasure at another person’s misfortune—in media reception. Building on appraisal theory, the research employed a three (deservingness) by three (severity of misfortune) experimental design and a multiple-message approach using fail video clips as stimuli. In total, 424 participants (mean age = 46 years, range = 17–74 years) watched three fail video clips and rated their level of schadenfreude for each clip. Schadenfreude is highest when a person experiencing a misfortune is portrayed as responsible and immoral, and when the harm is considered small. Our analysis showed that responsibility alone is not sufficient to evoke high levels of schadenfreude in fail video clips, and a morally negative evaluation is needed. Thus, it is important to distinguish between these two variables, which have been confounded in previous studies. Furthermore, schadenfreude was heightened among individuals with strong belief in a just world. Interestingly, individuals with high trait empathy reported more schadenfreude than individuals with low empathy when immoral behavior was present. For the first time, schadenfreude regarding fail video clips has been investigated using a multiple-message approach. However, not all clips elicited high schadenfreude levels. Future research could investigate the reasons for the popularity of fail clips that go beyond justice-based schadenfreude as a primary motivation.