When an opponent team made a mistake in an athletic match, when a boss I dislike was scolded by his boss, when a friend in a similar grade mismarked answer sheets, when a hotshot politician’s corruption was exposed, or when my rival was gossiped… we may find pleasures in them rather than feeling bad for them. Everyone might have experienced this.
Dr. Richard H. Smith, a professor of psychology in the U.S., defines the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others as Schadenfreude. He says this is human nature which comes from an idea that when people around us have bad luck, we look better. So he recommends we should refrain from it because if this mentality persists, we may wish others’ misfortune and even directly take action to mislead them.
The lower your self-esteem is, the more you are likely to be swayed by a superiority feeling and an inferiority complex that come from comparison with others. Therefore, we need the will to seek happiness from ourselves, not from others and have the flexible mind to pay attention to the situation of others’ misfortune and to empathize with them rather than to blame the person on the cause of the misfortune.