幸災樂禍全因自卑心作祟
Do you rub your hands in glee if an acquaintance fails to land their dream job? Or chuckle when someone spills their coffee down their white shirt? If so, then it could be because you’ve got low self-esteem, according to researchers.
Enjoying someone else’s misfortune is known as schadenfreude and scientists from Leiden University in the Netherlands say that the lower your self-esteem, the more you’ll experience it.
‘If somebody enjoys the misfortune of others, then there's something in that misfortune that is good for the person,’ said study researcher Wilco W van Dijk.
Van Dijk and his colleagues drew their conclusions after testing 70 undergraduates by asking them to read two interviews, reports LiveScience.
The first was about an ambitious student who was aiming to secure a dream job. The second was a chat with his supervisor who revealed that his academic success had been extremely patchy and that he wouldn't be offered the role.
The volunteers were then given various statements and asked to what degree they agreed with them.
Their responses would measure their susceptibility to schadenfreude.
The statements included ‘I enjoy[ed] what happened to Marleen/Mark’ and ‘I couldn’t resist a little smile.’
Self-esteem levels had been worked out in a separate test before this stage of the experiment and the results show that those with a low opinion of themselves were happiest at learning of the student’s misfortune.
To add even more veracity to the study those with low self-esteem were tested again after they’d been given some short and intense positive thinking exercises – and their schadnfreude levels dropped.
Van Dijk told LiveScience: ‘I think when you have low self-esteem, you will do almost anything to feel better, and when you're confronted with the misfortune of others you'll feel schadenfreude.
‘In this study, if we give people something to affirm their self, then what we found is they have less schadenfreude - they don't need the misfortune of others to feel better anymore.’如果你認識的一個人沒能獲得夢想的工作，你是否洋洋自得呢？或者在某人把咖啡濺到白襯衫上時，你是否暗自發笑？研究人員說，如果是這樣，那是因爲你感到自卑。
因爲別人的不幸而快樂就是指幸災樂禍。來自荷蘭萊頓大學的科學家說，你越自卑，就越會幸災樂禍。
研究人員維爾科•W•凡·迪吉克說：“如果某人因別人的不幸而感到高興，那麼別人遭受的不幸當中一定包含有利於這個人的地方。”
據“生活科學網站”報道，凡·迪吉克和他的同事在測試了70個大學本科生之後得出了這一結論。他們讓本科生閱讀兩份訪談錄。
第一份訪談是關於一個想獲得夢想工作的野心勃勃的學生。第二份訪談是該學生和導師間的談話，談話揭示出他的學業成績起伏很大，他將不能獲得想要的工作。
研究人員向志願者們展示了各種言論，並問他們在多大程度上同意這些言論。
從他們的反應可衡量出他們幸災樂禍的程度。
這些言論包括“我對馬琳/馬克遭遇的事情感到高興”和“我忍不住感到一絲竊喜”。
在進行這一實驗前，已經通過單獨測試測量出他們自尊心的強弱。結果顯示，那些自卑的人在知道該學生的不幸後是最高興的。
爲了增強這一研究的真實性，研究人員在讓那些自卑的人做了一些簡短、強度大的正面思維訓練後，又對他們做了一次測試，這次他們的幸災樂禍程度下降了。
凡·迪吉克告訴“生活科學網站”說：“我認爲當你自卑時，你幾乎會做任何能讓你感覺好起來的事情，因此在你知道他人遭遇不幸時，你會幸災樂禍。”
“在這一研究中，如果我們向人們提供一些能讓他們肯定自己的東西，我們就會發現他們就不會那麼幸災樂禍——他們不再需要用他人的不幸來讓自己感覺好一些。”
