Hieronymous Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins, Envy (detail)
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Envy and Schadenfreude, envy and Schadenfreude, go together like a horse and carriage– but only when the person you envy who falls from grace is someone you consider to be a lot like you:
“When people fall from grace: reconsidering the role of envy in Schadenfreude“ Emotion. 2006 Feb;6(1):156-60 van Dijk WW, Ouwerkerk JW, Goslinga S, Nieweg M, Gallucci M Department of Social Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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. . . [E]nvy is a predictor of Schadenfreude when the target is similar to the observer in terms of gender. These results suggest that envy predicts Schadenfreude when people are confronted with the misfortune of a relevant social comparison other.
Sometimes brain lesion symptoms are the failure to recognize the emotions of others. Here’s a fascinating report on recognizing gloating (schadenfreude) and envy in others. Particular left hemisphere brain lesions impair recognizing gloating in others, whereas particular right hemisphere brain lesions impair recognizing envy in others (the abstract after the jump — also some really great ancient medical illustrations):
“The green-eyed monster and malicious joy: the neuroanatomical bases of envy and gloating (schadenfreude)”;
“. . [W]e tested the ability of patients with [brain lesions on the right hand side of the brain or on the left hand side] to understand ‘fortune of others’ emotions: envy and gloating (schadenfreude). . . While envy is an example of a negative experience in the face of another’s fortunes, gloat is thought to be a positive experience in the face of another’s misfortune. Whereas in schadenfreude and envy the emotion of the self and the protagonist may be opposite, identification involves matching between the protagonist’s and the observer’s emotions. . . . Furthermore, while patients with lesions in the left hemisphere were more impaired in recognizing gloating (a positive emotion), right hemisphere patients were more impaired in recognizing envy (a negative emotion). . .”
The neurological correlate to envy seems to be the left hemisphere region because those patients had difficulty recognize gloating — if they could recognize gloating, perhaps they would have been envious. The neurological correlate to gloating seems to be the right hemisphere, as those patients had difficulty recognizing envy in others.
I suppose this begs the existential question, can you gloat if no one knows or cares?
Or, perhaps the methodological question, were the patients asked to recognize the emotions in others whom they considered “like me”?
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