People Commonly Take Joy in Others' Pain

According to a recent study, taking pleasure in other people's suffering is actually a common human phenomenon.

Do you ever feel guilty when giggling at someone else's pain?

The study showed that taking pleasure in other people's suffering is actually a common human phenomenon.

Princeton University researchers found that a "significant portion" of people might feel this way, especially towards those who are successful.

The researchers advocate reconsidering daily situations and specifically business organizations. Researcher Mina Cikara explained, "It's possible, in some circumstances, that competition is good. In other ways, people might be preoccupied with bringing other people down, and that's not what an organization wants."

Results for four separate experiments were self-reported or captured via electronic equipment measuring smiles or other biological changes. Participants reported how they felt about positive and negative events happening to people who generally fit stereotypical groups of pity, pride, disgust, and envy as well as general sporting rivals.

By and large, people took the most joy in seeing rich, prideful, despised, or otherwise rival people suffer and were most willing to inflict pain such as electrical shocks on them.