Partisan schadenfreude: what it is and how it affects politics

Partisan schadenfreude takes the form of voters choosing the option that is most detrimental to their opponent.

In some contexts of society, groups of very different and sometimes even totally opposite tendencies are formed.

But in some cases, as is the case at the political level, these differences translate into real hatred between some people. Then phenomena such as partisan schadenfreude arise.that we are going to analyze in this article to know its operation and causes.

What is partisan schadenfreude?

To understand what is the partisan schadenfreude, first of all we must stop for a moment to understand what the first element of this expression means, that is, the word "schadenfreude". This term is German and refers to the experience of joy or satisfaction on the part of a person or group because of the suffering or problems of someone outside him or her or them..

Therefore, this word refers to the pleasure or positive emotion that an individual would be feeling as a result of being aware of the humiliation or Pain of others. It would be a concept close to sadism. An approximate translation in Spanish would be regodeo or regodearse. In any case, we are talking about the opposite of compassion for other people.

Continuing with the characteristics of the first term of partisan schadenfreude, we should know that this emotion is more frequent in children, although this does not mean that adults do not experience it on certain occasions, as we will see later. What is true is that adults are more adept at concealing this feeling, as it is not socially accepted in many areas.

Etymologically, the word schadenfreude literally means joy (freude) at the harm (schaden).. There is a Greek term that attempts to make a literal translation of this German word, and it is epicaricacia. The German philosopher Schopenhauer already mentioned the concept schadenfreude, stating that envy was a natural feeling in man, but the enjoyment of the evil of others was something monstrous.

Let us now turn to the second part of the expression partisan schadenfreude. The concept of partisan originally referred to civilians who organized themselves into militias to fight against an army. But a more modern meaning would be those people who fervently follow the ideals of a political party. In fact, another possible expression for partisan schadenfreude could be partisan schadenfreude.

After this first approach to both terms we are now ready to join both definitions to reach the full meaning of this concept, which would be the enjoyment of the misfortunes suffered by the members of the political party of the opposite sign to that of the person who experiences it. In other words, it is the satisfaction that a person feels when a political member or supporter of the rival party is involved in a misfortune or humiliation..

• You may be interested in, "What is Political Psychology?"

Partisan schadenfreude in American politics.

In order to delve deeper into the implications of this peculiar phenomenon that is partisan schadenfreude, we are going to focus on a recent study about its presence in some voters of American parties, traditionally Republicans and Democrats.

This study, carried out by researchers Webster, Glynn and Motta, asks whether US voters fall into the so-called partisan schadenfreude and, if so, what influences it has on their feelings and decisions at the electoral level. To this end, the opinions on four major issues affecting the 2020 elections were analyzed..

These blocks were, in the first place, everything related to health care. Then, the proposals concerning taxes. The third theme studied was that which had to do with policies to combat climate change. And finally, the entire block concerning the measures taken to combat the global pandemic of COVID-19 was studied.

By studying voter attitudes in these four areas, the authors concluded that there was partisan schadenfreude in the most extreme positions in each bloc. In other words, people who held a polarized opinion on one of these issues usually expressed enjoyment in the suffering of people who thought the exact opposite..

Another revealing fact of the study is that those individuals who manifested partisan schadenfreude were more likely to express their political convictions as well as their favorite candidate than those more moderate voters who did not fall into such emotions of enjoying the misfortune of others.

Likewise, these people are more likely to go to the polls to exercise their right to vote. Moreover, one of the most striking findings of this study is that voters who indulge in partisan schadenfreude usually prefer the candidate whose policies are somehow guaranteed to cause the most harm to voters of the opposite persuasion.

In other words, those voters identified with partisan schadenfreude will always choose the option in which they believe they are most likely to cause harm, disgrace, or humiliation to all those supporters of the choose the option in which they believe they are most likely to cause harm, disgrace or humiliation to all those supporters of the political party opposed to the one they advocate..... A sample of the extreme polarization that governs the thoughts and behaviors of these individuals.

In statistical terms, it seems that between 5% and 15% of voters accept such aggressive policies that seek to harm the rival group. Therefore, that is the approximate percentage of individuals who practice partisan schadenfreude, or what is the same, the enjoyment of the ailment of the follower of the opposing political party.

There are basic human motivations, and the pursuit of pleasure is one of them. Partisan schadenfreude is a mechanism that activates pleasure brain circuits in the individuals who are feeling it. Going back to the studies on US voters, it seems that some time ago the pleasure they got came from their party's triumphs.

But in recent years the situation has become polarized. That's when the concept of partisan schadenfreude has come into play and the percentage of voters who enjoy their rival's failures more than their own triumphs. Therefore, these people will experience more pleasure if the opposing party fails to get a law passed, as opposed to the possibility that their party will get the support for a certain project..

Schadenfreude in sport

We have explored the presence of the phenomenon of partisan schadenfreude, i.e., pleasure at the failure or pain of the opponent, in the realm of politics. But this is by no means the only context in which we can observe this effect. One of the scenarios in which it is most visible is undoubtedly that of sports, which is not without its paradoxes.

Indeed, in certain sports, and especially among fans of teams with a certain historical rivalry, a sort of partisan schadenfreude can be observed, whereby each one enjoys practically more the defeats and humiliations suffered by the rival team than the victories of his own.

Logically, this feeling is magnified and reaches its peak when both teams face each other in a direct duelespecially if this match is crucial for the achievement of a competition. In such cases, partisan schadenfreude can even lead to physical violence among the most radical fans, so it is not unusual for intense police surveillance to be required to prevent incidents.

Another study conducted in the United States analyzed the behavior of baseball fans, especially those who supported the Yankees and those who supported the Red Sox. In this case, physical reactions were studied, and more specifically the activation of different parts of the brain in different situations related to their team and the rival.

It was observed that the ventral striatum of the brain was activated in the face of either the victory of one's own team or the defeat of the rival. On the contrary, if the defeat of the home team or the victory of the opponents was witnessed (note that these are comparable events for these fans), such activation was detected in the insula and in the anterior cingulate cortex.

Not only that, but in the first of the cases, the level of activation detected for the cases of victory of one's own team as well as defeat of the opponents, and thus of partisan pleasure or schadenfreude, was observed to be a high correlation with the probability that these individuals were capable of carrying out an aggression on a supporter of the opposing team, according to their own self-report.

Bibliographical references:

• Cikara, M., Botvinick, M.M., Fiske, S.T. (2011). Us versus them: Social identity shapes neural responses to intergroup competition and harm. Psychological science.
• Leach, C.W., Spears, R., Branscombe, N.R., Doosje, B. (2003). Malicious pleasure: Schadenfreude at the suffering of another group. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Smith R.H., Turner T.J., Garonzik R., Leach C.W., Urch-Druskat V., Weston C.M. (1996). Envy and Schadenfreude. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
• Webster, S.W., Glynn, A.N., Motta, M.P. (2021). Partisan Schadenfreude and the Demand for Candidate Cruelty.