Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Creation Moment 3/9/2016 - Cause of Schadenfreude

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9
".... with the results of a study led by Australian psychologist Norman Feather, ...People reported feeling much happier when the
overachiever was punished than when the average Joe was.
What these scenarios inspire is schadenfreude, German for “joy-pain,” the primal pleasure in another’s misfortune. “To savor schadenfreude is diabolic,” Schopenhauer once said.  
But research shows that rejoicing in the failures of others is not inspired by cruelty so much as status. When enviable people fall, we feel smarter, more entitled, or morally superior in comparison, says Richard Smith, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky and the author of The Joy of Pain.
Schadenfreude may have its roots in the motivation to increase social stature and to punish unfairness. So how can we explain the fact that many of us feel guilty about delighting in the downfall of others, ..... “Gratitude runs counter to envy,” he explains, “and envy causes schadenfreude.”
PsychologyToday

We were not created with Schadenfreude...(at the creation---and God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:25) but rather it is the result of our sinful, prideful nature....
 (....pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. Proverbs 8:13)