Schadenfreude - which literally means "joy-from-evil" in German - is the feeling of pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. It is a "poorly understood" emotion, according to a group of psychologists from Emory University in the US, and in their review article, New Ideas in Psychology, proposes a new "tripartite" model of schadenfreude, based on the idea that deeply buried fears about one's own survival can encourage us to see others as “subhuman”—not fully human. Shensheng Wang and colleagues Scott Lilienfeld and Philippe Rochat draw on evidence from three decades of social, evolutionary, personality, and clinical research on Schadenfreude. They begin by identifying three distinct but related subforms of emotion - aggression, competition, or justice - all of which have deep roots and unfold in the development of infants and children. Aggression-related Schadenfreude stems from a sense of social identity that develops in infancy. Strengthening one's own social group can entail aggression towards others, and "Schadenfreude aggression" is the type that supporters of one football team experience when the other team (not necessarily the one currently playing) loses. Rivalry and Schadenfreude are related to some extent, but are rooted in personal competition - the desire to do better than your peers. Envy may play a role in this, and Vance's team observed that Schadenfreude and Envy emerge around the age of 7 (in fact, the scientists found jealousy and subsequent Schadenfreude towards the object of that jealousy as early as age 2). The third subformation of Schadenfreude is “fairness-based” and is rooted in perceived fairness, which also develops in early childhood. Taking joy in the failure of a high-ranking individual who succeeds but who cheats in business and is later exposed and humiliated would fall into this category. Researchers note that we all have different tendencies to feel Schadenfreude. For example, there is evidence that people with low self-esteem are more likely to perceive other people's success as a threat to their self-worth and, as a result, are more likely to experience Schadenfreude. People who are more prone to the "dark triad" of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, as well as sadism, are also more likely to feel Schadenfreude. All of these personality traits have been associated with dehumanization—perceiving another person or group members as less than human—“subhuman,” denying others at least some of the attributes that make us all human. “One possibility is that When people experience Schadenfreude, they undergo [temporarily] a process similar to that experienced by people with high levels of psychopathic personality traits: motivated by certain situational and, to a lesser extent, dispositional variables, the perceiver tends to dehumanize the victim, temporarily losing the motivation to show intelligence victims as a psychopath," they write. In fact, they argue, the process of dehumanization "may underlie this emotion." » people towards Schadenfreude, while the perception of what other people think and feel pulls them away from Schadenfreude. “We argue that this motivational model of Schadenfreude will help integrate its multiple dimensions and offer a heuristic framework for embedding Schadenfreude research in the context of theories of emotion,” they write. The debate about the moral character of Schadenfreude has a long history, going back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who denounced it as a malicious emotion. In their conclusion, Wang and his team write: “We encourage researchers to subject our theoretical model to rigorous tests so that they can either».