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MALICIOUS PLEASURE [1 record]

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Record 1 2003-12-04

English

Subject field(s)
  • General Vocabulary
  • Sociology of Human Relations
  • Social Psychology
CONT

Lord Conrad Black's troubles have done for Canadians what Martha Stewart's financial embarrassment did for Americans. We are living through a Black-induced national festival of schadenfreude. The word is German (schaden = damage, freude = joy), and bigots claim it describes a peculiarly German feeling. Alistair Cooke says it's "an unworthy emotion, which may be why we don't admit to it by having a word in English."

OBS

Nietzsche guessed that feelings of inferiority intensify schadenfreude. Richard H. Smith, a University of Kentucky psychologist, proved, if experiments with students prove anything, the truth of what Nietzsche intuited. Smith studied reactions to the apparently true stories of two medical students who ruined their careers by stealing drugs from a school lab. One of the expelled students was wealthy, good-looking, and a natural scholar, the other was none of those things. Naturally, Smith's subjects felt more gleeful about the distress of the student who had looked like a great success (from Robert Fulford's chronicle).

French

Domaine(s)
  • Vocabulaire général
  • Sociologie des relations humaines
  • Psychologie sociale
CONT

On retire l'impression d'une enlissement inexorable. Les médias, aveuglés par leur Schadenfreude (malin plaisir), brandissent en gros caractères des comparaisons qui blessent. [www.commentaires.com/frame1.htm.]

Key term(s)
  • Schadenfreude

Spanish

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