"Through a series of four experiments – one involving the aforementioned sports rivalry – the researchers found that people are actually biologically responsive to taking pleasure in the pain of others, a reaction known as "Schadenfreude."
"A lack of empathy is not always pathological. It's a human response, and not everyone experiences this, but a significant portion does," Cikara said. "We need to remember this in terms of everyday situations. If you think about the way workplaces and organizations are set up, for example, it raises an interesting question: Is competition the best way to get your employees to produce? 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."
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-pain-gain-pleasure-misfortune-envy.html
Cikara & Fiske. (Sept. 2013). "Their pain, our pleasure: stereotype content and schadenfreude." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Abstract.
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