How the Feeling of Schadenfreude Impacts Choice Satisfaction and Consumer Decision-Making

At the 2007 Super Bowl, the New England Patriots lost to the New York Giants, destroying their undefeated record. The happiest fans weren’t the Giant’s, but the Jets. Jets fans took pleasure in the pain of their long time rival’s humiliating loss.

This feeling of joy when someone else is in pain is called schadenfreude. And it’s not a feeling that is limited to sports fans. Some people feel a hint of joy when a wealthy individual encounters a misfortune. Others can experience schadenfreude when a celebrity they don’t like is humiliated on national TV.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all enjoy a bit of schadenfreude from time to time in our daily lives. But how does schadenfreude impact us as consumers?

In this edition of Consumer Behavior Insights, we dive into the consumer psychology of schadenfreude. As our guide, we examine recent research by Dmytro Moisieiev of York St John University, Radu Dimitriu of Trinity College Dubin and the University of Southeastern Norway, and Shailendra P. Jain of the University of Washington. Their 2020 paper suggests that schadenfreude can actually increase choice satisfaction in consumer behavior.

Methodology: Schadenfreude and Choice Satisfaction in Decision-Making

Schadenfreude is present in marketing in many ways, and brand rivalries have a way of bringing out this feeling. If you’re a fan of Apple, you’ll probably experience a bit of schadenfreudic joy if you see a Microsoft user bringing in their laptop for repairs. If you’re a fan of BMW, you might feel some satisfaction if you see a Mercedes having car trouble on the side of the road. Same with Spotify users when their friend cancels their Apple Music account.

This research looked at a specific implication of schadenfreude: choice satisfaction. Choice satisfaction is how happy consumers are with a decision they made. Customer loyalty, product recommendation, and word-of-mouth are all positive outcomes of high choice satisfaction (Heitmann, Lehmann, & Herrmann, 2007).

Choice satisfaction can be affected by schadenfreude because consumers will misattribute their feelings to make themselves feel better about their choices. Therefore, it’s important to focus on schadenfreude and choice satisfaction when marketing a product or brand.

Here’s how the researchers probed schadenfreude impact:

Study 1: Positive effect of schadenfreude on choice satisfaction. Imagine a woman named Caroline. All you know about her is that she had recently bought a new pair of shoes for $50. Now, imagine having the choice between two wines of the same price. Caroline bought one of the wines and hated it. You buy the other. How satisfied do you think you’d be with your purchase? Now consider Caroline had bought $4,000 Christian Louboutin shoes instead. Would your satisfaction change?

Sixty participants were asked to read the stories about Caroline, select a wine, and then were asked about their choice satisfaction to explore how schadenfreude affects choice satisfaction.

Here, participants reported being more satisfied with their choice of wine after reading Caroline’s story. And in addition, had even stronger feelings of schadenfreude when she bought $4,000 shoes, compared with $50 shoes, indicating that high social class has an impact.

Study 2: Effect of schadenfreude on choice satisfaction only when a consumer is exercising a choice. Three hundred fifty-nine participants read the same Caroline story but were randomly assigned different versions of it to analyze the effect of schadenfreude on choice satisfaction after a consumer has made a choice. It also focused on the effect of schadenfreude if the purchases are not within the same product categories.

Here, there are two schadenfreude onset conditions. The first one is schadenfreude-after-choice. In this condition, Caroline either purchased inexpensive or expensive shoes and then participants picked which wine they wanted. Then, they were informed that Caroline either hated her purchase whether it was the expensive shoes or wine. In the schadenfreude-before-choice condition, participants were told that Caroline did not like her purchase of shoes or wine (depending on the story they were given) before they made a choice.

The results indicated that schadenfreude took place in both conditions (both within the product category, and outside of it) of this study. The researchers did not find an effect of schadenfreude timing on the overall amount of schadenfreude that they felt.

Study 3: Positive effect of the feeling of schadenfreude on choice satisfaction when it is felt about someone’s failure to purchase in a different product category. The last study had the same beginning of the Caroline story, but instead of wine, the participants picked a pair of earphones. After they were told that Caroline disliked her choice, the researchers measured schadenfreude and then gave the participants a small vignette to read. Randomly assigned, each of the 118 participants received one about the weather or social media reports of others’ failed relationships making them feel better about their own.

The results displayed that when participants were aware that schadenfreude feelings can be misattributed to their own, they did not apply their positive feelings of schadenfreude to their own choices.

The Results and Implications of Schadenfreude on Consumer Behavior and Decision-Making

Overall, this study suggests that consumers experience schadenfreude and are more satisfied with their choice when another consumer makes a bad purchase. However, the item that was purchased does not have to be in the same product category for the consumer to feel schadenfreude. Lastly, consumers must not know that their feelings are misattributed for schadenfreude to occur.

As we’ve discussed, it’s present in the consumer’s world all of the time. And thanks to this new research, we can appreciate its complexities: it has an impact on choice satisfaction AND can be avoided.

All in all, schadenfreude turns out to have a stronger impact on consumer behavior than we might expect. We don’t need to watch our rival team lose in the big game, we just need to watch a fellow consumer have a bad experience with a rival product. And in the end, it’s a feeling that all of us can experience—not just Jets fans.

Your Pop Neuro Consumer Behavior Insights

Consumers are impacted by schadenfreude on choices they have already made
Schadenfreude feelings are intensified if the other individual is of a high social class
Consumers can avoid misattributing their feelings of schadenfreude if they are aware of it

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References

Heitmann, M., Lehmann, D. R., & Herrmann, A. (2007). Choice goal attainment and decision and consumption satisfaction. Journal of Marketing Research, 44(2), 234–25

Moisieiev, D., Dimitriu, R., & Jain, S. P. (n.d.). So happy for your loss: Consumer schadenfreude increases choice satisfaction. Psychology & Marketing, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21399