Leyens, J.-Ph., Cortes, B. P., Collange, J., & de Renesse, E.
Humanizing outgroups does not lead to stress but to Schadenfreude
In the present set of studies, we speculated that attributions of uniquely human emotions to ingroup and outgroup members would create an emotional burden that would reduce people’s well-being. This hypothesis proved to be incorrect. In fact, the more uniquely human negative emotions participants attributed to the outgroup, the better they felt. The contrary happened for positive uniquely human emotions: the more positive attributions to the outgroup, the worse participants felt. No such effect was obtained on the ingroup or when non-uniquely human emotions were at stakes. We discuss our findings in the light of the literature on Schadenfreude.
