Feeling happy at the expense of someone else’s losses is an emotion that psychologists refer to as schadenfreude, a German word combining the words harm (schaden) and joy (freude). Although this is a common enough emotion, is it inevitable that people take pleasure in the harm that befalls others?

Perhaps you hear that a small electrical fire destroyed your neighbor’s kitchen. Isn’t it likely that you would feel sympathetic toward them rather than triumphant?

• Social comparisons are at the heart of people's emotional responses to other people's (mis)falls
• If the person you're comparing yourself to unfavourably has a desirable outcome, you'll experience envy.
• You'll feel sympathy because you can "look down" at the other person without feeling threatened by their superiority over you.
• At the other end of the spectrum, you will feel what the German authors call "happy-for-ness" when you don't see someone as having qualities more desirable than your own.

A plethora of studies have shown that individuals do not like inequality, also known as inequity aversion.

The farther away someone's relative rank moves from your own, the worse you will feel.

Emotional reactions to other people's successes or failures exist on a sliding scale.

You'll feel envious of a winner, then, who ranks higher than you in some way, as this individual threatens "not only comparative concerns but also self-esteem".

• When you see someone get what you would like to have, such as the opportunity to join that outdoor gathering, ask yourself why this matters so much.
• If you feel that your upward social comparison process is being set into motion, you can then start to bring it back down to erase your inequity aversion.
• Feeling joy in other people’s misery doesn’t have to be an inevitable outcome of the social comparison process. By understanding the full dimensions of the FOE model, you can move yourself toward the fulfilling end of the emotional continuum.