When former University of Florida and NFL wide receiver Jacquez Green scrolled past arecent story by The Athletic about legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick’s single-season unraveling at the University of North Carolina, something must have caught his attention.
The article chronicled Belichick’s struggles in his post-Patriots career—a surprising sight for one of football’s most decorated coaches—and yet, instead of sympathy, much of the online reaction seemed gleeful.
“Ppl obsession with hoping others fail needs to be studied,” Greenposted on X, summing up what many quietly think but rarely say out loud.
As it turns out, scientists have been studying that very obsession for years—and psychology even has a word for it: schadenfreude. In German, the term literally means “malicious joy,” describing the peculiar pleasure people feel at another person’s misfortune. Research shows that this emotion becomes especially powerful when the person who stumbles is wealthy, influential, or widely admired.
The Psychology of Schadenfreude
Psychologists have long been fascinated by why success and failure evoke such emotional extremes. In a landmark 2013 study, Harvard’s Dr. Mina Cikara and Princeton’s Dr. Susan Fiske explored how social status shapes reactions to others’ setbacks. Their paper, “Their pain, our pleasure: Stereotype content and schadenfreude,” found that participants smiled more and reported less negative emotion when misfortunes befell high-status, competitive individuals rather than neutral ones.
As the researchers wrote, “stereotypes are sufficient to influence affective responses to targets’ misfortunes.” In other words, we’re more likely to feel pleasure when someone we envy loses ground. Schadenfreude, they found, isn’t simple cruelty. It’s a reflection of how our emotions are shaped by status and comparison.
That dynamic helps explain why Belichick—a six-time Super Bowl champion often seen as both genius and, by some, a villain—draws so much attention now that he’s struggling. His decades of dominance made him an icon, but also a target. When someone so successful falters, our reactions often stem less from hatred and more from relief. Their downfall, even briefly, makes the rest of us feel a little more equal.
The Envy Equation
Envy, psychologists say, is one of the primary emotional triggers behind schadenfreude. However, not all envy is the same. In a 2020*Frontiers in Psychology* study, researchers drew a line between benign envy, which motivates us to improve ourselves, and malicious envy, which makes us wish others would fail.
“Malicious envy drives people to lower the status of a superior other, while benign envy motivates individuals to increase their own status, often by increasing personal effort,” researchers write. “Malicious envy is associated with hostility, destructive social consequences, and resentful thoughts, whereas benign envy entails more positive thoughts toward the envied person.”
That darker version of envy tends to surface when successful people appear arrogant, undeserving, or unfairly advantaged, traits that can amplify public satisfaction when they fall from grace. From celebrity scandals to sports controversies, society often builds up its idols only to find entertainment in their collapse.
When Failure Feels “Deserved”
Another key ingredient in schadenfreude is deservingness or the belief that someone earned their misfortune. A 2005 experiment titled “Deservingness and Schadenfreude” found that people felt more pleasure when they believed a person was responsible for their own downfall.
Results showed that when people viewed the misfortune as the target’s responsibility, they reported higher levels of schadenfreude, and that this effect was mediated by the perceived deservingness of the outcome. Conversely, when a misfortune seemed arbitrary or undeserved, the pleasure people felt at observing it diminished.
A more recent 2022 paper in the*Journal of Experimental Social Psychology* reached similar conclusions: people were more likely to enjoy another’s setback if they viewed the individual as hypocritical or morally inconsistent, for example, someone who preaches fairness but behaves otherwise.
Belichick’s career offers a textbook case. His record-breaking achievements cemented his legacy as one of the NFL’s greatest minds. Yet for some, scandals like “Spygate” and “Deflategate”—along with his humdrum record following the departure of longtime Patriots quarterback Tom Brady—have led some to cast doubts about how much of that success was truly his own.
That perception was only deepened by The Athletic’s recent report, which highlighted growing criticism of Belichick’s coaching staff at North Carolina. The article pointed to accusations of nepotism and favoritism, noting his decision to appoint his son, Steve Belichick, as defensive coordinator and to hire longtime friend Michael Lombardi as general manager.
To many, these choices reinforced the image of a coach building his new venture on loyalty rather than merit, turning what might have been seen as an ordinary first-year coaching slump into a kind of poetic justice. When figures with complicated legacies stumble, public sentiment often shifts from sympathy to satisfaction, as if the scales have finally been balanced.
That same sense of balance underlies what psychologists call the “just-world hypothesis”—the belief that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. When reality defies that belief, it creates discomfort. Seeing an influential person fail can temporarily restore that sense of cosmic fairness.
A 2013 study published in the Australian Journal of Psychology found that people with strong just-world beliefs are more likely to experience schadenfreude when observing the downfall of those perceived as undeserving of their success.
“Individuals with high belief in just-world would perceive targets as more responsible for their own failures and subsequently also experience more schadenfreude,” researchers write. “Thus, experiencing schadenfreude can be one of the strategies to satisfy the belief in a just world and reduce the threat.”
The study’s authors note that this reaction often arises subconsciously: people aren’t aware they’re seeking justice—they feel satisfaction when “the scales” appear to balance.
Evolutionary Roots: Keeping the Alpha in Check
Some researchers argue that schadenfreude has ancient roots. In a 2006 paper,“The Evolution of Envy,” evolutionary psychologists Dr. Sarah E. Hill and Dr. David Buss proposed that envy and schadenfreude evolved to regulate dominance hierarchies in early human groups.
Taking pleasure in a leader’s failure, they suggest, wasn’t cruelty. It’s social control. By collectively celebrating the fall of an overbearing “alpha,” groups reinforced cooperation and fairness. That same instinct, they argue, lingers in modern life, from office gossip to celebrity takedowns to the schadenfreude surrounding a legendary coach’s decline.
Not Everyone Feels Schadenfreude the Same
Still, not everyone experiences schadenfreude the same way. Empathy, moral reasoning, and self-esteem all play significant roles. A 2017study in theEuropean Journal of Social Psychology found that people with low self-esteem were far more likely to feel joy at others’ setbacks than those who were confident and self-assured.
oort
“Past research has shown that self-evaluation threat and low self-esteem are key factors eliciting schadenfreude,” researchers wrote. “People with low self-esteem who have a chronic need to enhance their self-image experience more joy at the misfortune of other individuals than people with high self-esteem do.”
Interestingly, the same experiments revealed that feeling schadenfreude can temporarily boost one’s confidence, offering a brief hit of emotional self-validation. “Feeling pleased after another person experiences a setback increases one’sself-esteem, which is a crucial component of self-image,” researchers concluded.
However, researchers cautioned that this boost comes at a social cost. By drawing satisfaction from others’ failures, schadenfreude may reinforce competitive mindsets and erode empathy over time, a fleeting emotional payoff with potentially corrosive long-term effects.
These findings underscore the paradox of seeking pleasure in others’ misfortune. Those most obsessed with others’ failures are often those who feel least secure about their own success.
The Real Lesson Behind the Gloating
According to science, schadenfreude is not necessarily spite. It’s a mirror, reflecting our insecurities, our hunger for fairness, and our constant comparisons with those who seem to have more. It’s a complex, deeply human emotion, born from envy, fairness, and the fragile calculus of self-worth.
However, Jacquez Green was also right—our obsession with seeing others fail deserves closer study. One area where research is largely lacking is exploring whether people who resist schadenfreude—those who focus on their own growth instead of others’ downfalls—are ultimately more successful or fulfilled.
Athletes like Green may offer a real-world clue. At the University of Florida, Green earned first-team All-SEC and consensus All-American honors, helping lead the Gators to the 1996 national championship. Drafted in the second round of the NFL Draft, he went on to play five seasons in the league, amassing over 2,000 receiving yards and nine touchdowns. Today, he continues his career in football as the head coach at Manatee High School, a storied 5A powerhouse in Florida.
Objectively, Green’s path reflects sustained success in one of the most competitive meritocracies in America. And while it’s not a scientific study, his public bewilderment at why people fixate on others’ failures rather than their own improvement hints at a more profound truth: those who channel their energy inward—measuring progress by personal growth rather than rivals’ setbacks—may not only accomplish more, but find greater satisfaction in the process.
In the end, as decades of research remind us, the next time we catch ourselves taking quiet pleasure in someone else’s downfall, it’s worth remembering that the feeling says less about their failure—and far more about our own insecurities, values, and need for self-validation.
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email:LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com