Empathy, Schadenfreude, and Intergroup Social Hierarchy: How Emotions Enforce and Attenuate Inequality
Sa-kiera Hudson, Professor
Business, Haas School
Applications for Spring 2025 are closed for this project.
Have you ever laughed when someone tripped, felt joy when someone faced the consequences of their actions, or celebrated when a rival sports team or political party lost?
When people think about the role of emotions in intergroup relations, they tend to think of empathy, commonly defined as the sensitivity to the emotional state of others, and a subsequent emotional response congruent with their perceived welfare (e.g., feeling pain due to someone else’s suffering; Batson, 1991). Although research has primarily focused on empathy to promote prosocial intergroup behaviors, lacking empathy is insufficient to motivate deeply harmful intergroup behaviors seen across social conflicts (e.g., discrimination, violence, etc.). In fact, feeling schadenfreude (i.e., feeling positively in response to another person’s pain), in conjunction with the absence of empathy, better predicts intergroup oppression than not feeling empathy alone (Hudson et al., 2019).
Rather than viewing empathy (and the lack thereof) as a single predictor of behavior, we investigate empathy and schadenfreude as dual contributors to enforcing and attenuating inequality. As a lab studying hierarchy and power, we are interested in inequality in group-based hierarchical organization. Specifically, we find that social dominance orientation (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)—a measure of the extent to which individuals prefer group based inequality— is an important precursor to empathy, schadenfreude, and intergroup conflict more broadly. For those who want to maintain hierarchical divisions between groups, i.e., those with higher levels of social dominance orientation, feeling schadenfreude and not empathy in the wake of the suffering of outgroups and low-status groups is congruent with a worldview in which the subjugation of members of these groups is not only justifiable, but perhaps even natural.
In sum, competitive contexts and worldviews can create situations in which individuals feel less empathy and more schadenfreude towards the suffering of members of outgroups and low-status groups in service of hierarchy maintenance. In current work, our lab is conducting experiments to expand theoretical models examining the importance of threatening status contexts. In collaboration with other researchers, we will be investigating the role that other, related emotions play in hierarchy maintenance (e.g., envy, gloating, pride), and behavioral interventions to induce empathy and reduce prejudice in education and the workplace (i.e., Empathable, https://empathable.com/).
Role: Students will act as research assistants (RAs) for Haas Intersectionality, Group Hierarchy, and Emotions Research (HIGHER) Lab, a social psychology research laboratory directed by Professor Hudson. As a part of this apprenticeship, students will assist in the production and publication of experimental social psychological research for a minimum of 7 hours/week, including literature reviews, survey design, data management, stimuli creation, and running experiments. Students will also attend weekly, in-person lab meetings (Thursdays, 10:00 - 11:00 AM) facilitated by the lab manager and meet at least monthly with their assigned mentor(s). At the end of the semester, all students will write a final paper and present a research poster summarizing their work.
Qualifications: An ideal candidate is interested in graduate school in Social Psychology, Management, and Organizational Behavior, or a career in behavioral research. Experience with SPSS/R (or other coding languages) is beneficial but not required. All technical knowledge necessary to do well in the position will be taught throughout the semester.
**Our lab is also recruiting an undergraduate RA for a related project on online incivility on Reddit who has proficiency in R and/or Python. Specifically, this RA will clean, analyze, and visualize data. Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP) is preferred, but not required. If you fit this descriptions, please indicate so on your application.**
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Teresa Campbell, Staff Researcher
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Related website: www.sakierahudson.com
Related website: https://www.higherlaboratory.com