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Empathy or schadenfreude? Exploring observers’ differential responses to abusive supervision

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Abstract

Witnessing abusive supervision is pervasive in the workplace. Intuitively, observers should respond with empathy. Drawing on appraisal theory of emotion, however, we propose that observers’ emotional and behavioral responses to witnessing abusive supervision depend on the perceived goal competitiveness between observers and victims. Specifically, when perceived goal competitiveness is high or made salient, observed abusive supervision is positively associated with observers’ schadenfreude, which in turn decreases their helping behaviors toward victims. In contrast, when perceived goal competitiveness is low, observed abusive supervision is positively associated with observers’ empathic emotion, which in turn increases their helping behaviors toward victims. Data from one experiment and one multi-wave field study provide support for these hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and directions for future research.

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Notes

  1. Theoretically, empathic emotion is very similar (if not the same) with compassion. It is different from empathy, however, because empathy is merely an emotional response to others’ suffering without necessarily a desire to help alleviating such sufferings (for a review, see Jeffrey, 2016). Because our dependent variable is helping behavior, empathic emotion is a more appropriate choice of mediator than empathy.

  2. We suggest although schadenfreude and positive affect share the same positive valence, they are different in a number of ways. Most notably, their elicitors are drastically different. Schadenfreude is a social emotion that is associated with observing others’ experiences or encounters in the workplace. Schadenfreude is only elicited when individuals know that others’ misfortune is caused by third parties; that is, the pleasant feeling is an emotional reaction to passively seeing others’ misfortune rather than to actively causing others’ misfortune (i.e., gloating) (Feather & Sherman, 2002; Leach et al., 2003; Leach et al., 2015; Leach & Spears, 2008). Thus, observing others’ misfortune is a precondition for observers’ schadenfreude. However, others’ experiences or outcomes are not necessary conditions for people’s experience of positive affect. In other words, positive affect can be triggered by both others and oneself.

  3. It is plausible that participants in both studies might be unfamiliar with the word “schadenfreude.” We thus re-analyzed both studies’ data by excluding this specific item from the schadenfreude scale. All hypotheses remained supported and the effect sizes were virtually identical.

  4. We used a self-reported measure of helping behaviors because the helping behaviors in this context are target-specific. That is, we are only interested in the focal subjects’ helping behaviors toward the abused colleague. As such, it was logistically impossible to obtain an other-reported measure of helping behaviors in this context.

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  1. Sun Yat-sen Business School, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Chen Chen & Xin Qin

  2. Business School, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Kai Chi Yam

  3. School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

    Haixia Wang

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Chen, C., Qin, X., Yam, K.C. et al. Empathy or schadenfreude? Exploring observers’ differential responses to abusive supervision. J Bus Psychol 36, 1077–1094 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-020-09721-4

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