IZUMI AKIHIRO

This study aims to develop a new measure, the Schadenfreude-by-Concern Inventory (SCI), to assess Schadenfreude as a personality trait and to evaluate its reliability and validity. Existing scales developed to measure trait Schadenfreude have not focused on the triggers that lead to the emergence of Schadenfreude. Therefore, in this study, a new scale was developed to measure trait Schadenfreude by focusing on the typical axes of concern (justice-type, rivalry-type, and aggression-type) observed before Schadenfreude arises. A total of 250 Japanese participants from a wide age range responded to the SCI, along with a set of questionnaires assessing belief in a just world, self-esteem, trait envy, group identification tendencies, and an existing trait Schadenfreude scale. Factor analysis revealed that the SCI has a two-factor structure: self-oriented-type Schadenfreude and justice-type Schadenfreude. The correlations between these factors and external variables showed that justice-type Schadenfreude was positively correlated with belief in a just world, while self-oriented-type Schadenfreude was positively correlated with malicious envy and negatively correlated with self-esteem. These results highlight the distinct nature of the two subtypes of Schadenfreude. The measurement of Schadenfreude using SCI may provide insights for future research into how the tendency to experience these two types of Schadenfreude relates to any decision-making and behavior.

A new method for measuring implicit self-esteem was developed: asking a person how much they like their name. One previous study which tested the validity of this name-liking measure with using mainly Westerner as participants found that the measure was positively correlated with the self-esteem Implicit Association Test (IAT), the name-letter task, and explicit self-esteem measures. In this study, we examined whether name-liking is an indicator of implicit self-esteem in Japan. In six studies, 646 participants completed the self-esteem IAT, Rosenberg self-esteem scale, and name-liking measure. Meta-analysis showed that name-liking was positively correlated with the Rosenberg self-esteem scale but not significantly correlated with the self-esteem IAT. These results suggest that, in Japan, name-liking cannot be used as a substitute for the self-esteem IAT, which is the most commonly used measure of implicit self-esteem.