Reactions to others’ misfortune on social media: Effects of homophily and publicness on schadenfreude, empathy, and perceived deservingness

an article by LewenWei and BingjieLiu (Pennsylvania State University, USA) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 102 (January 2020)

Highlights

• Misfortune disclosed by dissimilar others amplified perceived deservingness and inhibited empathy.
• Perceived deservingness mediated the effect of homophily on schadenfreude and empathy.
• Message publicness on social media moderated the effect of homophily on emotional and cognitive responses.

Abstract

Social media has become a popular venue for support seeking, which often involves self-disclosure about one's misfortune.

To examine how help-related emotions and cognitions as responses to such disclosure might be influenced by technological factors, we conducted a 2 (interpersonal similarity: low vs. high) x 3 (message publicness: private vs. moderate vs. public) between-participants experiment online.

Findings suggest that seeing disclosure about a personal misfortune from a dissimilar other, as compared with a similar other, elicited schadenfreude and inhibited empathy via heightened perceived deservingness among message recipients. Also, such effects were more prominent when the self-disclosure messages were visible within a given network of friends as compared to when messages were made completely public to everyone or exclusively directed to the observer.

Full text (PDF 13pp)

Labels:
homophily, message publicness, schadenfreude, empathy, perceived deservingness,

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