Schadenfreude scholarly research: A scientometric and Bayesian analysis

This study employs a bibliometric network analysis to examine schadenfreude in scholarly research. The Web of Science (WoS) database was used to extract 264 peer-reviewed schadenfreude articles written by 533 authors representing 33 countries over thirty years (1993–2022). The aim was to identify the key scholars, major journals, and collaborative networks. Emerging trends or “hotspots” in schadenfreude research were also identified. The findings indicate that the most influential outlets publishing schadenfreude research are Personality and Individual Differences , Motivation and Emotion , and Cognition and Emotion. The study also revealed that there is a sparse collaboration in schadenfreude research at the author, organization, or international level, suggesting a potential “East–West” divide. Furthermore, the multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) results highlight the complexity of the domain. Finally, the Bayesian negative binomial regression results show that the topics deal with dark personality traits, esteem dynamics, intergroup dynamics and empathy, consumer behavior and brand perception, and sports fandom and brand competition garner more total citations compared to other topics detected. Our findings have important implications for researchers interested in schadenfreude research, as they provide a retrospective analysis of research output and identify trending topics and hotspots within the broad theme of this research area.