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Current research does not establish that animals feel schadenfreude—pleasure specifically at another individual’s misfortune. That is an evidence limit, not proof that animals cannot experience it. Researchers can observe behavior and physiological or neurobiological indicators, but animals cannot give a verbal account of what they feel.
What schadenfreude means—and what it does not mean
Schadenfreude is pleasure at someone else’s setback or misfortune. To show that an animal experiences it, evidence would need to support not just that the animal noticed another individual’s difficulty, but that the other’s misfortune itself brought the animal pleasure.
A reaction that looks like amusement or gloating to a human observer is not enough on its own. The same behavior may have different meanings depending on the species, individual, and situation. Nor does a response to an unequal reward automatically show pleasure at a partner’s loss: frustration, reward expectations, or other features of a test may explain what the animal does.
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How researchers study animal emotions
Subjective experience is not directly observable, so animal-emotion research draws inferences from behavior and, where possible, physiological or neurobiological indicators. Each measure has limits: behavior can vary with context, species, and individual differences, and an observable response does not map neatly to one human emotion.
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Researchers can improve interpretation by pairing different kinds of measures and testing what an individual prefers. Even then, evidence about an emotional response in a particular task is not automatically evidence for a specific named feeling such as schadenfreude.
What unequal-reward studies can—and cannot—tell us
One relevant area is inequity aversion: a proposed negative response to receiving less than a social partner. It is related to social comparison, but it is not a direct test of pleasure at another’s misfortune. The design of the task affects what a response can mean.
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| Task design | What the animal does | What the result can address |
|---|---|---|
| Accept/reject | The animal can reject an unequal offer, receiving nothing instead. | Whether the animal rejects an offer under those conditions. Rejection alone does not establish why it happened or demonstrate schadenfreude. |
| Choice-based | The animal actively chooses between distributions. | Preferences between the available options. Social comparison may be one explanation, but task features or other motivations may also matter. |
The distinction between social and non-social explanations is important: an animal’s response might reflect comparison with a partner, but it could also reflect frustration, expected rewards, or another aspect of the setup. A 2019 review of animal inequity-aversion studies discusses these task and interpretation issues.
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What a 2024 meta-analysis found
A 2024 meta-analysis by Oded Ritov, Christoph J. Völter, Nichola J. Raihani, and Jan M. Engelmann compiled primary data from 23 accept/reject studies: 60,430 observations involving 18 species. The authors reported no evidence for inequity aversion in the tasks they analyzed, including in preregistered subsets.
That result is specific to those studies and accept/reject paradigms. It does not settle every form of social comparison or animal emotion, and it does not measure schadenfreude. The broader record is also not uniform across species and studies: a review of dog research, for example, describes some studies reporting responses to unequal rewards and others not.
Why human findings do not answer the animal question
Human psychology research can help clarify how envy and schadenfreude relate in people, but it cannot establish that animals experience either emotion. A 2018 meta-analysis by Lange, Weidman, and Crusius found that the relationship between envy and schadenfreude in human research varies with how envy is defined and measured. Its findings concern people, not animals.
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What we can conclude
The sources reviewed here support studying animal emotions and social responses, but they do not provide a direct demonstration that an animal feels pleasure at another individual’s misfortune. Unequal-reward findings, social behavior, or an expression that looks like gloating should not be treated as proof of that specific subjective emotion. The evidence leaves the question open rather than showing that animals cannot feel schadenfreude.
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