Schadenfreude (/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/; German: (listen); lit. 'harm-joy') is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. Schadenfreude (/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/; German: (listen); lit. 'harm-joy') is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. Schadenfreude is a complex emotion, where rather than feeling sympathy towards someone's misfortune, schadenfreude evokes joyful feelings that take pleasure from watching someone fail. This emotion is displayed more in children than adults; however, adults also experience schadenfreude, though generally concealed. Schadenfreude is borrowed from German; it is a compound of Schaden, 'damage, harm', and Freude, 'joy'. The German word was first mentioned in English texts in 1852 and 1867, and first used in English running text in 1895. In German, it was first attested in the 1740s. Though common nouns are normally not capitalised in English, Schadenfreude is sometimes capitalised following the German convention. Researchers have found that there are three driving forces behind schadenfreude: aggression, rivalry, and justice. Several studies have produced evidence that self-esteem has a negative relationship with the frequency and intensity of schadenfreude experienced by an individual. This means that the less self-esteem an individual has, the more frequently and/or more intensely they will experience schadenfreude. The reverse also holds true - those with higher self-esteem experience schadenfreude less frequently and/or with less emotional intensity. It is hypothesized that this inverse relationship is mediated through humans' psychological inclination to define and protect their self- and in-group- identity/self-conception.Specifically, for someone with high self-esteem, seeing another person fail may still bring them a small (but effectively negligible) surge of confidence because the observer's high self-esteem significantly lowers the threat they believe the visibly failing human poses to their status or identity. Since this confident individual perceives that, regardless of circumstances, the successes and failures of the other person will have little impact on their own status or well-being, they have very little emotional investment in how the other person fares, be it positive or negative. Conversely, for someone with low self-esteem, someone who is more successful poses a threat to their sense of self, and seeing this 'mighty' person fall can be a source of comfort because they perceive a relative improvement in their internal and/or in-group standing. Schadenfreude has equivalents in other languages (for example, German, Greek, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Arabic, Croatian, Hebrew, Bangla, Czech, Norwegian and Finnish), but no commonly used precise English single-word equivalent. There are other ways to express the concept in English. 'Epicaricacy' is a seldom-used direct equivalent, borrowed from Greek epichairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία, first attested in Aristotle), from ἐπί epi 'upon', χαρά chara 'joy', and κακόν kakon 'evil'. 'Tall poppy syndrome' is a cultural phenomenon where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticized because they have been classified as better than their peers. This is similar to begrudgery, the resentment or envy of the success of a peer. If someone were to feel joy by the victim’s fall from grace, they would be experiencing Schadenfreude. A 'Roman holiday' is a metaphor from Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, where a gladiator in ancient Rome expects to be 'butchered to make a Roman holiday' while the audience would take pleasure from watching his suffering. The term suggests debauchery and disorder in addition to sadistic enjoyment.