Why a coworker’s failure can feel satisfying

“At last, something went wrong for him too”

A colleague whose projects usually attract praise makes a visible mistake. Before compassion appears, you feel a brief flash of satisfaction. Perhaps you immediately feel ashamed of it. Or perhaps you think his failure is a fair consequence of his earlier behavior. This does not mean you are destined to hurt others. It points to an emotion worth examining precisely because it can suggest convenient, but not necessarily fair, justifications for what you do next. Schadenfreude is pleasure felt in connection with someone else’s misfortune or failure. At work, it may concern losing a prestigious assignment, having an idea criticized or suffering a fall in status. It differs from envy, which focuses on another person’s advantage, although the two experiences may be connected. Nor is it the same as relief that a threat has passed or satisfaction that a problem was resolved fairly. The defining element is pleasure that a particular person has fared badly. It is useful to distinguish satisfaction at another person’s failure from relief that the problem did not affect us. These reactions can mix, but they do not have identical meanings. Someone may also feel relief when an unfair practice is exposed without taking pleasure in a particular person’s suffering. Ask what exactly brought the satisfaction: an improvement in your own position, confirmation of an earlier judgment or a sense that justice has been restored. The point is not to pass an immediate moral judgment on the emotion, but to understand it before it shapes your behavior toward a colleague. The appearance of an unwanted reaction does not mean you must sustain it, display it or turn it into action that harms someone else.

What we know—and what remains a proposed explanation

A 2026 review by Dissanayake, Fernando and Biswas emphasizes that organizational research on this phenomenon is still limited. Drawing on psychology and social psychology, the authors propose an appraisal-based framework and point, among other factors, to justice, social comparison and identity. This distinction matters: some of the mechanisms presented are theoretical proposals, not a conclusively validated model of every employee’s behavior. Dissanayake et al., 2026. In practice, these perspectives can be treated as prompts for reflection. Did your colleague’s success make your own position seem worse? Do you interpret their mistake as restoring justice? Are you pleased because the failure happened to someone from a rival department? There may be more than one answer. The important thing is not to treat the first interpretation as indisputable fact. Feeling that someone “deserved it” may reflect genuine harm, but it may also reflect our need to justify our dislike.

An emotion becomes a problem through behavior

A brief internal reaction is different from publicizing the mistake, withholding necessary help or deliberately obstructing the repair. This distinction allows us to retain responsibility without moralizing. You can notice the satisfaction and still behave professionally: share information, help remedy the damage and refrain from turning the failure into a spectacle. This does not require pretending to feel warm toward the person. It requires separating your experience from your duties to the task and to another human being. Imagine that a colleague’s faulty analysis threatens a shared deadline. Withholding important information so that “he can see for himself” may also harm the client and the team. If that colleague previously took credit for other people’s work, the issue still deserves to be addressed—but separately. Fixing the current mistake does not mean condoning the earlier behavior. Keeping the two issues apart makes it possible to pursue fair rules without using someone’s failure as an informal punishment in the course of shared work. A competitive climate can reinforce such reactions when another person’s success is framed primarily as everyone else’s loss. If an organization constantly compares people, fails to explain recognition criteria and rewards individual victories at the expense of cooperation, a colleague’s failure may begin to look like a personal opportunity. This is one possible way of interpreting the situation, not a universal consequence of every bonus system. Still, it is worth asking whether goals genuinely require cooperation and whether the reward system undermines it. Asking people to be kind is not enough if everyday decisions teach them that helping a rival reduces their own opportunities. A conversation about emotions should therefore also consider the conditions in which employees judge one another’s successes and failures.

What to do with your own reaction

It helps to name exactly what brought relief. “I’m not the only person who makes mistakes” points to a different need from “At last he has lost his advantage.” In the first case, examine the standards you apply to yourself. In the second, examine your own goals and the rules of competition. Ask what an improvement in your situation would look like if it did not require someone else to fall. Reflection cannot switch off an emotion on command, but it can help you choose behavior less dependent on a momentary comparison. If genuine unfairness lies in the background, the process may need to be discussed: how credit is allocated, who gets access to projects or who is held accountable for errors. Pleasure at another person’s failure does not fix those rules. It may even distract from the source of the problem by offering a brief sense that the score has been settled. Separate the question “What do I feel toward him?” from “What should change in the organization?” The second usually offers more scope for lasting action.

How a leader can curb a culture of enjoying others’ mistakes

A manager should watch that public review does not turn into a spectacle of humiliation. If one person’s failure becomes an opportunity to elevate everyone else’s status, the team may start treating mistakes as currency in a competition. Discussing causes matter-of-factly, assigning clear responsibility and separating repair from ridicule all help. It is also worth recognizing cooperation across departments instead of building motivation solely around an image of the opponent. A shared result should not require emotional investment in someone else’s failure. A practical test of responsibility is what you do after noticing your satisfaction. Do you share the information that is needed, or hope your colleague makes another mistake? Would you judge the situation the same way if someone you liked had made an equivalent error? You do not have to force yourself into enthusiastic sympathy in order to maintain standards of cooperation. You can provide practical help, avoid spreading a humiliating story and return to your own needs. If the reaction stems from a sense of injustice, discuss that injustice rather than waiting for your rival’s next failure. Another person’s setback may bring momentary relief, but it rarely clarifies promotion rules, expands your own influence or resolves the conflict that created tension in the working relationship.

Satisfaction at another person’s failure may reveal tension around status, fairness or comparison. Feeling it does not determine what you do next. A useful step is to identify your own need and choose an action that protects cooperation instead of turning someone else’s mistake into a tool of retaliation.

Using Empatyzer to make sense of your reaction to someone else’s failure

Empatyzer can help you examine a difficult emotion without reducing you to a judgment about your character. In Talk to Em about yourself, you can describe the situation, separate the spontaneous reaction from your intended behavior and identify the issue that needs further attention. The Motivations tab offers another starting point for reflecting on the importance of recognition, status or security in the comparison. It does not, however, automatically explain the causes of schadenfreude. A practical goal of working with Em may be to prepare for a conversation about assessment criteria, development needs or unequal treatment. Ground that conversation in facts about your own situation, not in satisfaction at a colleague’s failure. Empatyzer does not assign blame or confirm that someone’s failure was deserved. It helps you organize your perspective and prepare a responsible response that does not damage cooperation and redirects attention to the true source of tension.