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For the first part of the study, we calculated the minimum number of participants (n = 46) for a correlational study (power = .80) with a medium effect size (r = 0.40). The hypothetical match group comprised 59 Argentinean participants (30 women), ranging between 20 and 60 years old (M = 31.15, SD = 10.18). These subjects completed an anonymous on-line survey (sent via Facebook and e-mail) including an hypothetical game circumstance. To diversify the sample we asked participants to send the survey to friends. There were no incentives for the participants to complete the survey. This study was completed during the 9th and 10th of December, 2015. For the second part of the study, during the 2016 edition of the Copa América, 120 Argentinean participants completed the same survey in which the same scenario was presented right after the event occurred in the real match. Participants completed the survey four days after the real match (12th of June, 2016). All responders were recruited by the same procedure as in the first part of the study. To avoid possible confounds of repetition effects, we only called participants who had have not answered the first survey. To this aim, we included a question about whether the participants had completed a survey about preferences in football from our laboratory and excluded those who responded affirmatively. In order to control demographic variables among the groups we excluded six participants that were outside from the age-range of the first sample (hypothetical match group). In our original design we wanted to conform a group of participant who have heard about the game or watched the repetition of the goal. Unfortunately, we only recruited 14 participants for this group and thus we decided to exclude them from data analyses. The final sample for the second part of the study includes 38 participants (23 women, M = 32.52 years-old, SD = 10.90) who hand neither watched nor heard about the game (did not watch the match group) and 61 participants (25 women, M = 31.52 years-old, SD = 9.34) who had watched the match live (watched the match group). No differences were observed between groups in terms of age (F(2, 155) = 0.23, p = .795), education (F(2, 155) = 0.03, p = .966), or gender (χ2 = 3.66, p = .160) (see details in Table 1).
Table data removed from full text. Table identifier and caption: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205595.t001 Means, DS and group comparison in demographics, predictors of schadenfreude and control questions. * Participants responded to a 7-point scale: 1 = Primary school incomplete, 2 = Primary school completed, 3 = Secondary school completed, 4 = College degree incomplete, 5 = College degree completed, 6 = Master’s degree completed, 7 = Ph. D. completed.
All participants gave written informed consent and the study was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee: “Comité de Ética del Centro de Educación Médica e Investigaciones Clínicas (CEMIC)” qualified by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, USA): IRb00001745—IORG 0001315.
Before the real game, the hypothetical match group responded to a short survey that included the following hypothetical football match between Brazil (Argentina’s long-standing rival) and Peru (a relatively less competitive third team): “Brazil and Peru are playing a football match. The match is decisive for the both teams’ chances of advancing to the next round. Brazil will make it to the next round with a draw or a win, and Peru will only classify if they win. The match is tied 0–0 when, close to the end, the referee concedes Peru an illicit goal. With this goal, Peru wins the match and Brazil is eliminated from the playoffs”. We asked participants how much pleasure they felt for the Brazilian team’s defeat (Direct schadenfreude, DS) and how much pleasure they felt for Peru’s victory (Indirect schadenfreude, IS). Six months after the first study, Brazil and Peru met. Nearly exactly as described in the hypothetical scenario, Brazil just needed a draw and Peru had to win in order to qualify to the next stage of tournament. Unexpectedly, 15 minutes before the end of the match the referee gave an illicit goal to Peru. This goal signaled the qualification of Peru to the next round and the elimination of Brazil from the tournament. This event received substantial media attention (see: https://goo.gl/rPxN7a). Four days after the real match we presented a very similar survey in a new population: “This is a real event that happened few days ago during the Copa América: Brazil and Peru played a match that defined who would advance to the next round and who would be eliminated. Brazil will make it with a draw or a win, and Peru will only classify if they win. The match was tied 0–0 when, 15 minutes before the end, the referee conceded an illicit goal to Peru that was not (was with the hand). With this goal, Peru won the match and Brazil was eliminated from the Copa America”. We included the same questions of the first survey. Furthermore, participants were asked to indicate whether they had (1) watched the game, (2) heard about the game or watched a replay of the goal, or (3) not watch the game. In both surveys we also included questions to assess relevant predictors of schadenfreude, as reported in previous studies [18,20]. We asked how much participants were identified with the Argentinean national team (in-group identification) and their degree of “loathing” for the Brazilian national team (out-group dislike). Responses were given in a 10-point scale (1 = not at all; 10 = very much). We observed no significant differences among groups in these variables (in-group identification: χ2(2) = 4.24, p = .120; out-group dislike: χ2(2) = 4.54, p = .79; see details in Table 1) suggesting that the three groups were similar regarding alternative explanations of schadenfreude. In the last part of the survey we included two control questions to test whether participants differed in their dispositional tendency to like unfair goals. To this end, we used a famous illicit goal scored by Diego Maradona (a famous Argentinean football player) against England in the quarter-finals of FIFA’s 1986 World Cup. This goal is known worldwide as “the Hand of God”. First, we asked whether participants remembered this goal. In each group, more than 80% of the sample remembered the goal (see details in Table 1). Second, we asked how much participants liked Maradona because of this goal and how morally acceptable his action was. We observed no significant differences in these measures among the three groups (Appreciation for Maradona: χ2(2) = .21, p = .941, and moral judgment about the unfair goal: χ2(2) = 2.78, p = .249, see details in Table 1). These results suggest that the three groups were also similar regarding their dispositional tendency to like unfair goals.
Since the ordinal measures were not normally distributed, we analyzed them via non-parametric statistics. First, Spearman’s Rho test was used to test the association between both schadenfreude measures in each group. Second, to contrast differences in schadenfreude among the three groups, we used a Kruskal-Wallis test and U Mann-Whitney test for pair-wise group comparisons. Third, to test whether schadenfreude was partially explained by the degree of out-group dislike and in-group identification, we conducted two separate ordinal regression analyses which included both schadenfreude measures as dependent variables and group as a categorical factor. To test whether the relationship between schadenfreude and its predictors varied between groups we analyzed the interaction effects between the group factor and each predictor. The α value for all statistical tests was set at .05. Cohen’s d (d) was used as a measure of effect size for significant effects. The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from: dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.tcbeisn.
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