Andrew Badham 2024-10-25 13:49:02
How would you respond if a fellow student was caught cheating? Or if a coworker was caught doing something unethical? Would it make you feel good? And how would it impact your work? Well, from the results of this article published in October 2024, it seems it might boost your performance.
The researchers ran two separate studies: one with business students in which someone cheated on a test using a cell phone; and another in which a salesperson lied about the benefits of a medication. In both studies, there were scenarios in which the offender was either caught or not.
In the cases where the offender was caught, the participants experienced schadenfreude, a beautiful German word which means joy at other people’s pain. What’s interesting is how that schadenfreude effected their performance after the fact: it boosted their performance on a subsequent task.
So, what are the practical implications of these results? If you are a manager or leader, make sure that unfair or unethical behaviour is not only stopped, but publicly denounced. That way employees feel they are in a fair and just environment in which they can work hard.