@blockurator,

...it's simply joy over another person's misfortunes, and they may not necessarily be deserved. I have known people who do take pleasure in seeing someone else suffer simply because the universe dealt them a bad hand.

In the latter case (let's call it schadenfreude+), unconditional pleasure from pain, there would seem to be a substantial overlap with psychopathic symptoms. I wondered if this has been studied?

Psychopaths brains are actually wired differently. Intellectually, they know what they are doing is wrong, but there is little or no "emotional valence" attached to the knowledge. Normal people are riddled with guilt and shame at even imagining certain kinds of antisocial behavior and this acts as a behavioral brake. We know precisely where in the brain this all takes place (it's actually a three-point network of neurons). It would be interesting to image someone "high in schadenfreude+" to see if there's a match with psychopaths. Perhaps psychopathology is a spectrum and "schadenfreude+" is "psychopath light."

And with that, I conclude my rampant speculation. :-)

Quill