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Abstract

The present study aimed at examining the feelings of schadenfreude among adolescents. The main objective was to determine the relationship between social comparison, self-esteem, episodic envy, and belief in just world and schadenfreude. The mediating role of self-esteem and episodic envy and the moderating effect of belief in just world-others was investigated. The study also aimed to test a proposed model of relationships through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). For this purpose, sample was consisted on 650 adolescents. Participants were taken from both public and private sector colleges and universities. Convenient sampling technique was used to obtain the sample. After collecting the sample, the data was subjected to various statistical analyses. Descriptive statistics, alpha reliability coefficients, and correlation between variables were computed to test univariate normality of the data. As the study was also aimed at testing the proposed model of predictive relationship between study variables, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was executed through Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) 18. The significant findings appeared with minor differences in predictive paths among variables as well as the entire major proposed paths were found significant as social comparison leads to low self-esteem and episodic envy, which in turn leads toward schadenfreude. Similarly, model show the buffering effect of belief in just world in the relationship between episodic envy and schadenfreude. Finally, limitations, suggestions, and implications were discussed.