In a quiet classroom in Córdoba, Spain, a teenager watches a classmate stumble and feel embarrassed — and feels a flicker of satisfaction. It seems small. But new research suggests that flicker, what scientists call schadenfreude, might be part of a larger pattern that, when combined with certain ways of thinking, can predict whether a student becomes a bully years down the road.
Researchers at the University of Córdoba analyzed nearly 2,000 elementary and secondary school students across 27 schools in Córdoba, examining three interlocking pieces: emotional responses (like that satisfaction at others' suffering), cognitive habits (how students justify hurting others), and actual aggressive behaviors in both physical and online settings. Published in the journal Psychology of Violence, the study was conducted by the Laboratory for Studies on Coexistence and Violence Prevention, known by its Spanish acronym LAECOVI.
"To understand why some young people end up attacking their peers, both physically and online, it's not enough to study aggressive behavior on its own," said Antonio Cabrera Vázquez, one of the study's authors. "We also need to understand if there are underlying emotional and cognitive factors driving these behaviors."
The team identified three distinct student profiles. Two showed low levels of bullying and cyberbullying. The third was more alarming: students who combined high levels of aggression with a tendency to feel pleasure at others' suffering — especially when that pleasure mixed with dislike or rejection of the victim.
But the most striking finding came from tracking these students over time. The researchers measured students' moral disengagement strategies — ways of thinking that let them justify harmful actions — and checked in again a year later. One strategy stood out above all others. Students who were more likely to blame victims and dehumanize them were nearly four times more likely to fall into that high-risk profile.
"If we curb the tendency to blame victims for what happens to them, or to think they deserve the harm they suffer, we may reduce the likelihood of students falling into higher-risk profiles," Cabrera Vázquez concluded. The implication is clear: intervention doesn't have to wait for aggression to start. Addressing the thinking patterns that precede it — particularly how students assign fault — could interrupt the trajectory before it escalates.
The study adds weight to a growing consensus in education research: bullying prevention works best when it addresses the whole person, not just the behavior. And for the vast majority of students — two out of three in this study — that trajectory never develops at all.