Her self-assessment may be a more enlightened version of the findings from Alexander H. Jordan, an adjunct assistant professor of business administration at Dartmouth. In a Stanford study suggesting we underestimate negative emotion in others’ lives (a misjudgment exacerbated by the cheery cast of most social-media personae), he and his co-authors wrote, “Some research suggests that downward emotional comparisons can improve people’s well-being.”

“It’s when a person’s typically rosy self-view is temporarily threatened that self-enhancement processes, such as finding people to ‘hate’ online, are triggered,” Professor Jordan said in an interview. “Research has also shown that people who are chronically unhappy or low in self-esteem are more concerned about social comparisons, upward or downward, in general.”

So, a common way to boost one’s ego through “emotion-regulation strategy,” he said, “is to look down on other people, such as reading a dumb blog to feel smarter or looking at photos to feel more stylish or a drama-filled Facebook page that might make you feel you’re well adjusted.”

It’s not schadenfreude, he noted; it’s more akin to gloating.