The Joy of Pain (13 page)

In
Chapters 1
and
2
, I stressed the importance of social comparisons in contributing to our feelings about ourselves and therefore the potential positive effects of downward comparisons—even if they come in the form of misfortunes happening to others. Social comparisons can also reveal the self-interested side of human nature. Becker argues this point as well:

[T]he child cannot allow himself to be second-best or devalued, much less left out. “You gave him the biggest piece of candy!” “You gave him more juice!” “Here's a little more, then.” “Now
she's
got more juice than me!” “You let her light the fire in the fireplace and not me.” “Okay, you light a piece of paper.” “But this piece of paper is
smaller
than the one she lit.” And so on and on. … Sibling rivalry is a critical problem that reflects the basic human condition: it is not that children are vicious, selfish, or domineering. It is that they so openly express man's tragic destiny: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe. …
³²

Psychologist Heidi Eyre and I did an experiment that captures some sense of how our reactions to events happening to others are anchored by our own relative experiences.
³³
Female undergraduate participants in our study thought that the purpose of the study was to evaluate ways students get feedback on exams. Another student participant would take an IQ test and then be given feedback about her performance using different methods (e.g., oral vs. written). Participants would observe this feedback and evaluate its effectiveness. The actual purpose of the study (revealed when the experiment was over) was to assess how the participants' own
relative
performance on the test would influence their emotional reaction to the other student's performance. To achieve this, we also asked participants to take the test, for the ostensible purpose of their being in a better position to appreciate the experience of the other student. And, as part of their evaluation of the feedback given to the other student, they completed a questionnaire tapping their own emotional reactions (such as “happy for” and “sad for”). In addition, we randomly determined
whether the participant and the other student appeared to have done well or poorly on the IQ test (again, at the end of the experiment, the actual nature of what was happening was revealed). We did not measure
schadenfreude
in this study. But it was clear from examining these emotional reactions that participants' sympathy for the other student when she failed, for example, was in part anchored by their own relative performance. Participants' feelings did not simply follow from the objective fact that the other student had “failed.” If she failed, participants were less sad for her when they themselves had failed than when they had succeeded. If she succeeded, they were also less happy for her when they themselves had failed than when they had also succeeded.

In sum, participants' reactions to the success and failure of the other student were partly dictated by their own relative performance and not only by the simple fact of the other student's success or failure. It was easy to feel sad for someone else's failure from the vantage point of one's own relative success. It was hard to feel happy for someone's success from the vantage point of one's own relative failure.

It is important to recognize that even participants who failed usually reported some sympathy for the other failed students—and some happiness for those students who succeeded. That is, they had mixed feelings. None of my suggestions about the self-interested aspect of human nature, let me emphasize once again, aims at cheapening other empathic motivations. I like the way that 18th-century Scottish thinker Adam Smith made a similar point:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasures of seeing it. … That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it. … The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.
³⁴

It is easy to marshal telling examples of empathy in human beings, and many researchers continue to explore this aspect of human nature.
³⁵
Our dependence on others at all stages of life alone suggests that empathy is itself a product of our evolutionary heritage. Overly self-interested people are likely to be rejected by group members. At the very least, human motivation reflects a complex interplay between concern for self and concern for others.
³⁶
But in trying to comprehend
schadenfreude
, the self-interested side of human nature provides a window into understanding why the misfortunes of others can give us pleasure rather than provoke feelings of empathy.

In
Chapter 1
, I referred to the research on primates done at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
³⁷
When both monkeys were given cucumbers, both seemed satisfied. But when one received a cucumber and the other received a grape, the monkey receiving the cucumber became distressed. These monkeys seemed to show concern over unequal treatment. What I did not mention is that these monkeys appeared unconcerned when getting
more
than their share. Gaining an “unfair” advantage over other monkeys did not seem to cause them distress. Researcher Sarah Brosnan notes: “The capuchins' sense of inequity seems to be very one-sided. It's all about whether or not ‘I' got treated unfairly.”
³⁸
Not surprisingly, although humans beings are capable of feeling stressed from both unfair
ad
vantage
and
unfair
dis
advantage, unfair advantage is generally less troubling than unfair disadvantage.
³⁹

Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Brad Bushman, in their widely used textbook
Social Psychology and Human Nature
, characterize this duality of self- and other-interest in an interesting way.
⁴⁰
They emphasize the view that self-interested impulses are especially likely to be rooted in our evolutionary heritage because traits furthering individual survival and reproduction should be favored. This is why Aristotle could suggest that luck is when “a missile hits the next man and misses you.”
⁴¹
It is hard to imagine living beings surviving without a strong impulse to serve themselves. Baumeister and Bushman also stress that human beings respond to the demands of culture, which typically urges that we adjust our own narrow interests to fit the needs of the group. Even if we want the larger share of the popcorn, we learn to share it equally. This was certainly true as my wife and I watched our daughters mature. As I described in
Chapter 1
, when they were very young, the disadvantaged one did
the protesting and the advantaged one was less perturbed. As they got older, they broadened their concerns, insisted on equality all around, and indeed felt good and took increasing pride in generosity and self-sacrifice. But, even now, if we were to sit down and watch a holiday movie, they would feel puzzled, even a little wounded, if I were to make the mistake of violating the rule equality in distributing popcorn.

Baumeister and Bushman note that many of the rules that we learn, such as turn-taking and respect for the property of others, are based on moral principles that inhibit self-interested behavior. Especially when we are among people we know well, moral emotions such as guilt and shame help in this process. We feel guilty if we satisfy only our own needs and disregard the interests of those in our own group or family, and we feel ashamed when our selfish actions are made public. But our self-interested concerns surface easily. It often requires deliberate, planful efforts on our part to act in culturally appropriate ways. Baumeister and Bushman put it nicely:

Generally, nature says go, culture says stop. … The self is filled with selfish impulses and with the means to restrain them, and many inner conflicts come down to that basic antagonism. That conflict, between selfish impulses and self-control, is probably the most basic conflict in the human psyche.
⁴²

We can recognize this tension in Mr. Johnson's mind as he struggled with what to do with Mr. Clutter's check, in Dr. Haas's mind as he instinctively changed places with his sick fellow prisoner, and in children's minds when they react to how desired things are divvied out to themselves and others.

Any factor that amplifies the benefits of others' misfortunes for ourselves, such as competition, should promote an “anesthesia of the heart,”
⁴³
to use philosopher Henri Bergson's phrase, and thus intensify our
schadenfreude
. This is one reason we see so much
schadenfreude
in the realms of sports and politics. As the studies I reviewed in
Chapter 3
show, misfortunes happening to rival teams and rival political parties produce quick pleasure, especially for people highly identified with their own team or party. This is because when our group identity is important to us, a rival group's loss is good for our own group and thus good for us. In these studies, the perception of self-gain was highly associated with
schadenfreude
. In fact, without this perception, unless our
participants had reasons to dislike the rival, there was very little
schadenfreude
reported. Self-interest, through the impact of group identification in these cases, inverted the emotional landscape. For the highly identified fan or political devotee, “bad things” happening to others (if they were rivals) were experienced as good for the group and therefore for the self. In sports, this was true even if the misfortune was a severe injury. In politics, this was true even if the misfortune entailed the death of soldiers. Although
schadenfreude
was typically low in intensity, especially in the case of reactions to troop deaths, and was mixed with concern, misfortunes happening to others created a boost in pleasure to the extent that these events led to self-gain.

In the next chapter, I shift to another important reason why we often feel
schadenfreude
, and this has to do with justice. We care deeply about justice and fairness. Our emotional reactions to both good and bad events happening to others are guided in part by whether these events seem deserved or undeserved, fair or unfair. Misfortunes are bad things, but when we believe that they are deserved,
schadenfreude
is almost sure to follow.

When someone who delights in annoying and vexing peace-loving folk receives at last a right good beating, it is certainly an ill, but everyone approves of it and considers it as good in itself, even if nothing further results from it.

—I
MMANUEL
K
ANT
¹

Every decent man will kvell when that sadist goes to jail.

—L
EO
R
OSTEN
²

Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they always made me glad.

—M
ALCOLM
X
³

It is hard to imagine the film industry without the revenge plot. There are inexhaustible variations on the theme, but the basic pattern is simple, predictable—and preferred by viewers. The villain treats the hero badly, and the arc of the story completes itself with the hero taking satisfying revenge. No one is more pleased when justice is served than the eager audience. The villain gets no sympathy. We cheer the outcome. It is highly pleasing to see bad people get what they deserve.

The regular merging in films of justice-inspired revenge with its resulting pleasure suggests a natural link between justice and
schadenfreude
.
⁴
No manner
of bloody end can cause us to blanch. I make this claim confidently because of a two-year stint working as an assistant manager at a movie theater during the late 1970s. The catbird seat in the projectionist booth was a good place for observing audience behavior. We showed many films that made audiences cheer when the villain got what was coming to him, but the one I remember best was the Brian De Palma film,
The Fury
. The villain in this film is an intelligence operative, Ben Childress, played by John Cassavetes, who pitilessly experiments with the lives of two teenagers who happen to have telekinetic powers that could be useful for intelligence purposes. When his actions lead to the death of one of the teens, the other teen turns her telekinetic powers on Childress. Driven by her anger and hatred, she levitates him a few feet off the ground and spins him around with increasing speed until he explodes. The theater audiences were untroubled by the grotesque scene. Some whooped and hollered. They hated this man, played so effectively by Cassavetes. Not only did they want him dead, but they also wanted him minced and pulverized. He
deserved
it. A ghastly end—but pleasing even so.
⁵

There seems little question that seeing a just misfortune befalling another causes us to feel pleased, with
schadenfreude
being part of the feeling. Philosopher John Portmann, who has written more on
schadenfreude
than any other scholar, argues it is an emotional corollary of justice.
⁶
It follows seamlessly from a sense that the misfortune is deserved. And experiments by social psychologists Norman Feather, Wilco van Dijk, and others confirm what one would expect: participants in experiments report more
schadenfreude
over deserved than undeserved misfortunes.
⁷