The Joy of Pain (5 page)

Interestingly, couples are usually matched in terms of physical attractiveness. Why is it so? As much as we may desire to mate with the most attractive person around, we are competing against others with the same goal. Any overture we make must be reciprocated if the relationship is to proceed, and overreaching on this valued dimension usually doesn't work. It leads to rejection.

In a graduate course I teach, I use a classroom demonstration to dramatize this point.
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The 15 or so students in the class are randomly given folded index cards that have their physical attractiveness “mate value” indicated inside (ranging from 1 to 15). They open up the cards and place them on their foreheads such that only others are aware of the value on the card. Ignoring their sex, they are told to pair up with someone with the highest mate value they can find. The pairing is initiated by offering to shake a potential mate's hand. If the offer is accepted, then the pair is complete. Rejected offers require that the person keep making offers until an offer is accepted.

As things progress, a small number of unhappy people wander about until, finally, even they find a mate. Then everyone guesses their own mate value and writes it down before seeing the actual value. They also rate their satisfaction with their pairing. Using a computer, I quickly enter actual and perceived values and ratings of mate satisfaction. Simply correlating these values is instructive. First, actual values are highly correlated. People pair up with those of similar value. Second, actual and perceived mate values are also highly correlated. It only takes a rejection or two to realize that one is not high on the attractiveness totem pole. Finally, mate values, both perceived and actual, are highly correlated with satisfaction. Attractive pairs are pleased; unattractive pairs are not. The demonstration is artificial, of course, but it dramatizes the consequences of ranking in one important area of life. People easily sense their mate value from how they are treated by others, and their feelings of satisfaction parallel actual and perceived mate values.

For our primitive ancestors living in closely knit tribes, it would have been important to be superior
relative
to other group members because it would have enhanced competitive advantage. Economist Robert Frank notes an interesting benefit to relativistic thinking. He argues that the rule of thumb, “do the best you can,” leads to a quandary. When can you conclude that you have done enough? Frank suggests that the
relativistic
rule “do better than your nearest competitor” solves this problem in an efficient way.
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The adaptive goal is to be better than your competitor, not to keep on achieving ad infinitum. Having a natural focus on social comparisons should lead to efficient actions: stop striving when you have a clear relative advantage; this is the signal to get off the treadmill. The process of evolution is likely to disfavor those who are fully at ease having low status because those with low status have less access to resources and are less preferred by potential mates.
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No wonder there is mounting evidence that lower status is related to an array of ill effects on health and longevity.
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Most people are unhappy with low status, and this is adaptive to a degree—a signal to do something about it. Similarly, most people are happy with high status. This is also adaptive—a signal of having achieved the benefits of high status. This happy feeling is something to anticipate and seek, as well as to relish.

One route to high status and its pleasures is through the reduction in status of others, especially those of higher status. As the pioneering evolutionary psychologist David Buss suggests, the anticipated pleasure of seeing higher status people fail serves an adaptive goal as well: to bring about these misfortunes, the relative gain that results, and the experience of this pleasure.
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The adaptive benefits of a keen sensitivity to relative differences are supported by observing a parallel tendency in primates, who share great genetic similarity to humans. Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University trained a group of capuchin monkeys in what they called a “no-fair” game.
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The monkeys were trained in pairs to hand a small rock to a researcher in exchange for a food reward, either a slice of cucumber or a grape, their much preferred food. When both received cucumber slices, both seemed satisfied. But when one received a cucumber slice and the other received a grape, the monkey receiving the cucumber became upset. The
relative
quality of rewards appeared as important as their
presence versus their absence. As the lead researcher Sarah Brosnan noted, these disadvantaged monkeys “would literally take the cucumber from me and then drop it on the ground or throw it on the ground, or when I offered it to them they would simply turn around and refuse to accept it.”
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These monkeys' reactions seemed to mirror what we see in ourselves when we are unfairly treated, relatively speaking: if we can't have the best, don't bother us with second best.

Even canines appear to show a concern over unequal treatment. The celebrated 18th-century scholar Samuel Johnson suggested that some people are superficial in their thinking and, in this sense, that they are like dogs and “have not the power of comparing.” They snatch the piece next to them, taking “a small bit of meat as readily as a large” even when they are side by side.
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A study on dog behavior indicates that Johnson may have underestimated canine abilities. A group of researchers at the University of Vienna examined domestic canines' behavior. Paired dogs were given either a high-quality reward (sausage) or a low-quality reward (brown bread) if they placed a paw in the experimenter's hand. Consistent with Johnson's claims, the dogs seemed indifferent to the reward quality, even when they received the brown bread rather than the sausage. However, one procedural variation created a different reaction. When one dog received
either
of these rewards and the other got
nothing
, this seemed to make the disadvantaged dog much slower at offering his paws and more likely to disobey the command entirely. The disadvantaged dogs became more agitated and appeared to avoid the gaze of their advantaged partners. The researchers inferred from these findings that the dogs were having a negative “emotional” reaction to the unequal distribution—at least if being disadvantaged meant getting nothing. One piece was as good as the next, but “nothing” was upsetting when the other dog got something.
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If dogs appear bothered by disadvantage, we can easily infer that most humans will be at least as concerned.

There are important cultural variations in how much social comparisons affect people's emotions.
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But if I meet people who doubt how powerful social comparisons can be, I often put aside the research evidence and evolutionary theory and ask them if they have kids. If they do, I ask what would happen if they treated one child more favorably than another. Their faces
usually animate with instant memories of family clashes caused by making this mistake. They remember the fireworks, the wails of unfairness, and the leftover resentments. They typically need no more convincing, but, primed in this way, I complete the point by telling them of the challenges my wife and I had in giving out popcorn to our two daughters when they were very young. Popcorn and movies were a compulsory pairing, and, from the beginning of this tradition, our daughters often quarreled over who received more popcorn. The only way to avoid an argument was to take delicate care in making sure the mound of popped kernels in each matching bowl was exactly equal. Nevertheless, one often would claim the other was getting more and was “always” favored. Sometimes we tried to snatch a teaching moment out of the sibling conflict: “Does it really matter who gets more? And why not ask for the bowl with the smaller amount? Be happy that your sister is getting more,” and so on. As readers might expect, our teaching moments were usually no match for what our daughters perceived as favoritism. Now that they are grown, we laugh about these times. But the raw distress over disadvantage they showed when they were young is good evidence for the natural concerns people have over social comparisons.

In my introductory social psychology course, I take a different tack to show the importance of social comparisons. As social psychologist Mark Alicke demonstrates in many experiments, people are usually self-serving in their beliefs about how they compare with others. This “better-than-average effect” is
very
easily demonstated.
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One classroom activity that works spectacularly well begins by asking two questions, answered anonymously by each student, on a single sheet of paper:

1. How good is your sense of humor?

1     2     3     4     5     6     7

2. How good is your math ability?

1     2     3     4     5     6     7

After collecting the responses, I ask a few volunteers to do a quick tally of the responses.
Figure 1.2
shows roughly what emerged when I conducted the exercise in a class of more than 100 students. For sense of humor, the distribution describes a near impossibility. Just about
everyone
in the class is reporting themselves above average. Most students see themselves as
way
above average. When it comes to sense of humor, this is easy to do. A highly subjective
judgment lends itself to bias, and we seize the opportunity to see ourselves in a flattering way. The second distribution for perceived math ability shows the bias as well, but it is not nearly as extreme. Math ability is more objectively determined than sense of humor, and our judgments on such domains are more likely to be anchored by actual standing. And yet, even so, most people manage to see themselves as above average here as well.

Figure 1.2. Biased perceptions of relative standing.
Students rated their sense of humor (top panel) and their math ability (bottom panel) compared to the average college student. Most rated themselves at or above the midpoint (number 4 on the scale).

Why are these perceptions so skewed? I think it is mainly because most of us like the idea of being superior to others, and we search for ways to come to this view whenever we can. The late comedian George Carlin captured the craving: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
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Such illusions help us maintain a sufficiently robust self-esteem.
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If superiority was superfluous for self-judgments, then there would be no need for biased construal. But we don't throw objectivity completely out the window.
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On traits and abilities that are less subjective, we are more responsive to the realities of our actual relative standing, even though we may still give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

The more we recognize how profoundly social comparisons permeate everyday judgments about ourselves—whether we are talented or mediocre, whether we are successful or unsuccessful, whether we are noticed or ignored by others—the clearer it becomes why another person's misfortune might be pleasing. Not surprisingly, great novelists who understand the human condition bear out this pattern. In Stephen Crane's Civil War novel,
The Red Badge of Courage
, the main character, Henry Fleming, eagerly joins the Union Army near the start of the war.
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But his excitement soon turns to dread when he confronts the possibility of dying. Naively, he had felt superior to his school friends who had not joined the army. All it took was to see the first dead soldier to reverse this perception. His friends were now the lucky ones. He also worries that he will run when he gets his first taste of battle, and this causes him to compare his worries with those of the other soldiers “to measure himself by his comrades.”
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Fleming's fears get the better of him in his first battle: he speeds “toward the rear in great
leaps”
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and soon feels ashamed and inferior because of his cowardly behavior. Of course, upward comparisons are hard for Fleming to ignore. He notices a proud group of soldiers marching toward the battle front, which makes him feel even more inadequate, as well as envious. He slips into another group of soldiers who have just come from a battle but soon feels acute shame because so many of these men, unlike himself, have wounds or “red badges of courage.” Happily for Fleming, he also meets other soldiers whose difficulties help him regain self-worth—sometimes leading to
schadenfreude
. Fleming notices a struggling friend, and this makes him feel “more strong and stout.”
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During the first battle, when he acted so cowardly, he takes some comfort in learning that many other soldiers also fled. Later, he notices a group of fearful, retreating troops and likens them to “soft, ungainly animals.”
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He takes pleasure in the flattering comparison and concludes that “perhaps, he was not so bad after all.”
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By the end of the novel, Fleming finds redemption in showing that he can act bravely in battle, but not before his sense of self is rehabilitated through pleasing comparisons with other soldiers.
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It is extraordinary how much social comparisons regulate Fleming's emotional life, their influence on
schadenfreude
being just one example.