The Joy of Pain (8 page)

The superiority theory of humor is not an all-encompassing explanation for when and why people find things funny.
³⁷
Other explanations focus on incongruity
(a conflict between what is expected and what actually occurs) or release (a relief from strain or stress). But, as Wills argues, a downward comparison perspective implies that such factors are secondary processes and “merely technical devices, serving to obscure the process of presenting another person's misfortune for the enjoyment of the audience.”
³⁸
They serve, in part, to circumvent the hesitancy that people feel about making downward comparisons. Similarly, Gruner is undaunted by other approaches to humor and claims that he can see superiority as explaining any example of humor. As someone who often studies the dark side of social comparison, I am less concerned about the debate on the broad origins of humor. What is relevant in explaining
schadenfreude
is that superiority resulting from downward comparisons is present in many cases of humor. It may well be a sufficient condition for humor, if not a necessary one.

The unmatched comic writer P. G. Wodehouse set most of his stories in pre–World War I Edwardian England. He populated these stories with upper-class characters who mostly lived lives of leisure and who frequented big country mansions with servants in tow. But the apparent narrowness of the setting and times did not prevent Wodehouse from producing some of the most inspired comic writing in the English language. J. K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter books, always places a Wodehouse volume by her bed.
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A considerable part of Wodehouse's humor involved lighthearted
schadenfreude
. A good example is
The Code of the Woosters
, which the late writer Christopher Hitchens put high on his list of favorite books.
⁴⁰
Like many Wodehouse novels, the plot of
The Code of the Woosters
is complicated and the narrator, Bertie Wooster, through no major fault of his own, finds himself in all kinds of troubles for which there seem no solutions. Bertie lives a pampered life and has a lazy intellect, but he is a lovable character even so. And, fortunately for Bertie, his uncommonly gifted and skilled valet, Jeeves, finds inspired ways to save the day. The satisfying moments, when those who have tormented Bertie are finally cut down to size, are rich in downward comparison–inspired
schadenfreude
, for Bertie as well as for readers.

Early in
The Code of the Woosters
, we meet Spode, a beefy, threatening character who is intent on physically assaulting both Bertie and one of Bertie's friends. But
Jeeves uses his network of fellow valets to discover an embarrassing secret about Spode.
⁴¹
This knowledge gives Bertie the power to reduce this bully to a meek, obsequious lapdog, such that the “red light died out of his eyes.”
⁴²
Here is how Bertie analyzes the pleasure he gets from the power he has to humble Spode:

I felt like a new man. And I'll tell you why.

Everyone, I suppose, has experienced the sensation of comfort and relief which comes when you are being given the runaround by forces beyond your control and suddenly discover someone on whom you can work off the pent-up feelings. The merchant prince, when things are going wrong, takes it out on the junior clerk. The junior clerk goes and ticks off the office boy. The office boy kicks the cat. The cat steps down the street to find a smaller cat, which in its turn, the interview concluded, starts scouring the countryside for a mouse.

It was so with me now.
⁴³

Bertie can be forgiven for actively exhibiting joy from a downward comparison because Spode is a true menace and he is shown to deserve humbling (I will discuss a lot more about the important role of deservingness in
schadenfreude
in later chapters). The novel is alive with other instances of downward comparison, but they are mostly of the standard, passive variety. In another sequence, Jeeves tells Bertie that a police officer, Constable Oates, who has also been unreasonably hostile to Bertie, has been hit on the head. Bertie replies:

“Blood?”

“Yes, sir. The officer had met with an accident.”

My momentary pique vanished, and in its place there came a stern joy. Life at Totleigh Towers had hardened me, blunting the gentler emotions, and I derived nothing but gratification from the news that Constable Oates had been meeting with accidents.
⁴⁴

The novel ends with the subplots coming together and neatly resolving themselves in a manner not unlike a Shakespearian comedy. Bertie is happy because he is no longer threatened by people like Spode, Constable Oates, and others, and this also eases what has been a string of assaults to his self-esteem
and general well-being. He is also gratified because his actions have helped two couples end their love squabbles and because he has found ways of benefiting his aunt and uncle. His aunt avoids losing a coveted servant, and his uncle obtains a much-desired cow creamer. With Jeeves, he reflects on the complex troubles he has suffered
and
Jeeves's brilliant solutions for these troubles. They are in their room in the country house where most of the action has taken place, and they hear a sneeze coming from outside. Earlier, Bertie had been wrongly accused of plotting to steal a prized object from the home (the cow creamer). Constable Oates was ordered to stand guard outside Bertie's window, to prevent him from escaping until morning, when he would be taken to court. But Bertie has been exonerated, and no one has told Oates that his watch is unnecessary. Rain has begun “with some violence.” Bertie reacts:

I sighed contentedly. It needed but this to complete my day. The thought of Constable Oates prowling in the rain like the troops of Midian, when he could have been snug in bed toasting his pink toes on the hot-water bottle, gave me a curiously mellowing sense of happiness.

“This is the end of a perfect day, Jeeves. … ”
⁴⁵

Using fresh images, incandescent language, and plots impossible to predict and yet so fitting as they unfold, Wodehouse puts a wondrously comic mirror up to nature. A generous portion of his themes relies on the
schadenfreude
felt by his characters, as well as by his readers, but this hardly leaves a mean-spirited taste. There is no real cruelty in his “stern joy”—no beating of the homeless. If Bertie gets pleasure over someone's humiliation, it feels right under the circumstances. Also, it's simply the way of the world to feel this emotion, especially if life has been placing you at a disadvantage and you need a ration of downward comparison.

In the next chapter, I continue to focus on how downward comparisons can create
schadenfreude
, but I add another ingredient: group identity. This is no trivial factor. There is something about “us” and “them” that quickly shifts to “us”
versus
“them.” When we are strongly connected to a group, misfortunes happening to the members of rival groups can be thrilling. Examples from sports and politics will provide sufficient proof of this.

When a nimble Burman tripped me on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. … The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all.

—G
EORGE
O
RWELL
¹

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.

—U.S. G
ENERAL
G
EORGE
S. P
ATTON
²

It's not enough that we succeed. Cats must also fail.

—S
AID BY A CANINE IN A
N
EW
Y
ORKER
CARTOON
³

If you have ever checkmated someone in chess, you know the experience of winning a zero-sum game, in which one person's gain or loss translates exactly into another person's loss or gain. A clear memory I have from high school is taking my queen and flicking over my friend's king as I said, “checkmate,” with understated yet pointed emphasis. Perhaps a small thing, but my friend had beaten me in an earlier match and had
gloated
over the win. This was low-stakes competition among high school kids, but no less intense for this fact. “Gentleman, start your egos,” as comedian Billy Crystal once quipped.
⁴
I can still see the
proud smile on his face when he had agreed to the rematch. As a result, beating him was a keener joy.

Although part of why beating him was so satisfying was his gloating, the zero-sum nature of the game told another part of the story. The pleasure I felt was from my winning
and
his losing. Both enabled satisfying gain for me.
⁵

Athletic contests are also zero-sum, and emotions are keyed on the outcome. As a parent of two girls, now grown, I spent years engaged in youth sports, sometimes coaching, but usually as a spectator watching the games. I often stepped back to watch myself and the parents of other kids on our team reacting to the ebb and flow of games. Errors by the other side would often receive as many cheers as the successes of our own team, especially as the teams' age group increased. Sometimes, the pleasure over the other side's mistakes more than matched the pleasure of a good play by our own kids. If you think about it, this is hardly a nice thing. When a child commits a turnover in a basketball game, for example, it is a misfortune for the child—maybe a mortifying one. Why should we feel comfortable clapping and cheering? The context of sports seems to make it kosher.

The triumphs or defeats of our children produce personal gain or loss. Watch the faces of parents when their children perform, especially during unguarded
moments, and there is little doubt that our identification with our children is usually total. The best example I can think of occurred during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The parents of American gymnast Aly Raisman were in tense synchrony with their daughter as she performed her difficult routine on the uneven bars. The NBC “parent cam” captured their shifting and swaying, and this video quickly spread across the internet. It summed up something that all parents experience.
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The phrase popularized by ABC Sports, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” applies to our children's performances as much as to our own. And so events that help them succeed, even if they involve another child's failure, can mix pleasure with sympathy.

Spectators feel powerful emotions, even when no family members are playing. The successes and failures of the groups to which we belong affect us perhaps as much as do our individual ups and downs.
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The attachments we have to groups are quickly cemented and often arbitrary, yet consequential despite these arbitrary origins. The first experiments to hint at this uncanny process were performed by the Polish-born social psychologist Henri Tajfel in the 1960s.
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Tajfel was as an international student at the Sorbonne at the outbreak of World War II, and he was called into service by the French. He survived imprisonment in Nazi prisoner of war camps only because his Jewish identity remained hidden. Most of his friends and relatives were not so lucky, and the terrible difference in their fates, based simply on ethnicity, spurred him to do his now classic research.

In his early experiments, Tajfel recruited British school boys at the University of Bristol as participants. The boys estimated the number of dots flashed on a screen and were then categorized into groups of either “overestimators” or “underestimators.” These categorizations were actually random, so neither group could logically assume any superiority over the other. But when these boys were given the opportunity to either favor their “ingroup” or discriminate against the “outgroup” in distributing rewards, they usually did so.

These findings are easy to replicate using even more arbitrary categorization procedures, such as randomly assigning participants to merely group “A” or group “B.” We now understand this phenomenon as the “minimal group paradigm,” and it suggests that human beings have an inbuilt tendency to categorize themselves and others into ingroups or outgroups. Why do we do this?
One reason is that it helps us achieve a useful clarity and certainty about our self-concept. Knowing that one is an ”overestimator” not an “underestimator” clarifies who one is, and this in itself is useful. It also provides an opportunity to enhance our self-esteem because we mostly conclude that our own groups are superior to others.
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When it comes to evaluating the groups we belong to, actual objectivity is elusive, and we like it this way.