The Joy of Pain

by Richard H. Smith

  In Chapter 7, I examine two distinctive examples of reality TV, American Idol and To Catch a Predator. Both shows, in memorable ways, pioneered the pleasures of humiliation as entertainment—or “humilitainment,” a term coined by media researchers Brad Waite and Sarah Booker.9 Why are these shows so popular? We shall see that humilitainment, when heightened by the way a show is edited and structured, often arises within narratives of deservingness. These shows provide a steady diet of pleasing downward comparisons for viewers.

  Figure I.1. Google NGram for usage of “schadenfreude” in thousands of books published from 1800 to 2008.

  A BALM AND CURE FOR ENVY

  I give envy its due in the next three chapters. Although envy is a painful emotion and schadenfreude is a pleasing one, the two emotions often travel in tandem. As Homer experiences it and as Lisa helps him understand, I detail in Chapter 8 how misfortunes befalling those whom we envy transform pain into a special joy. This is why definitions of envy often include the readiness to feel pleasure if the envied person suffers.

  Much can be said about envy and its link with schadenfreude. Because envy is such a repugnant emotion, most of us are in fact more like Homer than Lisa. We are so threatened by the feeling that we suppress awareness of it. Even if we are aware of it, we rarely want to admit to it. In Chapter 9, I show that this often causes envy to transmute into other emotions, ones more palatable to ourselves and to others. In this altered form, schadenfreude resulting from an envied person’s misfortune can seem justified, sometimes even decent. Moreover, envy is usually hostile at its roots. Hostility may breed dissatisfaction with passive forms of schadenfreude. When we feel envy, strong envy especially, we not only hope for misfortunes to befall those whom we envy; we may sometimes find ways to bring the misfortune about.

  ENVY, SCHADENFREUDE, AND HUMAN DEPRAVITY

  In Chapter 10, I take envy’s transmutational nature into especially dark territory. I examine the special case of anti-Semitism and the Nazis’ pleasure in the brutal treatment of the Jews. I claim that this extreme example of schadenfreude is partly explained by unconscious envy transmuted into resentment. When this happens, the envious person can rationalize and justify extreme forms of schadenfreude, as well as aggression. This is the outer range of schadenfreude, where crimes occur that go “beyond denunciation.”10

  ARE THERE ANTIDOTES?

  As natural as schadenfreude is, should we encourage it? Who would argue this way, especially if we see that it can trend toward hurtful actions? I won’t try to claim that we can snuff out this feeling, but I will suggest in Chapter 11 at least one way that we might moderate its likelihood. I will elaborate on our psychological tendency to prefer personality explanations when explaining other people’s behavior. This “fundamental attribution error” enhances schadenfreude over empathy when we see people suffer misfortunes. People will seem to deserve their misfortunes because their internal qualities will appear to cause them. If we can curb this tendency, then empathy might trump schadenfreude—as we will see was true for Abraham Lincoln.

  Let me be doubly clear from the start. By focusing on schadenfreude in this book I do not mean to suggest that human beings lack a strong capacity for empathy when others suffer. Of course we do. Some recent evolutionary thinking suggests that human nature disposes us more toward compassionate responses than hostile ones. We see this in titles of recent books. The primatologist Frans de Waal labels this shift in how we view human nature as The Age of Empathy. The emotion researcher Dacher Keltner uses the phrase Born to Be Good to capture this shift in zeitgeist. And, just as we have instinct for revenge, we also have an instinct for forgiveness, as psychologist Michael McCullough argues in Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct.11 We see the embracing of the good in human nature in the speedy ascent of positive psychology and its focus on healthy human functioning rather than mental illness. Important studies on understanding happiness by psychologists Ed Diener, Robert Emmons, and Martin Seligman are examples.12 One theme of the positive psychology movement is that compassion leads more to personal happiness than does self-focused gratifications. Nonetheless, our capacity to feel schadenfreude resonates with our less compassionate side.

  In sum, we will see that schadenfreude arises because there are varied ways that we can gain from other people’s misfortunes. The primacy of our own self-interests in competitive situations and our keen preference for superiority over inferiority ensure a place for schadenfreude in our repertoire of feelings. We have a passion for justice, and it happens that many misfortunes seem deserved. Schadenfreude is intimately linked with deservingness, particularly when the suffering person has wronged us, and I will also examine the basis for this important link. An envied person’s fall brings a special pleasure, and I will explore the many reasons for this frequent cause of schadenfreude as well. More than we realize, schadenfreude is a natural human emotion, and it pervades our experience. It is worth taking a very close look at why it is so prevalent because it will tell us a lot about human nature—and should help redirect us toward, in Lincoln’s words, “the better angels of our nature.”13

  CHAPTER 1

  THE HIGHS OF SUPERIORITY

  To feel one’s well-being stronger when the misfortune of other people is put under our own well-being like a background to set it into brighter light, is founded in nature according to the laws of the imagination, namely that of contrast.

  —IMMANUEL KANT1

  For a few days I brought along Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog so I could feel a little better than everyone else in line.

  —DON J. SNYDER, THE CLIFF WALK2

  I’m Chevy Chase … and you’re not.

  —CHEVY CHASE, “WEEKEND UPDATE” FROM SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE3

  When my eldest daughter was four years old, she attended a day care center close to where I worked. One day, I came into the center to pick her up and saw her drawing with a piece of chalk on a low-slung chalkboard. She saw me and immediately begged me to help her sketch some people. I did, but, coincidentally, one of her friends had been drawing right next to her. Just as my daughter began to draw again, the girl’s mom showed up. The first thing her mom saw were my drawings next to her own daughter’s age-appropriate stick figures. Never have I seen a look of shock and confusion appear so forcefully on a person’s face.

  “Did she do that … did she do that??!!!!”

  “No, no, I drew them.”

  Her expression swiftly changed to embarrassed relief.

  I often think of this incident when considering the effects of how we compare with others on our everyday emotions.4 Identified as she was with her daughter, the gulf in apparent performance between her daughter and mine jolted her. The sudden knowledge that my daughter was blessed with so much greater talent than hers was painful. And if you think about it, revealing my contribution was a kind of bad news for me and good news for her. The diminishment in my daughter’s talents brought her relief and, I sensed, a touch of schadenfreude.

  Comparisons with others, the conclusions we make about ourselves based on them, and the resulting emotions pervade much of our lives. As much as inferiority makes us feel bad, superiority makes us feel good. The simple truth is that misfortunes happening to others are one path to the joys of superiority and help explain many instances of schadenfreude.

  This sometimes disquieting fact is more easily digested when we see it at arm’s length, in the context of entertainment. There are many examples from Frasier, the long-running sitcom that starred Kelsey Grammer as a neurotic, endearingly snobbish psychiatrist, Dr. Frasier Crane. In one episode, “The Perfect Guy,” Frasier is intensely envious because the radio station where he has his own call-in show has hired a new health expert, Dr. Clint Webber—who is extraordinarily talented and handsome. Along with an irritating, modest charm, Clint effortlessly outshines Frasier and gets the lustful attention of all the women. To convince people that he is not envious, Frasier throws a party for Clint. The event evolves int
o yet another showcase for Clint’s staggering set of talents. When Frasier tries to impress a Chinese woman with his (woefully rudimentary) Mandarin Chinese, he compliments her by trying to say that she looks “absolutely beautiful,” but his pronunciation translates this to “lovely as a chicken beak”—as she is quick to point out. Clint has partially overheard the conversation and interjects, “Who is as lovely as chicken beak?” He then proceeds to have a smooth conversation with the woman in perfect Mandarin.

  Frasier, thoroughly defeated, concedes to his brother Niles that Clint must be entirely free of defects. But later, he finds himself alone in the kitchen with Clint, who thanks Frasier for arranging the party in his honor. In the background, a hired pianist is playing “Isn’t It Romantic” on Frasier’s grand piano, and Clint says how much he loves the song. Anticipating yet another domain in which Clint is superior to top off the evening, Frasier exits the kitchen as Clint begins to sing—way off-key! Frasier immediately recognizes this unexpected good fortune and turns with keen anticipation back into the kitchen. Clint apologizes for singing too loudly, but Frasier, now grinning broadly, says, “No, no, not at all. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying hearing it.”

  Clint admits to being a bit of ham when he has a glass of wine in him and asks if he might “serenade” the guests. Frasier seizes this opportunity, leading Clint to the piano. As Clint prepares to sing, Frasier rushes over to Niles to tell him the good news: “Oh Niles, Niles, I’ve done it. I have found his Achilles’ heel. … I just heard him singing, the man’s completely tone deaf. He’s about to launch into a rendition of ‘Isn’t It Romantic’ that will simply peel the enamel from your teeth!”

  Niles objects to the plan: “Are you sure you want to let him do that? … You have your victory, you’re a wonderful singer. Isn’t it enough to know that? Do you really need to see him humiliate himself?”

  Frasier pauses for a moment, then says, “Yes.”

  Humiliation is precisely what Frasier wants. He has had it with feeling inferior to Clint and is thrilled to discover his rival’s “Achilles’ heel.” Frasier gleefully anticipates the added pleasure of seeing Clint expose this flaw to all the guests. When Clint starts singing, Frasier is triumphant, delighted with the results. The guests try to be polite, but they are almost made ill by the horrid performance. And Frasier says with an ironic, rebuking air, “Please, everybody—nobody’s perfect.”5

  It is funny and entertaining, but it is also just a sitcom. Even if, in identifying with Frasier, we half recognize his feelings in ourselves, we can also keep this recognition at a comfortable distance. And yet is Frasier more like ourselves than we want to admit?

  HOW GOOD AM I? COMPARED TO WHOM?

  Social comparisons not only help tell us whether we are succeeding or failing, but they also help explain the cause of our success or failure. If we “fail” because most people are performing better than we are, we infer low ability; if we “succeed” because most people do worse than we do, we infer high ability. Social comparisons deliver a double influence by defining whether a performance is a success or a failure and by suggesting that the cause probably results from high or low ability. No wonder misfortunes happening to others can be pleasing. They increase our relative fortunes and upgrade our self-evaluations.

  It is worth stressing how much social comparisons can contribute to defining our talents and abilities. How do you know whether you are a fast runner? Is it enough to time how fast you can run a lap? No. You must compare this time with the times of other people who are similar to you in age, gender, and practice level. If you run faster, then you can say you are a fast runner.

  Many have tried to capture the powerful role of social comparisons in human experience. Sometimes it comes through in a quip inspired by a lifetime of experiences, such as, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better,” attributed to the American singer and actress Sophie Tucker.6 Or, it comes from a transforming event, such as when entertainer Walter O’Keefe was replaced by young Frank Sinatra at a New York nightclub in 1943. O’Keefe summed it up this way: “When I came to this place, I was the star. … Then a steamroller came along and knocked me flat.”7 Stand-up comedian Brian Regan once fantasized about what it would be like to be one of the few people in the world to have walked on the moon; then, in social situations involving “me-monsters” who like to dominate conversations by bragging about their accomplishments, he could break in and say, “I walked on the moon.”8 No one could beat this comparison.

  A slew of utopian novels, such Walden Two by B. F. Skinner and Facial Justice by L. P. Hartley, reveal how people’s common use of social comparisons challenges societal efforts to maximize happiness. But I doubt anyone has been as effective in showing the importance of social comparisons in everyday life as 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his classic work, A Discourse on Inequality,9 Rousseau imagines what life might have been like early in human history and speculates that people may have lived in a relatively solitary state. If this were so, the implications for our sense of self and our emotional life would have been huge. Natural differences among people in intelligence and strength, often the stuff of social comparison, would have carried little weight in this “state of nature.” As long as people were smart and strong enough to procure food and shelter, they would have needed no greater talents—nor would they have felt lacking. Rousseau suggests that with greater contact among people in our more recent history, an increase in social comparisons resulted, yielding likely effects. Rousseau writes:

  People become accustomed to judging different objects and to making comparisons; gradually they acquire ideas of merit and of beauty, which in turn produce feelings of preference. … Each began to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself; and public esteem came to be prized. He who sang or danced the best; he who was the most handsome, the strongest, the most adroit or the most eloquent became the most highly regarded, and this was the first step toward inequality.10

  Feelings about ourselves would also change. In a solitary state, we would feel good about ourselves if we had food in our bellies, a roof over our heads, and the absence of physical injury. Not so when living among others. Now, a kind of self-pride or “amour propre” takes over, inspired by a newfound desire to be superior to others and to be recognized as such. Rousseau highlights the feelings that dominate when self-feelings are powered by relative differences—shame and envy if we are inferior and vanity and scorn if we are superior.11

  SOCIAL COMPARISON AND SELF-ESTEEM: WHAT IS THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE?

  Psychologists, beginning with the pioneering work of Leon Festinger in the 1950s that linked social comparison with a basic drive to evaluate ourselves, have found many ways to give empirical weight to claims about the importance of social comparison in self-evaluations.12 Susan Fiske, in her recent book, Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us, provides an excellent distillation of this research done by her and many others.13 I am most fond of a study done in the late 1960s by Stan Morse and Ken Gergen.14 The design was simple, but the implications of the findings are far reaching. Participants who were students at the University of Michigan showed up in response to an ad for a job. The job promised good pay, so the stakes were higher than for a typical experiment. On arriving, they were placed in a room and asked to fill out a questionnaire as part of the application. After the students had completed half of the questionnaire, which contained an indirect measure of self-esteem, the experimenters arranged for another apparent applicant to enter the room and also begin completing the application. The appearance and behavior of this person were adjusted to create two conditions. In the Mr. Clean condition, this person was impressively dressed, well-groomed, and self-confident. He carried with him a college philosophy text and began completing the application with efficient ease. In a contrasting, Mr. Dirty condition, this person was shabbily dressed, smelly, and seemed a little dazed. While working on his application, he would occasionall
y stop and scratch his head, as if he needed help.

  Participants then completed the final part of the application, which contained another embedded self-esteem measure. By subtracting the participants’ self-esteem scores before and after the second applicant entered the room, Morse and Gergen were able to test a number of possible predictions. One possibility was that comparing with “Mr. Clean” would decrease self-esteem, but comparing with “Mr. Dirty” would not increase it. This would suggest that an “upward” comparison typically affects self-esteem, but a “downward” comparison does not. Superiority in others makes us feel bad, but we may be indifferent to inferiority in others. A second possibility was that Mr. Dirty would increase self-esteem, but Mr. Clean would not decrease it. This would suggest that a downward comparison can affect self-esteem, but an upward one may not. We are indifferent to superiority in others, but inferiority in others gives us a boost. A final possibility—the one that actually occurred—was that both conditions would affect self-esteem. Applicants felt worse about themselves when the other applicant was superior and better about themselves when the other applicant was inferior. Superiority in others often decreases our self-esteem, but their inferiority provides a boost, especially in competitive circumstances—as many other subsequent studies have shown since this one by Morse and Gergen.