THE JOY OF PAIN
THE JOY
of
PAIN
SCHADENFREUDE AND THE DARK SIDE
OF HUMAN NATURE
Richard H. Smith
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Richard H.
The joy of pain : schadenfreude and the dark side of human nature / Richard H. Smith.
pages cm
ISBN 978–0–19–973454–2
1. Envy. 2. Failure (Psychology) 3. Humiliation. I. Title.
BF575.E65S65 2013
152.4—dc23 2012044930
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
THE HIGHS OF SUPERIORITY
CHAPTER 2
LOOKING UP BY LOOKING DOWN
CHAPTER 3
OTHERS MUST FAIL
CHAPTER 4
SELF AND OTHER
CHAPTER 5
DESERVED MISFORTUNES ARE SWEET
CHAPTER 6
JUSTICE GETS PERSONAL
CHAPTER 7
HUMILITAINMENT
CHAPTER 8
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT ENVY
CHAPTER 9
ENVY TRANSMUTED
CHAPTER 10
DARK PLEASURES UNLEASHED
CHAPTER 11
HOW WOULD LINCOLN FEEL?
Conclusion
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lori Handelman was my first editor at Oxford University Press. Do you know someone whose judgment is so keen that you hang on her every word? You know that whatever your own understanding might be, it is necessarily incomplete until you have consulted her. Lori is in this category. Lori gave the first draft of the book an initial thumbs up, and she began the tough task of helping me turn a sow’s ear into something of better quality. Chance favored me a second time when Abby Gross took over the project. Upon these two rocks of Handelman and Gross, I could start a publishing company. I was very far from solving the problems with the first draft, but Abby rolled up her editorial sleeves and went to work on guiding it toward the copy editing stage. Like Lori, her wisdom is extraordinary. As with Lori, I was incapable of a confident judgment on any issue until I got her opinion. If this final product misses the mark in any way, it is because I was unable to act on Abby’s suggestions. I should add that the whole operation at Oxford was superb. The group of folks, together with Abby, who thought through the cover of the book did an exceptional job. I had imagined any number of designs for the cover, but none was close to what the Oxford team created. It was perfect, really. Suzanne Walker, Karen Kwak, Coleen Hatrick, and Pam Hanley expertly guided the final draft through to its completion as book in hand.
This book is partly a story of empirical work, done by myself and a group of other psychologists, including Norman Feather, Shlomo Hareli, Wilco van Dijk, Jaap Ouwerkerk, Masato Sawada, Hidehiko Takahashi, Zlatan Krizan, Omesh Johar, Colin Leach, Russell Spears, Niels van de Ven, Seger Breugelmans, Jill Sundie, Terry Turner, Mina Cikara, and Susan Fiske—as well as some of my current and former students, Ron Garonzik, David Combs, Caitlin Powell, Ryan Schurtz, Charles Hoogland, Mark Jackson, Matt Webster, Nancy Brigham, and Chelsea Cooper. Much of this work I summarize in this book, and I am indebted to these scholars for all their efforts to make conceptual and empirical headway in understanding schadenfreude.
Many friends and colleagues have contributed directly to my thinking or have simply given me the support of their friendship, which indirectly made this book possible. John Thibaut and Chet Insko at the University of North Carolina, where I did my graduate work, and Ed Diener at the University of Illinois, where I enjoyed a postdoc, were my first academic mentors. They each made me a much better researcher and thinker. The first study on schadenfreude that I was part of was done at Boston University, my first academic home. Much thanks to Ed Krupat, Len Saxe, Fabio Idrobo, Jean Berko Gleason, Henry Marcucella, Hilda Perlitsh, Mary Perry, and Joanne Hebden for their constant goodwill during the four years I was in the department—and to the late Phil Kubzansky, a marvelous human being of many parts who gave me so much good advice, including these words from A. E. Housman: “Get you the sons your fathers got, and God will save the Queen.” What a mensch he was.
I am lucky currently to work at a place, the Psychology Department at the University of Kentucky, that provides a friendly, respectful, and intellectually vibrant environment conducive to getting good work done. A special thanks to Bob Lorch, Betty Lorch, Jonathan Golding, Ron Taylor, Art Beaman, Phil Berger, Monica Kern, Larry Gottlob, Charley Carlson, Ruth Baer, Rich Milich, Tom Zentall, Mike Bardo, Phil Kraemer, Mary Sue Johnson, Jenny Casey, Erin Norton, Melanie Kelley, Jeremy Popkin, Richard Greissman, Steve Voss, and Mark Peffley.
A number of people read and gave me feedback on one or more chapters. Mark Alicke, Phil Berger, Zlatan Krizan, Rich Milich, Jeremy Popkin, Peter Glick, and Stephen Thielke read early versions of Chapters 9 or 10, and their comments greatly improved each. Mark Alicke, Phil Berger, and Stephen Thielke also read Chapters 5 and 6, and, here again, their comments were very, very helpful. Stephen was a constant source of astute observations about schadenfreude and other social emotions. Phil supplied me with many pertinent newspaper clippings and magazine articles. Claire Renzetti read Chapter 7 and gave me useful sociological references. Heidi Breiger provided me with a judge’s perspective on assessing emotional reactions to criminal behavior. Jerry Parrott clarified much of my thinking about envy. Late in the process, Charley Carlson read the penultimate draft of the entire book. This was an enormous help in fine-tuning points. Before submitting the last draft of the book, Jon Martin, Sarah Braun, Alex Bianchi, and Allie Martin, the undergraduates in my lab at the time, read parts or all of the book. They also made very helpful suggestions and caught many writing glitches. A former honors student, Edward Brown, read the entire book and gave me especially useful comments.
My sisters, Gillian Mu
rrell and Helen Smith, read the first draft of the book. Their comments were extremely helpful in my being able to take a sober assessment of where things were—what was working and what was not. I very much appreciated their enthusiasm for what I was trying to accomplish. My brother-in-law, Arch Johnson, who has a lot of horse sense, was always ready as a sounding board. And my sensible and fair-minded niece, Julia Smith, read early versions of Chapters 5, 6, and 10. Her comments greatly assisted my efforts to clarify these sections.
There are a few people I want to single out for extra thanks. My good friend, Mark Alicke, has had my back ever since we were in graduate school together, when he accepted my citing the Bard rather than the latest social psychological research. He has followed this project from its inception, sometimes reading chapters, but always, and with inimitable humor, giving me frank, constructive suggestions for how to get it done. Thanks, Mark.
My brother, Eric Smith, read several drafts and helped at all stages, from pleading with me to write the book in the first place to volunteering to do the figures. I am not the only person who has benefited from his willingness to help others, professionally and personally, in hugely substantial ways.
I am blessed with a family who has remained loving, patient, and optimistic as I worked to complete the book. My younger daughter, Caroline Smith, who shares my proclivity for punning, rather than groaning at them, simply came up with reciprocal puns of her own. This pun-upmanship was a sure energy boost when my vigor lagged. My older daughter, Rosanna Smith, despite her many other activities, did the drawings for the book. Working with her on ideas for these drawings was by far the most fun part of this project. My wife, Sung Hee Kim, painstakingly read the book at least five times at critical junctures. So gladly forbearing, she also created guilt-free conditions in our home to make it easier to complete it. More than anyone, by a country mile, she is the reason this thing got done. Finally, I thank my parents. I owe my love of reading and of scholarly pursuits to both. My mother, Hilary Smith, spent many years as an editorial assistant in the English Department at Duke University, and, during that time, helped edit the collected letters of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. She is still quick with an adapted line of poetry for any occasion. With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes. My late father, Peter Smith, who was a professor of chemistry at Duke for several decades and the son of a flower and seed shop owner in Manchester, England, knew and valued his Shakespeare, and this rubbed off on me as well. “Lay on, Macduff, and damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold! enough!’”
INTRODUCTION
Homer Simpson’s neighbor, Ned Flanders, announces during a backyard barbecue that he will quit his sales job to start a business called the “Leftorium,” catering to left-handed people. Ned and Homer break the wishbone from a turkey carcass, and Homer gets the bigger piece and the right to make a wish. “Read it and weep!!” he exclaims, imagining a scene of the business failing. It turns out that it does start poorly, as Homer discovers when he passes by the store some weeks later. It is “deeeserted,” he happily reports to the family at dinner. Lisa Simpson, ever the erudite daughter, labels and defines the emotion he is feeling.
LISA SIMPSON: Dad, do you know what schadenfreude is?
HOMER SIMPSON: No, I do not know what schadenfreude is. Please tell me because I’m dying to know.
LISA: It’s a German word for shameful joy, taking pleasure in the suffering of others. 1
There is no English word for what Homer’s feeling, but as Lisa tells him, there is one in German: schadenfreude. It comes from the joining of two words, “schaden” meaning “harm” and “freude” meaning “joy,” and it indeed refers to the pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune.2 This book is about schadenfreude, an emotion that most of us can feel despite its shameful associations.
GAIN FROM OTHERS’ MISFORTUNE
Although most of us feel uncomfortable admitting it, we often feel schadenfreude because we can gain from another person’s misfortune. What does Homer gain from the failure of Ned Flanders’s business? Actually, quite a lot. Homer envies Ned. Although Ned is a good neighbor, he still has it better than Homer in just about every way, from his well-equipped recreation room with foreign beers on tap to his superior family bliss. The envy Homer feels runs deep and takes its typical inferiority-tinged and hostile form. When Ned fails, Homer feels less inferior. Ned’s failure also satisfies Homer’s hostile feelings. These are heady psychological dividends and should make Homer feel pretty good as a result. What better tranquilizer for Homer’s inadequacy and ill will than Ned’s failure?
Perhaps you have heard this joke: two campers come across a grizzly bear while hiking in the forest. One immediately drops to the ground, takes off his hiking boots, and starts putting on his running shoes. The other says, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear!” His friend replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you!” While this example is cartoonish, similar but lower-stakes scenarios like this one play out in relationships every day. In Chapters 1 and 2, I examine the link between schadenfreude and personal gain and show that a large part of our emotional life results from how we compare with others. We gain from another person’s misfortune when this “downward comparison” boosts our rank and self-worth. We shall see that this is no small benefit.
The benefits to Homer from Ned’s failing are largely intangible, but schadenfreude also results from tangible things. As I will stress in Chapter 3, much of life involves competition. One side must lose for the other to win. This is captured well in Apollo 13, the film based on the near-fatal NASA lunar mission. In this film version of events, Jim Lovell is unhappy because fellow astronaut Alan Shepard and the others on Shepard’s crew have the latest coveted opportunity to travel to the moon. But Shepard develops an ear problem, and his crew is replaced by Lovell’s. This is painful for Shepard, but Lovell’s reaction is exuberant when he rushes home to give the news to his family. Lovell shows no hint of sympathy for Shepard as he tells his wife what has happened.3
As viewers of Apollo 13, we are watching from Lovell’s perspective and, with him, we experience the good news. We see that when an outcome is so desired, its value for ourselves eclipses other factors. The extra detail that our gain comes at another person’s expense recedes in relevance and does little to reduce the pleasure involved. Notice, however, that Lovell would have had no reason to delight in Shepard’s ear infection had it not furthered his own goals. He was not happy “in” Shepard’s misfortune, but rather “because of” it. Does this mean his joy was not schadenfreude at all? In this book, I take a broad definition of schadenfreude. The distinction between types of gain is easily blurred in our experience. For example, Lovell may well have envied Shepard. As I will explore later in the book, Homer Simpson is an exaggerated version of all of us. Envy can produce deep satisfaction in another’s misfortune, especially in competitive situations, and there may be few pure cases of gain uncontaminated by such features. Plus, would we see Lovell showing his joy outside the family? Taking any pleasure from another’s misfortune simply because we are gaining from it seems illicit and shameful. This gives it the clear stamp of schadenfreude.
If schadenfreude arises to the extent that we gain from another person’s misfortune, then any natural tendencies we have to favor our own self-interests should further this pleasure. In Chapter 4, I address how human nature pulls us in at least two directions, one toward narrow self-interest and the other toward concern for others. Our capacity to feel schadenfreude highlights the self-interested, darker side of human nature. Without ignoring our compassionate instincts, I consider some of the evidence for our self-interested side and suggest that this evidence indeed reveals our capacity for schadenfreude.
PLEASURE FROM DESERVED MISFORTUNES
How about deservingness? Sometimes misfortunes suffered by others satisfy our sense of justice. In Chapters 5 and 6, I shift to this important reason why we can feel scha
denfreude. Examples are everywhere. Take the case of Baptist minister and clinical psychologist, George Rekers. He made headlines in May of 2010 for using a Web site, Rentboy.com, to hire a 20-year-old male to accompany him on a short trip to Europe.4 On the surface, this doesn’t sound like news, but Rekers quickly became the focus of jokes on the internet and on late-night TV.5 Rekers, as The New York Times columnist Frank Rich argued, is “the Zelig of homophobia, having played a significant role in many of the ugliest assaults on gay people and their civil rights over the last three decades.”6 His hiring of the Rentboy.com employee was viewed as a case of pure hypocrisy when the hired man claimed that he had given Rekers intimate massages during the trip. As Joe Coscarelli noted in his blog for The Village Voice soon after the event made news: “Please excuse most of the forward-thinking, tolerant world for being a bit excited and snide about the news. … ”7
As shameful as schadenfreude can be, the more a misfortune seems deserved, the more likely schadenfreude is out in the open, free of shame. This is true especially if the standards for judging deservingness are clear cut—for instance, if someone has committed crimes—or has behaved so hypocritically, as with George Rekers. The pleasure is collective and free-flowing.
I will emphasize that the desire for justice is a strong human motive, so strong that we are biased in our perceptions of deservingness. We are particularly biased in our reactions to being personally wronged. Our pleasure in a wrongdoer’s misfortune is sweet indeed if we are lucky enough to have this hoped-for event occur. Here, the desire for justice merges with a desire for revenge against someone we dislike, even hate.
THE AGE OF SCHADENFREUDE?
Are we living in the age of schadenfreude? Just glance at the checkout lanes in the grocery store: some of the best-selling magazines will have break-ups, scandals, and other personal tragedies emblazoned on their colorful covers. The reality TV industry flourishes by developing programs that pit people against each other in difficult situations; ratings and advertising spending speak for themselves. Of course, the internet multiplies these trends many times over, which is why we speak of information going “viral.” I was not surprised to find out what happens if you insert the word “schadenfreude” in the search tool Google NGram Viewer. Figure I.1 shows the percentage of times that schadenfreude is used among all words in books published in English from 1800 to 2008. Starting in the late 1980s, its use begins to increase and then rockets upward by the mid-1990s. An analysis of the use of the word in The New York Times nicely mirrors this pattern: in 1980, there were no instances; in 1985, only one; three in 1990; seven in 1995; twenty-eight in 2000; and sixty-two in 2008.8 Perhaps this upsurge in usage comes as trends in media also shift toward a focus on people suffering all variety of misfortunes.
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