The Joy of Pain

by Richard H. Smith

  For many, the image of Swaggart, his face twisted in pain and tears streaming down his cheeks was, and still is, a source of unabashed hilarity. His behavior was full-strength hypocrisy, and his humiliation seemed wholly deserved. Indeed, most media accounts and letters to major papers focused on the hypocrisy of Swaggart’s behavior and heaped on the disgust, ridicule, and glee.24 Making matters worse for Swaggart, and further preserving the likelihood that his confession would persist in cultural memory, was that he returned to the pulpit far from entirely repentant. Thus, the Assemblies of God defrocked him. A few years later, he was caught with yet another prostitute. He didn’t bother with contrition this time. He told his congregation, “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.”25 Confession is one thing; repentance is quite another.26

  When it comes to hypocrisy and its gratifying exposure, preachers stand out. Many in this line of work seem so quick to point out others’ moral failings despite being vulnerable to moral lapses themselves.27 In the Introduction, I noted the case of George Rekers. His anti-gay initiatives were undone when he was caught hiring a young man from Rentboy.com to accompany him on a trip to Europe. What took Rekers’s hypocrisy to its spectacular level—and what made the schadenfreude seem so deserved—was that he went out of his way to further policies that harmed gay people for their homosexual behavior—for more than three decades. As much as one might feel sorry for Rekers as he combated the white-hot media attention that he received, his prior punishing ways put him at a disadvantage for deflecting schadenfreude. Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote, “as perversely entertaining as it is to watch someone work out his private psychodrama in the public space … there is a moral crime here.”28 Rekers condemned and punished people for behaviors he evidently engaged in himself.

  Another well-publicized example is Reverend Ted Haggard, who resigned from his mega-church in Colorado Springs after admitting to having homosexual relations with a professional masseur named Mike Jones.29 Haggard’s behavior was patently hypocritical because he had condemned homosexuality so frequently and vigorously. In a documentary, Jesus Camp, he proclaimed with conviction that “we don’t have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It’s written in the Bible.”30 Among his authored books, one had the title From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime.31 Jones, for his part, wanted to reveal their relationship because he learned that Haggard (who went by the name of “Art” when he visited Jones) supported a Colorado ballot amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in that state. When Jones realized how much Haggard’s influence might lead to passage of the amendment, he grew increasingly angry:

  I remember screaming at his picture on the computer. “You son of a bitch! How dare you!” Art and every straight-acting couple in America could get married and divorced as many times as they liked, yet two men or two women cannot get married even once, much less enjoy the legal benefit of marriage. … I was becoming angrier by the minute.32 … You goddamn hypocrite!33

  Haggard at first denied the allegations of sexual contact,34 but evidence against this denial mounted quickly, as did the cascading waves of schadenfreude. His behavior was satirized in various forms from late-night comedy to a book-length treatment on sex scandals (The Brotherhood of the Disappearing Pants: A Field Guide to Conservative Sex Scandals).35 One response from a pleased blogger summed up the tenor of most reactions: “I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.”36

  As for Mike Jones, he claimed to get no pleasure out of exposing Haggard’s hypocrisy. Friends even commented that he should have been more lively when interviewed about his relationship with Haggard. But Jones wrote that he “was not happy about anything that had happened.”37 Perhaps he worried that being “lighthearted” would make his motives suspect. In any event, he recognized the glaring inconsistency between Haggard’s public denouncements and his private behavior. Wrote Jones, “You must not speak out against something that you do in secret. You must practice what you preach. Let us not forget that the ultimate word in this story is hypocrisy.”38

  Preachers are easy targets. Their job requires that they encourage moral behavior in others—even though they are surely flawed themselves, just like their congregations. And, just like the rest of us, for that matter. It is an occupational hazard made worse by a greater need to keep up appearances and maintain at least a higher standing of moral behavior than those around them. But their professional activities may expose them to many powerful temptations as they counsel their flock. Sometimes, to quote Oscar Wilde, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”39 Swaggart and Haggard both have redeeming qualities, obscured by the exposure of their hypocrisy. I, for one, enjoy Swaggart’s preaching and his gospel singing. I am quite taken by the life story of someone who is, as one biographer of Swaggart, Ann Rowe Seaman, put it, so “full of sauce”40 and so uniquely “poor and gifted and determined.”41 I admire how Haggard and his wife have handled life since his fall from grace. Haggard has been forgiving in his comments about Rekers (e.g., “we are all sinners”),42 but even he noted that his own actions were not as hypocritical as Rekers’s.43 As I stressed in Chapters 1 and 2, the social science evidence makes clear the self-esteem benefits of seeing oneself as superior to others. When is it not open season for a downward comparison?

  Take someone like Bill Bennett, the well-known and accomplished conservative thinker and author of books such as Moral Compass: Stories for a Life’s Journey and The Book of Virtues. Bennett has a reputation in some circles for wagging the moral finger at others for their misbehavior.44 In 2003, a story circulated that he had been gambling at casinos for years, losing as much as $8 million. Bennett had his defenders.45 His books on virtues are effective tools for instilling moral values in kids. But many writers seized on this story, notably Michael Kinsley of Slate Magazine, who awarded Bennett a “Pulitzer Prize for schadenfreude.” Kinsley guessed that many sinners had long fantasized that Bennett was a secret member of their club. And so he wrote that “[a]s the joyous word spread, … cynics everywhere thought, for just a moment: Maybe there is a God after all.”46

  Preachers and others who make a living telling others how to live get top billing in the roll call of fallen hypocrites. But hypocrisy plays no real favorites. Politicians often feel the need to both aggrandize themselves and criticize their opponents in order to get elected. Thus, in scandals and the media attention that surrounds them, they come in at least a close second. Like preachers, who need to impress congregants, politicians have to position themselves to voters and constituents as beyond reproach.

  WHY IS IT SUCH FUN TO WATCH HYPOCRITES SUFFER?

  Yes, witnessing the suffering of hypocrites is felicitous fun. What is behind this distinctive pleasure? Hypocritical behavior reveals a breakdown between words and deeds, usually having to do with moral behavior. Hypocrites claim virtue but practice sin. According to one gospel account, hypocrisy among the religious leaders even made Jesus angry:

  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. … Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.47

  Throughout history and across cultures, people find inconsistent behavior unappealing. “The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t match is seen as confused, two-faced, even mentally ill,” notes social psychologist Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: Science and Practice, also referenced in Chapter 4.48 Cialdini speculates that being inconsistent may even be worse than being wrong. It smacks of deception and is a violation of trust.

  It is more than contempt from the sidelines that leads us to condemn hypocrites. Hypocrites often set themselves up as morally superior, forcing imperfect people around them to ponder their relative moral inferiority. Thus, even before their hypocritical behav
ior comes to light, hypocrites can be an irritating, disagreeable presence. Their “holier than thou” manner is annoying.49 For example, Stanford University social psychologist Benoit Monin has found that the presence of a vegetarian can make an omnivore self-conscious. He showed that meat-eaters can feel morally inferior around vegetarians, who they anticipate will show them moral reproach.50 Vegetarians need not say a word; their very existence, from a meat-eater’s point of view, is a moral irritant. And so imagine the pleasure felt by a meat-eater when catching an avowed vegetarian snacking on a rack of ribs. Discovery of this deceptive, hypocritical behavior is a buoyant event. We are not as inferior as we were led to believe; now, we can assume the contrasting position of moral superiority. Naturally, this turnaround feels good.

  There is another reason why misfortunes befalling hypocrites should be so satisfying. Often, these misfortunes amount to their being caught doing the very thing that they point the finger at others for doing. The precise matching of their moral rebukes and the behavior that lands them in trouble heightens the suitable feel of their downfall. Such reversals have extra special aesthetic appeal.51 Justice rises up to meet poetry. This helps make the exposure of hypocrisy feel like such a satisfying tale.

  I collaborated on an experiment with social psychologist Caitlin Powell in which we showed how pleasing it is to see hypocrites get caught for the precise thing they have criticized others for doing.52 Our undergraduate participants read what appeared to be an article containing an interview with a fellow student. Half the time, the student interviewed mentioned being an avid member of a campus organization aimed at curtailing as well as punishing plagiarism. The student said in the interview, “It really gets me mad when I see people cheating or plagiarizing. That’s just lazy. Our actions have helped in the punishment of three recent cases of cheating.” For other participants, the student was simply mentioned as being a member of a university club. In a second, follow-up article, the same student was charged with one of two possible moral lapses: he had been caught and suspended either for plagiarizing or for stealing. We also gave our participants questionnaires after each article to gauge what they thought and felt about the student, his misconduct, and his subsequent punishment. As we expected, the student was seen as more hypocritical when he had been a member of the organization focused on academic misconduct and was subsequently caught plagiarizing compared to when he had just been a member of the club. In this case, our participants also thought his punishment more deserved and more pleasing.

  What was more interesting was a comparison of reactions to the two kinds of misbehaviors, depending on whether the student had been a member of the organization focused on academic misconduct or the club. When the student had been a member of the club, his misfortune was viewed as equally deserved and experienced as equally pleasing, regardless of whether he was caught stealing or plagiarizing. After all, both behaviors were morally wrong. How about when the student had been a member of the organization that aimed to combat plagiarism? (See Figure 5.1.) Participants now felt much more pleased when the student got caught for the precise behavior he criticized others for doing, that is, when he was caught plagiarizing. And this is the important part: they felt this way even though the misbehaviors were equally immoral. Why? Knowledge that the student had criticized others for plagiarizing transformed how participants felt about the student getting caught. The matching of misconduct and prior statements enhanced the perception of hypocrisy and the deservingness of the misfortune.

  Figure 5.1. The effect of prior moralizing about cheating on the intensity of schadenfreude. Prior moralizing about cheating resulted in markedly greater schadenfreude in response to a person caught cheating compared to stealing.

  There is little doubt about it. Deserved misfortunes are a joy to witness, whether due to hypocrisy, as was the case in this experiment, or to other factors that make misfortunes seem deserved. We can understand why John Portmann, after his wide-ranging scholarly examination of the nature of schadenfreude, concluded that deservingness is the main explanation for why we can take pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Indeed, much more can be said about this frequent cause of schadenfreude, and the next chapter will take up some of these points.

  CHAPTER 6

  JUSTICE GETS PERSONAL

  O what a brilliant day it is for vengeance!

  —AESCHYLUS1

  When I heard on the news they finally got him, I was filled with joy.

  —SAUNDRA WOOLEN, MOTHER OF AN ARMY SERGEANT KILLED IN THE PENTAGON ON 9/11, ON HEARING THE NEWS OF OSAMA bIN LADEN’S DEATH2

  I am not a vengeful man, but I do enjoy a touch of retribution now and then.

  — NEW YORKER CARTOON CAPTION BY ED KOREN3

  One appeal of witnessing deserved misfortunes is that any joy we feel can seem free of malice. As I highlighted in the previous chapter, this is especially true when our judgments of deservingness follow from clear, culturally shared standards. Our thinking then has the stamp of impartiality, and we gain the license to feel righteous pleasure.4 But it is important to recognize that there is a strong motivational component to judgments of deservingness that can heighten this pleasure, sometimes in a subjective, biased way. This is a process well worth exploring.

  BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD

  One way that this subjectivity happens is because we are often motivated to construe the world as a just place. We need to believe in a “just world” in which people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get.5 Believing in a just world allows us to go about our lives as if events are guided by predictable, orderly forces. The alternative belief, that the world operates in a random fashion in which deservingness is absent, undermines the value of planful actions. The chaos it implies causes anxiety. These are existential conclusions that most of us resist.

  This motive to believe in a just world, originally proposed by psychologist Melvin Lerner, seems innocent enough, but research by Lerner and others shows that it can lead to the ironic effect of blaming innocent people when they suffer. Lerner and his colleague Carolyn Simmons did a series of now-classic studies in the late 1960s and early 1970s that supports this idea. In their first study,6 observers witnessed another person who appeared to be receiving electric shocks. The reason for these shocks was designed to seem unfair, and, indeed, knowledge that this innocent person was receiving these shocks produced compassion in the observers. When given the opportunity in one condition, they chose to rescue and compensate the person. But an additional condition gave observers the expectation that this person would continue to receive the shocks. Surprisingly, observers tended to derogate the character of the victim. Lerner and Simmons suggested that reactions in both conditions could be explained by concerns over justice. If people need to believe that the world is a just place in which people get what they deserve, then they will construe all events as confirming this belief. In the first condition, the easy recognition that the victim was undeserving of the shock led to compassion. In the second condition, the disturbing sense that an innocent victim would continue to receive undeserved shock led to a more rationalized view that she must deserve it. Lerner and Simmons argued that the just world motive provides a substantial filter through which we interpret and react to both good and bad things happening to others.

  BLAMING THE VICTIM AND ENJOYING IT TOO

  The idea that people need to believe in a just world might explain reactions to events that are otherwise perplexing. Consider the memorable case in the late 1980s of a young woman who was raped at knife-point after she had been kidnapped from a Fort Lauderdale restaurant parking lot. The perpetrator was captured and put on trial, but the jurors acquitted him. The jury foreman commented, “We all feel she asked for it [by] the way she was dressed.”7 The victim had been wearing a white lace miniskirt, a tank top, and no underwear. This may have been a provocative, attention-getting ensemble, but did she deserve her assault? It seems the jurors thought as much. Otherwise, how could they have found the perp
etrator innocent? A need to believe in a just world may offer one clue.

  In his 1980 book, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion, Lerner explained how he came up with this idea. His first thoughts about the just world motive were prompted by noticing schadenfreude in others. Early in his career, when he worked among doctors and nurses who cared for psychiatric patients, he saw many instances of these professionals joking about their patients behind their backs, sometimes to their faces. These reactions jarred him because, generally, these patients were unlucky souls and had little control over their psychological problems. But he did not view his colleagues as callous. Rather, he concluded that their reactions were coping responses to the unpleasant reality they confronted in these patients. Eventually, he developed the notion of a need to believe in a just world as a prime motive for such reactions. If these patients largely seemed to “deserve” their troubles, one could feel comfortable joking about them.8