Awareness of this attribution tendency provides at least an opportunity for a more complex explanation for someone’s behavior, which might avert the instant flow of guilt-free schadenfreude. There is a clear lesson to be learned from our tendency to commit the fundamental attribution error: we would do well to make a conscious effort to learn more about the circumstances that might have caused a misfortune happening to another. Situational factors will compete on an even playing field with dispositional factors in our efforts to explain what happened. In the process, we might find ourselves less likely to laugh or smile.
WISDOM FAVORS AVOIDING THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
It is certainly easy to find fun in the humiliation of people when we can enjoy self-righteous superiority over them or when they appear to richly deserve what they get. The strong tendency to make dispositional attributions for other people’s actions is one reason this type of fun is so common. But some people succeed better than others in resisting the tendency. My boss was an example. I cannot think of a better way to sum it up than to say that he had wisdom. Perhaps he also had a greater natural empathy for others, but I think that life taught him to focus first on the circumstances that can shape people’s behavior, especially if someone had failed or suffered from his actions. When those around my boss were quick to blame people for their failures, he bucked the instant consensus either by his silence or by offering an alternative, less condemning explanation. Did we ever catch him feeling schadenfreude? Of course. The emotion is part of everyone’s DNA. But it was never malicious, and his wisdom moderated its prevalence.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE; CHARITY FOR ALL
There was a touch of Abraham Lincoln in my boss. Lincoln is admired by anyone who becomes familiar with the details of his life. Early in his political career in the Illinois state legislature, he made the mistake of making fun of a fellow legislator, James Shields, by publishing satirical letters about him. Lincoln had used a pseudonym, but Shields found out, felt his honor offended, and challenged Lincoln to a duel. Together with friends on both sides, Lincoln found a way to convince Shields to call off the duel, but not until it got close to happening. This experience taught Lincoln important lessons. Ashamed by the incident, he avoided harsh satire of others in print from then on. His stump speeches could be lively in their pointed humor aimed at his opponents, but even this habit disappeared over time.15 He was so talented in mimicry and so perceptive about the human condition that these were hard habits to reverse completely, but when he lapsed, he felt chagrined and apologized.16 He walked away from fights, laughed off insults, and rejected opportunities to mock and humiliate.17
Taking the perspective of others seemed to come naturally to Lincoln. He learned how to handle people effectively through tact, which he once defined as, “the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”18 Many accounts of Lincoln’s life highlight the famous incident of his writing a critical letter to General George Meade after the battle of Gettysburg.19 Lincoln had suffered many frustrations with his generals. There had been so many missed opportunities due to incompetence or the lack of initiative in these men, but the Union victory at Gettysburg could have been a fatal blow to the Confederacy. After many clashes with terrible losses on both sides, Meade had prevailed over the Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee, causing Lee to retreat across the Potomac to regroup and to prevent complete defeat. Retreat was slowed by flooding along the river, yet Meade failed to take this opportunity to crush Lee’s army, despite explicit urgings from Lincoln by telegraph and special messenger. Thus, Lee had the time to build bridges that allowed his army’s escape. Meade’s failure to act exasperated Lincoln, and he penned a letter expressing his feelings. This is how part of it reads:
My dear General … You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him, but a flood in the river detained him, till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him. … I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within our easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so south of the river, when you can take with you very few—no more than 2/3’s of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect and I do not expect that you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it. … 20
Meade, sensitive to criticism, had already learned of Lincoln’s frustration through other channels and had threatened to resign because he felt the criticism undeserved. But Meade never read the letter. It was found in Lincoln’s materials after his death. On this letter, Lincoln wrote, “To Gen. Meade, never sent, or signed.” According to historians, Lincoln saw no point in further upsetting General Meade, who had served the Union cause mightily. As distressed as Lincoln was by Meade’s inaction, he was able to suppress the impulse to send the letter.
Lincoln did not care for alcohol, especially whiskey, because he disliked the effect it had on his thinking and on his self-control. But if others wanted to drink, this was fine. In his early days, he frequented the company of heavy drinkers and could enjoy their company even as he refused to drink. Mostly notably, he did not condemn alcoholics, unlike many others who did. In fact, he felt pity and compassion—because he recognized that alcohol could often have special hold on even the best of people—this “tyrant of spirits,” as he called it.21
Lincoln’s sensitivity to the situational factors affecting other people’s behavior was not at the expense of a sense of humor. Lincoln delighted in jokes which, when he was present, were “plenty and blackberried,”22 even bad puns. He was able to tell funny yarns about people so vividly that people’s “sides were sore with laughing,” according to President Van Buren.23 But he was rarely unkind in his joking.24 Lincoln used humor to put people at ease. If he did laugh at people’s misfortunes, it was amusement that recognized human frailties that he himself shared.25 Indeed, much of Lincoln’s humor was directed at himself, especially at what he considered his “ugly” face.26
And so, Lincoln, for all his remarkable talents for seeing the humor in people’s behavior, matured into someone whose instincts leaned more toward empathy than ridicule. Lincoln came to recognize the evils of slavery, but he did not condemn Southerners for owning slaves. When Southerners complained that slavery was a difficult system to eliminate, he could appreciate this point. “I surely will not blame them,” he said, “for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly powers were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing situation.”27 When he considered the matter carefully and imagined what kind of Southerners that Northerners would be if they grew up in the South, he thought, “They are just what we would be in their situation.”28 And yet, he knew slavery was wrong, in part because he could imagine what being a slave was like. To people who argued that slavery was “a very good thing,” he noted that he had never come across someone eager to take advantage of the opportunity “by being a slave himself.”29
Lincoln was a complex man, and I do not want to make a saint out of him. My aim here is to suggest that, to the extent that he displayed traits that we admire, he was also broad in his understanding of the causes of other people’s behavior. His instincts, like those of my boss, led him to take into account the situational constraints that can play a major role in explaining people’s actions—which is at least one reason why he said things
such as, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”30 He was also capable of seeing depravity in others when fitting, but in his tendency to avoid the “fundamental attribution error,” he set a good example for us all.
The additional lesson here is that we are less likely to have schadenfreude dominate our reactions to another person’s misfortune if we are able to focus on the situational factors causing the misfortune. Rather than schadenfreude, the prevailing emotion should be empathy, as it was for Lincoln, by all accounts. It is no accident that Lincoln was able to pen these immortal lines from his second inaugural address: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”31
CONCLUSION
The scandal? There was no need to be driven away by a little scandal. It would have been painful, grotesque, but a scandal was after all a sort of service to the community.
—SAUL BELLOW, HERZOG1
[A]n apostle of peace will feel a certain vicious thrill run through him, and enjoy a vicarious brutality, as he turns to the column in this newspaper at the top of which “Shocking Atrocity” stands printed in large capitals.
—WILLIAM JAMES2
Until the late fall of 2009, Tiger Woods seemed to live a life approaching perfection. After leaving Stanford University early to turn pro, he instantly became the ascendant golfer on the professional tour. During the more than a decade of dominance that followed, there were periods when he toyed with the competition. He hit shots impossible for mere mortals, maintained an astonishing level of focus, and carried himself with singular self-assurance and poise. Unlike so many other golfers, he actually looked like an athlete. “Tiger” was of a different breed of golfer, even a different breed of man, and, at the age of 34, was within easy striking distance of eclipsing the record of 18 major golf championships long held by “The Golden Bear,” Jack Nicklaus. Woods became an international marketing phenomenon, transcending the world of golf, and the income from many lucrative endorsements propelled him into the near-billionaire class.3 Woods enjoyed the kind of celebrity status that enabled him to double TV ratings with his participation in a tournament.4 What was known about his well-guarded personal life also added to the luster. He married a stunningly beautiful Swedish woman who was a former fashion model. He had his own charity organization, the Tiger Woods Foundation, dedicated to helping children learn and achieve. His father, Earl Woods, had been able to say with confidence that his son “will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity.”5
But his fall from grace was quick and cataclysmic. On December 9, 2009, he was taken to a hospital for injuries suffered when he reportedly crashed his Cadillac Escalade on his property in the early morning hours.6 The details of how and why this happened are unclear, but much evidence suggested that there had been a domestic dispute caused by his wife’s discovery of his apparently out-of-control infidelity. Within days, multiple women claimed to have had affairs with Woods,7 and Woods himself, under the pressure of burgeoning evidence, admitted to betraying his marriage vows8 and voluntarily took a leave of absence from golf to get his personal life in order. In a press conference, he apologized for selfishly hurting his wife, family, friends, and fans.9
This was no ordinary fall, and the tabloid media leapt on this story. As a milestone in the history of schadenfreude, the misfortunes of Tiger Woods surely surpass the troubles of Martha Stewart. Indeed, the National Enquirer was largely responsible for initially exposing Woods’s infidelities,10 but it was deemed fair game for just about every respected news outlet and internet venue.11 The general interest in this story was broad and relentless, and schadenfreude was infused through many public reactions. Soon came the jokes.12 “Tiger” was now the “Cheetah.”13 The late-night talk show writers took full advantage, and the blogosphere abandoned all constraint.14
Don Ohlmeyer, a longtime innovator in television sports and entertainment generally, was working at the time as an ombudsman for ESPN, the major sports network channel. His job was to provide independent analysis of the business of producing sports television at ESPN, and he found himself addressing how the network dealt with the indiscretions of athletes, with Tiger Woods heading the list. It was clear that viewers wanted to know everything about these indiscretions. Ohlmeyer struggled to think through the difficult balancing act of maintaining high journalistic standards while also feeding the monster that paid the bills. The tabloids and talk shows fired up their engines to serve a public that delights in the troubles of the rich, famous, and powerful, and then ESPN and other “mainstream media tag along.”15 Ohlmeyer noted that the bottom line of needing to serve the insatiable appetites of the public meant that ESPN had to keep its headlights on the story, just like pretty much everyone else. Coverage focusing on the misbehavior of Woods was what viewers wanted. Many ESPN.com articles about Woods attracted an enormous increase in viewer traffic compared to the average article. It seemed impossible to withhold reporting the details of Woods’s story in light of this. Ohlmeyer, whose experience and role as ombudsman give him considerable credibility, concluded that “Schadenfreude … seems to be a contagion afflicting many media outlets and their consumers.”16
One theme that I’ve carried through this book is that misfortunes befalling others can bring us pleasure because, sometimes, we benefit from these misfortunes—more than we are aware of or willing to admit. I argued in Chapter 3 that this is true most obviously in competitive situations when a rival suffers. We can easily infer that many other golfers on the professional tour might have been secretly pleased by Woods’s troubles. It is hard enough to win a professional tournament, especially a coveted Major tournament, but the chances of winning were reduced to small odds indeed when Woods was playing. Some golfers may have cursed the fates to have their careers overlap with the reign of Tiger Woods. His fall from grace provided an opening.
As natural as it may be to feel schadenfreude, I have also emphasized that most of us are not quite sure that we ought to feel it, or at least disclose feeling it. I can only suspect that other golfers felt happy over Woods’s troubles. I am unaware of any golfer, at least in interviews for the national press, who openly expressed schadenfreude. Most people are uncomfortable with admitting schadenfreude, generally, but particularly if it seems inspired by a selfish motive. It is verboten. Some on the pro tour acknowledged the obvious: that their own rankings might rise in the wake of Woods’s troubles. British golfer Lee Westwood noted that Woods’s situation made a higher ranking for himself more within reach.17 At the time he made the comment, he was ranked number 3 in the world, behind Woods at number 1 and Phil Mickelson at number 2.
I have underscored throughout this book that the way we compare with others plays an important role in our self-esteem and in our emotional life. Competition itself is a kind of social comparison process. If we had no capacity to make social comparisons, then we would have no sense of what rivalry means. It is largely through social comparisons that we understand who has won and who has lost and through which we infer the levels of our abilities and talents. Social comparisons are important building blocks for self-assessments, self-evaluations, and the emotions enmeshed with these judgments.
Woods’s remarkable success on the golf course and the way he seemed to realize perfection in almost every way a person can do so provided an acute contrast for most people, even if they were not interested in golf. Although some people might have been inspired by Woods, perhaps more felt diminished. Those plagued by envy surely found some measure of joy in his fall from grace. And, as inspiring as he might have been, many of us would have preferred to be him rather than be in awe of him. For golfers in particular, Woods probably changed the standards by which they judged themselves. This also fits with the role of social comparisons in how we judge our abilities and talents. Because of his physique alone, many on the pro tour would look at themselves in the mirror and conclude that they failed to measure up even before taking a swing. Often, it seemed as though, when Woods was playing, all the
other golfers were playing for second. Ireland’s Padraig Harrington, reminiscing about Woods’s 15-stroke victory in the 2000 U.S. Open, said, “I was there … I was playing in the other tournament.”18 Ernie Els, paired with Woods in the final round and with two U.S. Open championships to his own credit at that juncture, noted, “It seems like we’re not playing in the same ballpark right now. … When he’s on, you don’t have much of a chance.”19
The scandal around Woods’s affairs reduced that contrast between him and other golfers. At the news conference where Woods, once such a colossus, apologized, he was reduced to humbler dimensions. The stunning personal and professional dimensions to this humbling undoubtedly registered with golfers and other people across the board. Some may have felt mostly pity and disappointment,20 but others are likely to have felt to some degree boosted by the event.
As I have also stressed throughout this book, many instances of schadenfreude can be explained by envy. We are most likely to envy people who do better in areas important to us—those in the same line of work and with similar aspirations. Envy is more intense and more hostile when it represents a frustrated particular desire.
There is little doubt that envy of Tiger Woods could make some people feel schadenfreude over his misfortune. For many pro golfers, of course, Woods was no ordinary unflattering social comparison—he had all the features that would create strong, potentially hostile envy. No doubt Woods left a trail of frustrated, envious golfers in his wake as he racked up win after win, usually in dominating fashion, sometimes humiliating his competition—because they sometimes seemed to choke under pressure. Becoming a pro golfer is no easy process; golf is an extremely difficult game, and the competition to get on and to stay on tour is fierce. Nonetheless, I imagine that most felt like they were playing Salieri to Woods’s Mozart.
The Joy of Pain Page 21
