The Joy of Pain (10 page)

There was another interesting finding in these researchers' study suggesting the intense motivations that can underlie
schadenfreude
. Their participants were contacted a few weeks after giving their reactions in the scanner. They completed a Web survey designed to assess their willingness to harm rival fans or nonrival fans by heckling, insulting, threatening, and hitting. Participants expressed a greater willingness to do these things to rivals than to nonrivals.

There does seem to be something about intergroup dynamics that brings out competitive instincts. When groups are rivals in sports, competition is a given, but the psychology of intergroup relations suggests many reasons why the competitive mindset will be amplified. Social psychologists Chet Insko, Tim Wildschut, Taya Cohen, and others have done many experiments that compare interactions between two individuals with interactions between two groups. Groups end up being more competitive than individuals.
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This
“individual-group discontinuity effect” is remarkably robust and easily replicated. Why? First, it is easier to serve the interests of our group than our own narrow interests without seeming greedy. Second, we are apt to see it as our
duty
as a loyal group member to favor our group. Far from feeling greedy, we take pride in serving our group's interests. Third, we are much more likely to attribute competitive motives, as well as a host of other negative traits, to outgroups than to individuals; outgroups are more difficult to trust and thus require our vigilance. Finally, any aggressive actions we do take seem to be a collective group action rather than our own individual action, and this diffuses our responsibility for the nastiness that may result. No wonder intergroup relations can be so overloaded with conflict.

If you follow golf, you have probably noticed the difference in both players' and spectators' reactions to Ryder Cup matches compared to regular tournaments. The Ryder Cup is a biennial, three-day event that pits the United States against Europe in a series of competitions between players from each team. As sports go, golf is subdued. Player and spectator norms dictate proper decorum and sportsmanship. The bouncy, Gangnam Style dance that Korean golfer James Hahn displayed after sinking a long birdie putt during the final round of the Phoenix Open in February of 2013 was memorable in part because it was so unprecedented.
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In regular tournaments, spectators display approval at every good shot made and collective groans at every shot missed. On the back of tickets for one major tournament, the Masters, a sentence reads: “Applauding mistakes is no part of the game of golf and we hope that visitors to the Masters will henceforth observe the etiquette and retain their reputation as among the most knowledgeable and courteous of golfing spectators.”
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Players themselves may be elated if a competitor chokes, but we wouldn't know this from their inscrutable demeanors. However, these norms do not apply quite so consistently for the Ryder Cup matches, especially in recent years.

The 1999 Ryder Cup involved an improbable comeback victory for the United States team.
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As the drama unfolded, the emotions of both players and spectators intensified and erupted openly. The competition came down to a final pairing between American Justin Leonard and Spaniard José María Olazábal. There were two holes to go (the 17th and 18th), and all Leonard had to do to ensure victory for the U.S. team was to win one of the holes or
tie both. On the 17th hole, both golfers made the green on their second shots. Leonard's ball was more than 40 feet away, a very difficult putt. Olazábal's was just over 20 feet away: tough but makeable. Leonard putted first and holed it! Even though Olazábal had yet to putt (and, importantly, making it would have extended the match), American players, some fans, and even wives rushed onto the green in celebration. The green was cleared for Olazábal to putt, but he missed. There was celebration over
this
too! So much for the gentleman's game of golf when play is intergroup.
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There are other arenas in life where partisan instincts carry the day—such as in politics. As in sports, any misfortune befalling an opposing party candidate, from sexual scandal to verbal gaffe, improves the chances of one's own candidate or party winning. In the heat of political campaigns, particularly as election night approaches, most events are interpreted through their implications for victory or defeat, even if a misfortune creates general negative effects for everyone. For example, dispiriting economic news might seem to have no positive outcomes for anyone, and yet for a challenger trying to defeat an incumbent, an economic downturn might be good news indeed—because the blame goes to the incumbent. The prospect of winning is the outcome that matters most and so the “bad news” creates
schadenfreude
.
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The partisan interests driving the emotions of those invested in politics can sometimes be difficult to uncover, however. The political costs of appearing to lack empathy over bad news are great—much more so than in sports. Regardless of who is losing politically, both sides are required to put on a long face, their actual feelings notwithstanding. Yet the suspected inconsistency between actual and presented feelings is probably why politicians and their allies often accuse their opponents of experiencing unseemly joy when negative events bring good political news.
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For example, early in the presidential campaign of 2012, President Barack Obama claimed that Republicans greeted with great enthusiasm the bad news of rising gas prices. They were “licking their chops” over the political opportunity, even though this hurt the average consumer. He added, “Only in politics do people root for bad news.”
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There
is little doubt that political motivations can promote
schadenfreude
, often camouflaged by mock concern. A juicy scandal suffered by a political adversary is an unfailing trigger. But is it actually true that
schadenfreude
also occurs when the misfortune is general in its negative impact, affecting more than the specific outcomes of a political adversary? I collaborated on a series of studies led by social psychologist David Combs in which we examined this question.
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We assessed participants' political party affiliations and the intensity of their affiliation. Approximately two months later, just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and again just before the 2006 midterm elections, we gauged their reactions to news articles entailing misfortunes of two types. Some were partly comic in nature and embarrassing to either the Republican or Democratic Party (e.g., President George W. Bush falling off his bicycle and Senator John Kerry dressed in a comical outfit during a tour at NASA). Others were objectively hurtful to others regardless of political party, yet had implications for the outcome of an upcoming election (a downturn in the economic news and troop deaths in Iraq). We expected that party affiliation would predict the amount of
schadenfreude
felt by the participants.

This is exactly what happened. For the comic misfortunes, the results were straightforward. Democrats found the article about President Bush much more humorous than did Republicans and vice versa for the article about Senator Kerry. Echoing the findings for sports, this pattern was stronger for those highly identified with their party and thus more concerned about the outcome of the election. Essentially, the “same” event was seen as either very funny or not depending on the political vantage point.

But more interesting were the results from the questions about the two “objectively negative” misfortunes. Democrats found both the economic downturn and the troop deaths more pleasing than did Republicans. Once again, this was all the more true for those highly identified with their party and invested in the outcome of the election. Overall, these feelings of pleasure were not extreme. And yet it was true that these objectively negative misfortunes were pleasing to some degree. Because the pleasure increased with strength of identification, it is likely that this pleasure was linked to resulting political gain. I should note that Democrats felt considerable ambivalence about both the economic downturn and the troop deaths. They seemed to welcome the
potential political windfall that might follow from each event, yet they still wrestled with the fact that the news was generally bad for almost everyone. By contrast, Republicans reported less
overall
negative affect as the result of these events. This might be because Republicans were trying to downplay the seriousness of the problem so that they would have less reason to feel troubled by bad things brought about by their party.

In our initial studies, we did not find that Republicans also experienced
schadenfreude
over an objectively negative event. This was a quirk of the period when we ran these studies, a period when scandals were the province of Republicans, not Democrats. Bad news on the economic or military front almost always had negative implications for Republicans, whose party was in power. However, we had no reason to believe that political
schadenfreude
was only something Democrats would feel. In another study, we took the liberty of constructing an article that portrayed a negative event that could be pinned on either Democrats or Republicans. The time period for this study was the tail end of the 2008 primary campaign, after both the Democratic candidate, the then Senator Barack Obama, and the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, had earned their respective party nominations. The article claimed that during the previous year the candidate had pushed through legislation that directly led to higher mortgage foreclosures that devastated the fortunes of many homeowners. The article stressed these broad, negative effects. As in the previous studies, we assessed party affiliation and party identification. Again, the pattern of findings was strikingly dependent on which candidate was associated with the misfortune and the participants' party affiliation and degree of identification with their party.

As illustrated in
Figure 3.1
, Republicans were more pleased than Democrats when Obama was the cause of the misfortune. The pattern reversed when McCain had pushed the bad legislation through. Those strongly identified with their party showed the pattern all the more. Just as in the competitive realm of sports, when it comes to political fortune, people naturally focus on their own party's success, regardless of how others' outcomes might be affected. As comedian Stephen Colbert put it during the summer of the 2012 presidential campaign between incumbent President Barack Obama and his challenger, Mitt Romney, “I've got some good news and some bad news.
The good news is there's plenty of bad news, which is great news for Mitt Romney.”
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Figure 3.1. The role of party affiliation of observer and party of the sufferer on
schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude
in response to a “misfortune” happening to either McCain or Obama depended on party affiliation of observer.

The influence of group identification on
schadenfreude
is powerful, but it fits with our inherent social nature. Humans have always lived in groups, and our individual survival has probably been linked with the advantages of being part of a strong group. Group identification is therefore quite automatic and can lead to ingroup favoritism and outgroup antipathy—and
schadenfreude
when a rival outgroup suffers.
Schadenfreude
seems the signature emotion in the competitive rough and tumble of sports and politics, where group allegiances are so intense.

Sometimes sports and politics travel together. Historian Peter Gay grew up in the pre-war Berlin of the 1930s. In his memoir
My German Question
, he describes what it was like to cope with persecutions that he and his family suffered as Jews until they made their escape on a ship to Cuba in 1939.
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He found refuge from the increasingly vile treatment of the Nazis by immersing himself in sports. He developed passionate attachments to teams and was keenly happy when they did well and miserable when they lost. Also, since he and his father hated the Nazis, they both began identifying with America rather than Germany. By the 1936 Berlin Olympics, they supported “the Americans passionately.”
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They attended most of the events, and their hatred of the Nazis and their love for Americans led to great swings in emotions depending on the outcome of the various games. Gay remembered one event most keenly,
the women's 4 × 100-meter relay, in which the highly favored German team lost because they dropped the relay baton:

As long as I live I shall hear my father's voice as he leaped to his feet … “Die Mädchen haben den Stab verloren!,” he shouted, “The girls have dropped the baton!” As Helen Stevens loped to the tape to give the Americans yet another gold medal, the unbeatable models of Nazi womanhood put their arms around each other and cried their German hearts out. …
Schadenfreude
can be one of the greatest joys in life.
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