The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature

Tiger Woods caught in a sex scandal; a would-be pedophile humiliated on TV; a wealthy Jewish neighbor persecuted by the Nazis. In his latest, Smith, a University of Kentucky psychology professor, claims that these seemingly disparate cases can all elicit the same emotion: schadenfreude, or “pleasure derived from someone else’s misfortune.” We enjoy these awful stories, whether because we’re uplifted by the “downward comparison” with a formerly envied individual or group, or because we feel that justice has been served to hypocrites and other “deserving” miscreants. A master at exploring humanity’s darker instincts, Smith (Envy: Theory and Research) crafts ingenious experiments to tease out the feelings we won’t admit to having, and explains the adaptive reasons for them. We wouldn’t be able to survive without these shameful traits, but, according to Smith, it’s a slippery slope—schadenfreude and empathy are opposite poles of human emotion, and we must be careful which way we lean. This is an accessible, fun, schadenfreudean romp through pop culture (a contestant embarrasses himself on American Idol), sports (an opponent suffers injury), politics (an economic crisis during the other guy’s term), and, of course, religion (the downfall of an ultramoral Christian evangelist), but with a focus on the causes and effects of what philosopher Henri Bergson called an “anesthesia of the heart” and its possible antidotes. Illus. (Aug.)