NYTimes | The world’s highest-paid athlete
began his spectacular downfall by crashing a Cadillac S.U.V. into a
fire hydrant and a tree. Initial accounts of Tiger Woods’s 2009 accident
reported that his wife had broken the vehicle’s window with a golf club
to free him, but when word spread that the couple had been fighting
over allegations of his infidelity, the smashed window became a metaphor
for his shattered reputation.
As the scandal unfolded, the sports celebrity who had built an empire on
his image as an upstanding family man was revealed as a glutton for extramarital sex
and an author of tawdry texts to mistresses and paid escorts. Almost
overnight, Mr. Woods became a target of ridicule, not to mention a
website and a Twitter account with the sole purpose of propagating jokes
about him.
The wicked delight over that turn of events has a German name so apt
we’ve adopted it in English. Schadenfreude, or “harm-joy,” is the
pleasure derived from another’s misfortune, and Richard H. Smith,
a University of Kentucky psychology professor, has built a career
around studying it and other social emotions. He previously edited an
anthology about envy, a close sibling to schadenfreude.
As perverse as the emotion may seem, it serves an adaptive function, Dr.
Smith argues in this enjoyable book. It stems from social comparisons,
which allow us to assess our talents and determine our status in the
social order. The urge to make these comparisons appears hard-wired —
studies show that even monkeys and dogs measure themselves against their
peers.
Schadenfreude provides a glimpse into what the psychologists Roy F. Baumeister and Brad J. Bushman
have called “the most basic conflict in the human psyche” — the
friction between our selfish impulses and self-control. “We are all
savages inside,” the author Cheryl Strayed wrote in her Dear Sugar column at the website The Rumpus. “We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed.”
But life doesn’t always turn out that way, and when we encounter someone
who is more chosen, beloved or esteemed than we are, our natural
instinct is to tear them down to our level. If this illicit desire is
fulfilled by happenstance, schadenfreude ensues. Clive James captured
the feeling in a poem that takes its title from its first line: “The book of my enemy has been remaindered/ And I am pleased.”
When envy invokes pain, schadenfreude provides a potent antidote. Mr.
Woods’s success on the golf course and seemingly perfect life —
beautiful wife, family and flawless reputation — “provided an acute
contrast for most people, even if they were not interested in golf,” Dr.
Smith writes. Though some people were surely inspired by him, perhaps
more felt diminished. His downfall brought him closer to their level,
and thus allowed his enviers to feel better about themselves.
The 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes
proposed that humor often arose from a sudden sense of superiority, and
Dr. Smith writes that our culture thrives on downward comparisons that
provide this “sudden glory.”
“Do we watch reality television for precious insights into the human
condition?” he asks. “Please. We watch for those awkward scenes that
make us feel a smidgen better about our own little unfilmed lives.”
