THE GUILTY PLEASURE

Schadenfreude – the emotion no one wants to admit to

When I found out she was in debt, I felt happy.’ This is Emma*, a 32-year-old teaching assistant from London, and the woman she’s talking about is her sister. Hear her out. ‘She’d always earned more than me and she had this habit of making me feel like my low salary was my own fault, as if I wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe happy is too strong a word, but when my mum told me that she’d racked up loads of credit card debt, I definitely felt something besides sympathy.’ If the precarious financial situation of a loved one doesn’t do it for you, how about the CEO’S grammar fail on the company-wide email (‘I think you’ll find it’s whom, Clive’) or when the friend most likely to post a pic of a bunch of flowers (#blessed) is dumped by her #perfectboyfriend? It’s called schadenfreude (pronounced: shahd-en-froyda) and it feels fantastic. Derived from the German words ‘schaden’ (to damage) and ‘freude’ ( joy), it describes the pleasure you take in the misery of another person. ‘We know it’s a collective emotion because there are words or phrases pertaining to it in so many cultures,’ explains Tiffany Watt Smith, historian of emotions and author of Schadenfreude: The Joy Of Another’s Misfortune (£9.99, Wellcome). The French have ‘joie maligne’ – a diabolical delight in the suffering of others; in Japan they have a saying that roughly translates as ‘the misfortune of others tastes like honey’; on a remote island in Papua New Guinea, it’s known as ‘banbanam’ which, at its most extreme, involves taunting a dead rival by exhuming their corpse and scattering the remains around the village. Oof. While exhuming corpses might feel a bit much, our collective schadenfreude stems from the same place. ‘Comparison is rooted in our consciousness,’ explains Watt Smith. ‘It’s tribal – we can trace it back to when we used to compete for food and shelter. When your rivals failed, it gave you an opportunity to pull ahead.’ While the fight for food and shelter in 2019 is more likely to involve cross-referencing house prices on Zoopla, comparison is still a game we play. And while it might not matter that a stranger on Instagram burnt their homemade banana bread, your brain still sees it as an opportunity to rise above them.

‘A big part of me thought, “You won’t put this on Instagram, will you?”’

CRASH AND YEARN

That schadenfreude no longer serves a survival-of-the-fittest purpose might explain why you’re so reluctant to admit to feeling it. Confessing to taking pleasure in someone else’s pain feels a bit… icky – and it’s the reason schadenfreude is so difficult to study. But research involving brain-scanning technology not only reveals that it’s real, but that people feel it even when they claim not to. In a 2009 study, Japanese researchers encouraged participants to feel envy by telling them their next-door neighbour

bought their dream car; then aimed to elicit schadenfreude by telling them the same neighbour had crashed that car. ‘The more enjoyment they took from something bad happening to the other person, the more activity we saw in the dopaminergic reward areas,’ explains Dr Dean Mobbs, co-author of the study. It means when the bloke who always talks over you in meetings gets fired, it activates the same region of the brain that’s switched on when someone hands you a fiver (or a cinnamon swirl). The study also shed some light on the victims of your schadenfreude; the more envy a person felt towards the Ferrari-owning neighbour, the more pleasure they derived from hearing that the car now resembled a piece of tin foil. But it isn’t just a case of envy. ‘Feelings of schadenfreude are increased when there’s something about the individual you find threatening,’ says Dr Mobbs. ‘Those threats can be incredibly complex, and you may not even be aware of them. In the example of the neighbour with the car, it’s a threat to your status; but it could be a threat to your belief system or your values.’ Back to Emma and her family values. While she insists that she never envied her sister’s fancy clothes or Instagrammable interiors, she admits to feeling threatened by her sister’s beliefs. ‘I don’t think I’m the only one who she blamed for being on a low income – I think it spoke to her world view,’ she explains. ‘She’s a successful woman with a platform, so I felt threatened by the thought of her spreading her views, which were so different from my own. For me, her falling into debt was her comeuppance, I felt like she deserved it.’

REVENGE IS SWEET

‘She deserved it.’ Studies confirm that schadenfreude is a bedfellow of justice. Researchers from Princeton University found that participants were more likely to deliver an electric shock to rich, successful professionals than those they deemed less deserving. It explains the fleeting satisfaction of watching the bloke who barged past you to run for the train have the doors shut in his face; but also the deeper sense of justice at seeing a tax-dodger jailed for their crimes. And your internal justice-delivery system doesn’t just extend to strangers, it also kicks in when someone close to you needs to be taken down a peg or two. ‘I actually smiled. How awful is that?’ says Gemma*, a 30-yearold advertising executive from London who’s so deeply ashamed of her reaction to the news that her school friend was having a shitty time that she asked us to change her name and her job. ‘She’d moved to New York for an amazing career opportunity, she was living in an apartment in a cool part of town and documenting every moment of her great new life on Instagram stories. So when I woke up one morning to a series of voice notes from her telling me she was working until 1am most nights, suffering with imposter syndrome and going out of her mind in the shoebox she was living in, it felt good. I wrote her a long, sympathetic message and scheduled a Facetime session to talk it out, but a big part of me thought, “You won’t put this on Instagram, will you?” For a delicious emotion, it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. But look schadenfreude in the face and it can be illuminating. ‘Think of it as a warning bell,’ suggests clinical psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd. ‘When you enjoy someone’s failure, it can alert you to your own insecurities. Acknowledge this and you can take productive action to address what isn’t working for you in those areas.’ Such was the case for Gemma. ‘I think I needed her to fail in order to make myself feel better about my own working life,’ she explains. ‘I wasn’t in a great place professionally – I hated my boss and I couldn’t see a way out of my situation. By the time we talked it out, I felt like the worst friend in the world. But it made me realise how bad things had become at work and it forced me to be more proactive. I even looked into working abroad myself for a while – it didn’t happen, but it forced me into the job hunt that ultimately led to a new one – one I love.’ As for the friend? ‘Oh, her imposter syndrome lasted five minutes. She’s killing it – she’s also toned down the Insta-bragging…’ ‘Schadenfreude is ultimately a thought,’ explains Dr Hibberd. ‘You have lots of thoughts during the course of a waking day. But it’s what you do with those thoughts that’s important. That says more about who you are.’ You’re better than banbanam.