EVILICIOUS: Cruelty = Desire + Denial (6 page)

Envy emerges out of our sense of fairness, fueled by competition. It is part and parcel of a hierarchical society. When we envy someone, we have detected a difference or inequity between our own condition and that of another. We want what someone else has, presumably because we like or think we like what they have. Wanting and liking are in harmony. Recognition of the inequity fuels competition to redress the imbalance. This sense of fairness appears early in child development and changes in systematic ways as a function of a culture’s norms
¹⁹
.

The economist Ernst Fehr set up an experiment to explore how fairness develops in young children ages 3-8 years old. Fehr was especially interested in when children recognize a disparity or inequity in the distribution of resources and what they are willing to do, if anything, to redress the imbalance. Each child first learned that they would play against a partner of the same age who was either from the same school or a different school; Fehr set up the school distinction to look at the possibility, seen repeatedly in experimental studies and real world situations with adults, of heightened cooperation among those from the same group and heightened hatred and aggression toward those outside. Though each child knew about his or her partner’s age and school affiliation, they never saw their partner. Each child therefore knew only that they were playing with
someone
from their school or
someone
unfamiliar to them.

All children played three different games. In each game, one child decided how to distribute a fixed amount of candy to his or her partner. In the
prosocial
game, the decider took either one candy and gave one to the partner or took one candy and gave nothing to the partner. If children are sensitive to inequities and want to share in order to make things fair, they should pick the 1-1 option; picking the 1-0 option doesn’t affect the decider, but dings the partner. In the
envy
game, the decider has a choice between 1-1 and 1-2. As in the prosocial game, the decider gets the same amount of candy with both options, but preserves equity with 1-1. Picking 1-1 also reveals that the child has an aversion to others having more, even when there is no personal cost. In the third,
sharing
game, the decider has a choice between 1-1 and 2-0. Here again, the decider gets candy in both cases, but the 2-0 option tempts the desire for more, both personally and relatively. On the one hand, a greedy child will want more candy, and so 2 wins over 1. But picking the 2-0 option also leads to a greater difference with the partner — critical for comparison shopping — while robbing them of an opportunity for any candy. If fairness prevails, deciders should pick 1-1. If selfishness prevails, motivated by competition, they should pick 2-0.

Fehr uncovered two key results. Across all three games, younger children played more selfishly than older children, but independently of age and the game played, all children played more fairly with familiar than unfamiliar schoolmates. These results, together with several other studies, show that children are sensitive to the distribution of goods at an early age, but with important developmental changes in play. There is a tendency for children to both recognize inequities early in life, but to act selfishly when possible. The envy game provides a beautiful illustration. When another child could receive more, children, especially young ones, rejected this option even though it wouldn’t cost them directly; the decider always gets just one candy in this game. Though no one has yet fully explained what causes this developmental shift from more to less selfishness, most agree that it is driven in part by maturation of brain regions guiding self-control, together with social factors that make young children increasingly aware of and sensitive to their own and others’ reputations. Young children are more impulsive and selfish, and this leads to higher levels of inequity when they are asked to distribute valuable goods. Fehr’s studies also show that playing fair is not just about the distribution of resources, but about who gets them. Early in life, children have already carved up the world into those they know and those they don’t. This division drives their thinking and feeling, and in cases like this, their sense of fairness. It is a division that I will discuss in greater detail in
chapter 2
.

Fehr’s research, and the majority of studies on the child’s developing sense of fairness, focus on children living in large Western societies. Most of the work on fairness in adults is similarly focused on such societies. The precise structure of these societies may directly impact how individuals decide when to share, what commodities enter into the distribution, and whether sharing depends on effort invested, needs, or power. As noted in the last section, those who support an egalitarian society are more likely to feel empathy toward those in pain than those who support a hierarchical society. Individuals who are more empathic are also more altruistic. Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be more egalitarian, and highly cooperative. These differences predict further differences in how those living in small-scale societies, including the hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers of Africa, Asia, and South America, should respond to unfair exchanges, and thus, whether they envy those who have more. If envy is lower in these societies, individuals should be less bothered when others get more, and thus be less interested in leveling the playing field.

The anthropologist Joseph Henrich and his colleagues presented a set of bargaining games to adults living in different small-scale societies across the globe. Though the subjects in this study played a number of different games, the basic goal was similar to those deployed by Fehr in his studies of children: under what conditions do individuals choose to share an unequal distribution of resources, and what are the consequences of selfish acts?

Consider the ultimatum game. One individual decides how to distribute a fixed amount of money to an anonymous partner. The partner has two options: keep what is on offer or reject it. Rejection costs both players as they leave empty handed. Rejection is both an expression of sour grapes for what could have been — a fair offer — and punishment for selfish behavior. In large scale societies, offers typically range from 40-50% of the initial pot, and rejections are common for offers less than about 20%.

Across the globe, most people in these small scale societies offered some amount of the initial pot. Across the globe, most people rejected really low offers. This suggests the universal signature of fairness and a desire to level those who try to get ahead. Cultures differed with respect to how much they shared and their threshold for rejecting offers. Some societies offered, on average, close to 40%, while others offered as little as 15%. Some societies accepted virtually all offers, whereas others rejected both low and even high offers. Even in more egalitarian societies, therefore, there is sensitivity to unequal distributions. Even in egalitarian societies, there is a willingness to punish those who act unfairly, those who take more than what others see as their fair share. Even in egalitarian societies there is a desire to prevent the Haves from having too much.

Let’s take stock of the discussion thus far. Our sense of fairness is part of human nature, appearing early in development, but guided by experience toward a particular cultural form. The reason why I have discussed fairness is because it often plays an essential role in our experience of envy. Envy grows when we detect an uneven distribution of resources, wishing we were members of the haves as opposed to the have-nots. Envy grows when desire combines with competition, motivating a departure from the group of have-nots. Envy is yet another way in which we can accumulate unsatisfied desires, seeing the rest of the world as always having more. This perception of inequity can drive competition and hatred.

Studies of the brain show how envy is generated from the psychologies of desire and competition. When healthy subjects sit in a brain scanner and learn about other individuals who have what they desire, there is considerable activity in the
anterior cingulate
, and more activity in those who feel more envious. This is not the envy center of the brain. There is no such area. But the recruitment of the anterior cingulate in other social situations helps us understand what is going on more generally in the case of envy. There is significant activity in the anterior cingulate when we experience pain from social exclusion, but not when we witness such pain in others. It is one of the areas that was activated in Chiao’s work on the differences in pain empathy between individuals who prefer egalitarian as opposed to hierarchical societies. The anterior cingulate is also involved when our minds are pulled in two different directions, a situation that arises when we are forced to choose between two conflicting moral options – for example, a duty to save the lives of many versus the prohibition of killing one person to save the lives of many. There is a common thread here that unites these different experiences. Like our experience of social exclusion, envy is also a form of social pain and to some, deeply painful, as it spotlights our deficiencies. Envy also represents a situation in which our positive sense of self conflicts with the negative sense of self engendered by social comparison. Our brain informs us that we are less accomplished when compared with others. Envy is socially imposed pain generated by comparison shopping.

The experience of envy highlights what we don’t have, which fuels the system of desire, which seeks satisfaction. Unsatisfied, wanting keeps hunting for pleasure. The experience of schadenfreude delivers some prey — a morsel of joy that emerges from witnessing someone who is worse off.

O Schadenfreude

When the envied fall down or experts fail, we often perversely enjoy the knock out. This is schadenfreude, a German word that describes the joy we feel in witnessing another’s misfortune. Though the emotion is universally understood, recognized in our written records at least as far back as Aristotle, the German language is one of only a handful of languages to capture the feeling in a single word, combining the word for harm (
schaden
) with the word for joy (
freude
). Like envy, schadenfreude is a social, comparative emotion. It erupts when those we envy fall down, when someone we dislike meets his comeuppance, and when a misfortune is deserved. And like envy, schadenfreude presents two faces, one elevating and virtuous, the other deflating and divisive. We should feel good when a person is caught crossing a moral line, and when justice is served. Such feelings not only reinforce our own adherence to moral norms, but encourage us to punish those who transgress. But these same feelings can emerge when we harm those who have been dehumanized. Dehumanizing another, as we shall see in
chapter 2
, provides one method of justifying morally abhorrent behavior. When members of another group are seen as parasites, eradicating them is not only justified but necessary for survival. Our desire for eradication continues until there is an extinction. Let’s look more closely at how schadenfreude works, and the evidence to support these general observations
²⁰
.

Schadenfreude, like envy, can trigger self-evaluation, looking inside of ourselves to assess our net worth relative to others. We know from a large body of studies, several carried out by the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, that when an individual’s sense of self-worth is threatened, especially those individuals with more narcissistic and overly confident personalities, aggression often follows. The more personally threatened we feel by another individual or group, the more pleasure we should feel when they suffer. The psychologist Wilco van Dijk tested this idea with an experiment. Subjects filled out a questionnaire that they believed evaluated their intellectual strengths. Upon completing the questionnaire, some were told that they had utterly flopped, scoring in the lowest 10% of all subjects, while others were told that they performed brilliantly, scoring in the upper 10%. Next, all subjects read a scenario in which someone suffers a misfortune. For example, in one scenario, a student rents an expensive car to show off at a party, but then drives the car into a river, not only damaging the car but requiring the fire department to tow it out. Those whose sense of self-worth was threatened by the abominable test score were more likely to say that they felt good about the misfortune, including smirks and laughter in response to the show off who submerged his rented car, as well as other similar cases.

van Dijk’s results show that schadenfreude serves the beneficial function of hoisting our own self-worth. This feeling even arises in cases where we have no connection with the injured party. When our self-worth has been challenged, for whatever reason, we feel better knowing that someone else is worse off, regardless of context or direct relevance. We evaluate our self-worth in much the same way that we evaluate potato chips: it’s all relative to someone or something else.

I have explained that our desire to see others suffer can grow, especially when the desire is not satisfied by feeling good. Carlsmith’s work on revenge and punishment, discussed earlier, provides an example: when people punish wrongdoers they expect to feel better, but ruminating on the experience causes them to feel worse and seek greater satisfaction. This cycle can drive a greater and greater desire to hurt others. Cycles such as these are often ignited and fueled by ideology, including especially differences in our perception of who is like us and who isn’t. This distinction, as we learned earlier, guides children’s sense of fairness, causing them to favor equity with in-group members and inequity among out-group members. Later in life, religious and political beliefs further fortify our favoritism toward in-group members, often leading to seemingly irrational desires to see those not like us suffer.

The psychologist Richard Smith explored whether an individual’s political convictions influenced the intensity of schadenfreude when witnessing a member of another party suffer, including cases where society at large also suffers. Smith initiated the study prior to the US Presidential elections in 2004 involving Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry; during this period, the Republicans controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Each subject — all college undergraduates — provided information about party affiliation and strength of support for the policies and beliefs of their party. Next, each subject read and provided reactions to short newspaper articles describing tragicomic moments for the two candidates, one in which Bush fell off a bicycle he was riding, and the other involving Kerry wearing a bizarre space outfit during a visit to NASA. Last, subjects read and reacted to an article describing job losses and the economic downturn facing the nation — an article meant to capture an objective cost to all members of society, irrespective of party affiliation.