Schaudenfreude Case

Society has held a twisted interest in the pain of others for all of recorded history. From the gladiators in ancient Rome, to the public witch burnings in colonial America, to the grotesque portrayals of physical fights and sexual tension on Jersey Shore today, or even, yes, laughing at your competition humiliating themselves in a speech round, humans have always used the demeaning of others for personal gratification; and whether we are cheering for the execution of our culture's grand vision of justice, or merely basking in the glorified humiliation of those we dislike or envy, it is an undisputable fact that humanity is obsessed with our fellow man's suffering....whether we're aware of it or not. Today, we will examine the phenomenon of shadenfreude by first gawking at the social media savagery, then smirking at the societal and psychological impact, and, finally, by mustering up the last dregs of our empathy.

Shadenfreude is everywhere, there's no way we can escape it. In fact, we even seek it out. According to compete.com in 2010, the vicious celebrity gossip site TMZ had over 5.5 million unique visitors in November alone. Compete's statistics indicate that in the past year, this number has increased by 25%. TMZ isn't alone, either; according to the Marshall Index on October 25, 2011, six out of the ten top searched news stories were related to celebrity gossip (four of which were about Lindsey Lohan) on everything from the Los Angeles Times to the Huffington Post . Even news outlets like U.S.A. Today and Fox News have fallen prey to preying on celebrity misfortunes.

Especially when the person being hurt or humiliated is someone whom you envy, like the celebrity with too much money, too much fame, and a too attractive girlfriend. Take for instance, back in 2009, when celebrity golfer Tiger Woods was caught being unfaithful to his wife. You couldn't get online, watch TV, or peruse a newspaper or magazine without experiencing the media explosion of someone's (rather embarrassing) personal affairs. Late night talk shows, blogs, and of course the infamous parody show South Park, all added their comedic fuel to the fire. And we ate it up. The embarrassment of a celebrity gave us that delightful tingle that can't help but make you give a self-satisfied "Ha!"...even if you're laughing behind your hand.

None of us want to admit we like it when other people are unhappy, we don't want to come off as sadistic or cruel. However, as any cynical, pessimistic, high school outcast can tell you being mean is only human...or, that is to say, human biology. In an experiment conducted by Dr. Tania Singer and the University College London in 2006, all of the participating subjects, especially men, had significantly less active empathy circuits in their brain when viewing images of bad things happening to who they were lead to believe to bad people. Not only that, but besides the lack of empathy, their brain scans also revealed a lit up reward center in the left nucleus acumens; which, in terms we can all understand, means that seeing bad people get what the subjects thought they deserved caused feelings of satisfaction and pleasure.

And according to an ongoing study reported in the online scientific journal "Very Evolved" in 2009, the witnessing of a perceived rival's failure instigated the same neural activity that governs our feelings of pleasure. And, while this seems terrible, according to the same study it all boils down to evolution. If caveman b was being mauled by a Lion, that left you, triumphant caveman A, to return to the tribe and continue on your line; in essence, if someone else was hurting instead of you, that meant that your ancestors would be the one's hearing this speech, opposed the theirs, who would never even get the chance.

And what's the problem? People are entertained and media outlets are getting money, everyone wins. Except of course, the victims of this self-indulgence; as more and more the latest headlines are filled with tales of scandal, tragedy, and loss, the more the actual people they're about are treated as commodities. The dissociative way we view these peoples lives leads to self-righteous, superior, and negligent attitudes. We value the glamorous and shallow elements of a story more than the human values, and our appetite for these things only grows. This indulgence by media proxy creates, as one psychologist at the University of Bangor in the United Kingdom put it, a "vacuum of morality, where participants are unable to grasp the negative consequences of passively allowing suffering