Why Watching Holiday Gatherers Fall Ill Might Feel Good

Due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic, the decision to partake in social gatherings during this holiday season has become polarized. Many are still dutifully practicing social distancing, quarantined at home without seeing family or friends. But at the same time, the United States saw more than one million daily air travelers the day before Christmas Eve (the highest number since the pandemic began).

As some individuals elect to travel and to gather among friends and family during the holidays, social media has offered a front row seat to their social activities. Indeed, even prior to the holidays, posts on Facebook and Instagram allowed many to watch as others continued to live life as if the pandemic did not exist: still dining indoors at crowded restaurants, drinking in bars, or partying with large groups of friends.

As a result of watching others completely eschew social distancing and mask wearing, those still quarantining this holiday season might experience envy, animosity, or even disgust. Indeed, the response to the pandemic has become a hyperpolarized and oddly partisan issue, with an "us vs them" mentality materializing between "social distancers" continuing to quarantine and the "social gatherers" foregoing public health guidance.

Whenever individuals begin to observe others as members of an "out group" (those belonging to a group which the observer is not a member), certain psychological phenomena begin to surface. For example, decades of social psychological research has documented that individuals feel less empathy for out-group members (e.g., Hornstein, 1972; Batson & Ahmad, 2009).

More recently, researchers have focused on a particular manifestation of the out-group empathy bias: schadenfreude. Described simply, schadenfreude is the sense of pleasure one derives from the misfortune of others. The term is borrowed from the German language and translates literally to mean "harm-joy."

Typically, people experience pity or empathy when they see others suffering. However, developing research has found that individuals will regularly experience schadenfreude when members of an out group experience misfortune.

For example, one seminal study showed that both Republicans and Democrats experienced schadenfreude when members of the opposition party were afflicted with a wide range of misfortunes, including particularly severe events such as home foreclosures and even death. (Combs, et al., 2009). Interestingly, participants in the study acknowledged that these events were hurtful and felt bad about them, but still reported schadenfreude anyway. This suggests that schadenfreude is an involuntary response that can coexist simultaneously alongside divergent emotions.

In the realm of sports, a study by Dr. Mina Cikara and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brain activity of avid baseball fans. (Cikara, et al., 2011). Participants were presented with video clips of their rival teams failing in some way (for example, a strike out from the rival team's best player). This stimuli was found to have activated the ventral striatum, an area of the brain associated with the experience of pleasure.

Indeed, other studies suggest that sports fans actually feel more pleasure from their rival's misfortune than their own team's success. For example, one study from Germany in 2015 found that football fans smiled more quickly and broadly when their rival team missed a penalty, as compared to when their own team scored. (Boecker, et al., 2015).

In the next few weeks, some individuals who have been cataloging their extensive holiday gatherings on social media will start posting news that they have fallen ill with COVID-19. Given the extraordinary prevalence of the virus, this is simply a statistical fact. In response to these posts, "social distancers" might experience schadenfreude at the misfortune of the "out group."

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Consider, for example, how President Trump's tweet announcing his COVID-19 diagnosis back in October was by far his most liked tweet, amassing nearly two million likes. Similarly, in response to Herman Cain's death from COVID-19, many posted online about the schadenfreude they were experiencing, with one Reddit post explicitly asking: "Is it too much schadenfreude to see this and think: one less Trump voter/surrogate, more will surely follow?"

To feel an affinity for the group to which you belong, be it a sports team, political party, or family, is a natural product of our evolution, and something that many proudly flaunt. Schadenfreude, however, is an emotion that most do not want to admit to experiencing.

Indeed, some philosophers have viewed schadenfreude as a malicious sort of pleasure. Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century German philosopher, described schadenfreude as "fiendish and diabolical," writing that "there is no more infallible sign of a thoroughly bad heart." Contemporary scholars approach schadenfreude through a more neutral lens, acknowledging its ubiquity in human psychology and even theorizing ways in which it has benefited humans throughout our evolution.

In either case, the COVID-19 pandemic is certain to elicit further instances of schadenfreude across all walks of life. For example, those in the "anti vaxx" camp might have experienced schadenfreude upon hearing of the recent allergic reactions from some Pfizer and Moderna vaccine recipients, just as some Republicans might feel pleasure while watching California (a generally liberal state) struggle catastrophically with COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations.

As much as we might not like to admit it, schadenfreude will always be a part of intergroup dynamics, and it is important to acknowledge (and to continue studying) its occurrence.