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whether it's laughing at fail videos or
relishing those times when a rival
sports team lost the big game we all
enjoy watching others misfortunes
there's actually a word for this
it's called schadenfreude 'ah literally
it means enjoyment obtained from
troubles of others it sounds twisted and
it is it's even more twisted than you
might think
schadenfreude a' is nothing new chances
are it's been hard wired into our way of
thinking for millions of years one of
the strongest arguments to my mind is
that our brains evolved for you know
millions of years in a situation where
you had small groups of humans
scrabbling out in existence against
other small groups of humans in a
relatively harsh environment in order to
survive that you'd need your group to be
really tight-knit and this would both
select for something like empathy
feeling for the suffering of other group
members and also extreme aggression
towards others something like
schadenfreude schadenfreude a-- and
empathy are two sides of the same coin
they're both a response we feel to
seeing someone else's trials and
misfortunes however there's one big
difference between the two
schadenfreude a-- isn't something
parents teach their children yet
researchers know that babies as young as
two can experience it all it takes is a
little competition to trigger the
reaction for one study two-year-olds
watched as their mothers doted on other
infants later the mothers were told to
spill water on the infants when they did
the onlooking two-year-olds got so
excited that some of them literally
bounced with joy it's funny but it's not
hard to see how this child is rivalry
could develop into something more
sinister in adults and that's exactly
what emile bruno studies he's travelled
to many parts of the world to
investigate conflicts including
Americans and Mexicans on the Arizona
border Israelis and Palestinians in
Israel and Democrats and Republicans in
the US doesn't matter where the conflict
is or what it's about he's found at the
of all of it is schadenfreude now we are
extraordinarily motivated by who belongs
to our group and who belongs to the
other group we have a strong tendency to
think not just in terms of me and you
but in terms of us and them and people
who identify as them
I'll feel more schadenfreude towards
them than towards us and certainly that
is the type of thing that drives
behavior if you feel empathy for
somebody else you're motivated to help
them if they're in distress similarly if
you feel schadenfreude you're motivated
to to harm the other person
neuroscientists think they've pinpointed
the area of the brain behind all this
for one study Red Sox and Yankees fans
watched simulated plays while a fMRI
measured their brain activity when a fan
saw the rival team fail a special area
of the brain called the ventral striatum
lit up it helps process reward and
pleasure suggesting that the fans were
experiencing schadenfreude
the ventral striatum is also involved
with decision-making interestingly fans
who showed more activity there also
reported that they were likely to harm a
fan of the rival team this could explain
why schadenfreude seems to be driving
human conflicts and violence worldwide
but isn't it time we finally shake off
this archaic way of thinking the modern
world is very different than the world
that our brains primarily evolved it and
that right now we're trying to solve
these modern-day problems with Stone Age
psychology in an environment that is
that is global and multicultural where
you have much less conflict where
cooperation and collaboration can get
you much further than conflict then yes
I feel like it is it is not as
productive instead Bruno is exploring
how to use empathy to resolve conflict
and move towards resolutions most
recently what I've been really
interested in is how do we intervene and
how do we motivate empathy towards the
other group interestingly enough what I
found is that interventions that are
directed more at trying to challenge
kind of cognitive perceptions of the
other side are the types of things that
open up their empathy so it's it's
almost like the best approach to opening
people's hearts is first by opening
their minds this doesn't necessarily
mean that you can't laugh at fail videos
on YouTube but perhaps if we tried to
have a little bit more empathy for other
groups maybe we could make the world a
better place
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