Even those who don't flinch at the sight of physical deformity may be socially uncomfortable around someone with a handicap. Often that's no more than the simple awkwardness that stems from the fear of breaking rules of etiquette—or looking like a jerk. This social fear embellishes the more innate feelings, suggests Don Freedheim, emeritus professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. As kids we have a natural curiosity about disabled people that adults try to squelch, he says: "Parents say, 'Shh, don't say that,' and the child may be forced into feeling that it's bad to be different." A little education about disability, says Freedheim, can go a long way.
Emotional Rubbernecking: "Funerals Can Be Fun."
You've probably met them at wakes: They are the apparently bereft third cousins (once removed), or the weepy friends who neglect to mention that they haven't seen the deceased in 10 years. They are emotional rubberneckers, secretly proud to claim an intimate connection to the dead.
Why jump on the bandwagon, when the bandwagon is a hearse? There are self-serving reasons: Evolutionary psychologists argue that the public expression of grief boosts your reputation as a trustworthy member of the community. Psychoanalysts, on the other hand, hold that excessive displays of grief mask unconscious guilt at our own survival. Grieving may also serve an existential function; in mourning others we wrestle with our own certain demise. But that doesn't explain why some people enthusiastically strike up the dirge for folks they hardly know.
People ally themselves with the dead for the same reason they tell fantastic tales or streak naked through the college quad: to command attention. The awe and reverence conferred on the newly dead can be ours by association. "People become overinvolved with death because they feel important through identification with the event," says Robert Reich, a New York City psychiatrist. Many people "overdo" funerals or lament the loss of a reviled spouse as a play for sympathy and attention, according to Reich.
Sudden tragic death can inspire emotional rubbernecking in anyone. (How many of us have boasted about near misses—say, driving through an intersection five minutes before a fatal crash?) A national catastrophe such as September 11 brings this behavior out of the woodwork. That fall, people felt compelled to disclose that they had friends of friends of friends in the World Trade Center. New Yorkers morbidly compared notes: How close were you? What did you see? Who did you know? (In this creepy social gambit, the "winner" is the person most directly affected by the attack.) The same calculus was at work in other states or countries, where the comparison was not what you saw firsthand but who you knew in New York City or Washington, D.C.
To be sure, there are more admirable reasons people advertise their connection to a newsworthy event. Tragedies such as 9/11 or Kennedy's assassination heighten the communal bond that sociologists refer to as group cohesion. Crime often dips in the immediate aftermath, and people feel kinship with the grieving families whether they know them or not. Anyone who watches such cataclysmic events unfold can somehow claim them as their own. Emotional rubbernecking is another way of saying, "I was there—and I survived."
Schadenfreude "She had it coming to her."
Why do we hate Martha Stewart? Is it her icy, lipless smile, her piles of cash, her talent at making every American feel like a domestic failure? None of this can account for the nationwide glee over her doing jail time. The only thing that really explains it is schadenfreude: the spiteful delight at seeing someone else flounder. Whether the belly flop is courtesy of Dennis Kozlowski or the high-school prom queen, nothing's more satisfying than witnessing a former victor turned into a washout.
From an evolutionary point of view, it makes perfect sense: Seeing rivals fail is satisfying because it would seem to leave more opportunity for us. "If we're both doing badly, but you do even worse, because it's a relative advantage it makes me [seem] better off," explains Evans. Glee, or even just relief, at this "advantage" lifts the mood.
But schadenfreude is much more disturbing when we feel it toward our friends. Licking your chops over Martha's downfall is a neighborly spectator sport. Admitting that you resent your husband's fame is another matter. Norman Feather, emeritus professor of psychology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, thinks that this messier version of schadenfreude emerges from our sense of fairness. We resent seeing anyone glory in success that isn't earned, even if it's a relative or an intimate. As a result, their comeuppance is gratifying. People who feel they've gotten a raw deal are especially likely to give in to this feeling. "The resentment you feel [about your own situation] can feed into the resentment you feel toward others," says Feather. "That can be dangerous."
Normally, etiquette requires us to cloak our resentment of friends, family and colleagues. Celebrities, on the other hand, make perfect targets, since who could possibly deserve all that fawning attention? Perhaps we should be nicer to Martha. After all, she gives us a rare opportunity to publicly bond over our dirty little secret—failure is fun to watch.
Playing Favorites "Why can't you be more like your sister?"
"You love him more!" must be second only to "It's not faaaaiiiir" among the top howls of childhood. Who hasn't felt at some point that they were getting cheated out of their fair share of parental affection? And what parent hasn't felt his or her heart unequally divided among the kids—at least temporarily?
Tags:
adultery,
bad taste,
controversial theory,
dylan evans,
evolutionary psychologist,
fantasy,
good question,
guilt,
penchant,
persistence,
predilections,
raw material,
repression,
savanna,
shame,
taboo,
university of bath,
unmentionables,
virgin mary
