The Joy of Pain by Richard H. Smith Page B

reveal the self-interested side of human nature. Becker argues this point as well:
    [T]he child cannot allow himself to be second-best or devalued, much less left out. “You gave him the biggest piece of candy!” “You gave him more juice!” “Here’s a little more, then.” “Now
she’s
got more juice than me!” “You let her light the fire in the fireplace and not me.” “Okay, you light a piece of paper.” “But this piece of paper is
smaller
than the one she lit.” And so on and on. … Sibling rivalry is a critical problem that reflects the basic human condition: it is not that children are vicious, selfish, or domineering. It is that they so openly express man’s tragic destiny: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe. … 32
HAPPY AND SAD FOR YOU, RELATIVELY SPEAKING
    Psychologist Heidi Eyre and I did an experiment that captures some sense of how our reactions to events happening to others are anchored by our own relative experiences. 33 Female undergraduate participants in our study thought that the purpose of the study was to evaluate ways students get feedback on exams. Another student participant would take an IQ test and then be given feedback about her performance using different methods (e.g., oral vs. written). Participants would observe this feedback and evaluate its effectiveness. The actual purpose of the study (revealed when the experiment was over) was to assess how the participants’ own
relative
performance on the test would influence their emotional reaction to the other student’s performance. To achieve this, we also asked participants to take the test, for the ostensible purpose of their being in a better position to appreciate the experience of the other student. And, as part of their evaluation of the feedback given to the other student, they completed a questionnaire tapping their own emotional reactions (such as “happy for” and “sad for”). In addition, we randomly determinedwhether the participant and the other student appeared to have done well or poorly on the IQ test (again, at the end of the experiment, the actual nature of what was happening was revealed). We did not measure
schadenfreude
in this study. But it was clear from examining these emotional reactions that participants’ sympathy for the other student when she failed, for example, was in part anchored by their own relative performance. Participants’ feelings did not simply follow from the objective fact that the other student had “failed.” If she failed, participants were less sad for her when they themselves had failed than when they had succeeded. If she succeeded, they were also less happy for her when they themselves had failed than when they had also succeeded.
    In sum, participants’ reactions to the success and failure of the other student were partly dictated by their own relative performance and not only by the simple fact of the other student’s success or failure. It was easy to feel sad for someone else’s failure from the vantage point of one’s own relative success. It was hard to feel happy for someone’s success from the vantage point of one’s own relative failure.
THE BALANCE OF SELF-INTEREST AND EMPATHY: A COMPLEX DUALITY
    It is important to recognize that even participants who failed usually reported some sympathy for the other failed students—and some happiness for those students who succeeded. That is, they had mixed feelings. None of my suggestions about the self-interested aspect of human nature, let me emphasize once again, aims at cheapening other empathic motivations. I like the way that 18th-century Scottish thinker Adam Smith made a similar point:
    How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness