Ahh, the Special Pleasure in a Rival's Misfortune
Sometimes a rival's pain trumps the joys of our own group's success.
Posted October 6, 2025 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
How pleasing it is when our own team wins.
But when is a rival’s failure even more satisfying?
Recently, a friend and I were driving home from Columbus, Ohio, after attending an Ohio State football game. My friend switched on the radio and started searching for a station. As he is an uncompromising Ohio State fan (and Ohio State had won easily), I assumed he wanted to listen to the post-game reactions to the game and gourmandize on every detail.
No, what I heard instead was a station devoted to Michigan football.
It turned out that Michigan had lost its game earlier in the evening. As any football fan knows, the average Ohio State fan hates Michigan. Clearly, he wanted to wallow in their loss. That in itself was unsurprising. But, strangely, he seemed to prefer this to basking in his own team's victory.
I asked him, "Let me get this straight, you want to listen to a Michigan show first?"
"Of course!" he said, without hesitation or hint of shame .
I probed further. "So, let's say you could listen to only one show, Ohio State or Michigan, which one would it be?"
"Yeah, I mean, if they had lost. Wouldn't you?"
Although I was not a big Ohio State fan and kind of liked the current Michigan team, I could easily think of a couple of other teams that would give me thrills if they lost.
I continued. "But I figured you'd still prefer the Ohio State show, unless, say, Ohio State had lost. Misery would love company then."
"Listen, I hate Michigan. Those cheaters deserve to suffer."
He turned up the volume.
I watched him as he listened to the callers expressing their frustration over how Michigan had played. A permanent smile and chuckle after chuckle marked the depths of his pleasure. Certainly, the fact that Ohio State won added the behavior of gloating to this pleasure, but his keen focus was on enjoying this suffering.
Research completed a few years ago suggests that my friend's behavior fits with what we would expect, given how much of social life flows from our identification with important groups, from sports teams to political parties.
A team of Harvard social psychologists (Lehr, Ferreira, and Banaji, 2017) selected Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fans (rivals comparable to fans of Ohio State and Michigan football) as participants. In several surveys, they asked the fans how much they would pay to produce either their own team's win versus the rival team's loss. Overall, fans were willing to pay more for the rival’s loss than their own team’s win.
One feature of their research speaks more directly to my friend's experience. The surveys were completed over a period of a few years; in this time, the relative fortunes of the Red Sox and the Yankees reversed. The willingness to pay was stronger when the participants' own team was behind in the rivalry; that is, when fans had more to gain (in relative status) by seeing the rival falter.
Ohio State has lost to Michigan four years in a row, each defeat a unique form of humiliation (softened most recently by Ohio State winning the national championship in January 2025).
Moreover, it is worth noting that the researchers chose Red Sox and Yankee fans because this rivalry is so intense and prolonged. Pleasure in a rival's suffering, and finding it more satisfying in certain respects than one's own team winning, is more likely when fan identification is robust. Also, a sense that the rival deserves their misfortune will make it more intense, however biased this judgment may be. My friend believes that Michigan benefited unfairly from sign-stealing during much of the recent win streak. The NCAA has penalized them—hence, they are deemed cheaters .
A moment's honest reflection reveals that my friend and I are two peas in a pod. I'm also a football fan, but I follow Duke most closely. Well, I've been spending a lot of time lately watching the fan podcasts produced by UNC, Duke's hated rival. And guess what? I watch these most enthusiastically after UNC loses, which, happily for me, is quite often this season. And I may just seek them out before watching a Duke podcast, even though Duke is doing well this year.
Lehr, S. A., Ferreira, M. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2017). When outgroup negativity trumps ingroup positivity : Fans of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees place greater value on rival losses than own-team gains. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22 (1), 26–42.
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Richard H. Smith, Ph.D. , a social psychologist and a writer of nonfiction and fiction, taught at the University of Kentucky.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.