Why the Schadenfreude Over Brian Thompson's Horrible Murder?
Schadenfreude emerges in the open when people think it is deserved.
Updated December 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Open schadenfreude has been a common, perhaps prevailing response to the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the company often criticized for delaying and denying necessary medical claims.
The murder was a vengeful, calculated act of pitiless violence.
Shouldn't a mix of horror and deep empathy be the overwhelming response—regardless of Thompson's apparent role in the company's policies, lethal and quite pitiless though these policies may have been in their own way?
Why the prevalent schadenfreude? And why so open, even shameless?
It is worth emphasizing the general point that pleasure at other people's misfortunes is a natural human emotion and probably more common than we like to think.
Although contemporary social standards disapprove of schadenfreude, a brief examination of history demonstrates that numerous societies, including those of the recent past, have partially thrived on the public’s desire to observe, celebrate, and be amused by various forms of human misery. Many examples come to mind from the gladiator "games" in ancient Rome, the public drawing and quartering of citizens in Elizabethan England, the use of stock and pillories in Puritan New England, to the party atmosphere lynchings in the post-Civil War American South. Modern-day examples are easily found, such as the TV show "To Catch a Predator" and other forms of "humilitainment." What would the movie industry look like if the satisfactions derived from bloody revenge were off-limits? Where is the line between fiction and the real?
It is also worth differentiating between what we should feel and what we do feel.
Generally, social norms work against expressing schadenfreude, even when we feel it. Some situations accentuate this pattern. For example, when an envied person experiences a setback, secret pleasure seems natural , even as the outward expression is false concern. One shouldn't feel it, but one does.
Envy itself is a shameful emotion . Admitting to schadenfreude driven by envy is all the more shameful.
Interestingly, prototypes in the literature suggest that envy can even spur the setback itself. Iago brings down Othello. Or Salieri gleefully causing the death of Mozart. News that fate has been the agent of the envied person's setback should lead to non-binary , mixed feelings of some part schadenfreude and some part empathy. That schadenfreude is part of the mix may still be shameful and hidden but hardly shocking. Some of the schadenfreude resulting from Brian Thompson's murder may have been tinged with envy over his great wealth.
Some situations bring schadenfreude out into the open , perhaps shame -free. Deservingness is one such feature.
There are many highly publicized cases of people getting into trouble for actions they have criticized others for doing. Yes, the shame is humiliating and painful, but those they had criticized can be forgiven for feeling satisfaction over this suffering. They deserve this suffering because of their hypocrisy.
A good example is the evangelical preacher, Ted Haggard, who took vocal stands against homosexuality and gay marriage , but who all the while was engaging in homosexual liaisons with a male escort, Mike Jones. Jones wrote about his experiences, and as he put it in the book title he "had to say something." Haggard's hypocrisy was too hard and painful to take, and Haggard's subsequent downfall caused a range of emotions in Jones, some form of schadenfreude being one, as he implied in his book and many interviews later.
Did Brian Thompson deserve to be murdered?
Yet the wash of open, righteous schadenfreude that his murder has caused indicates that many people certainly believe that some kind of rough justice has been served.
The awful, sad deaths of so many people who had depended on Thompson's company for their healthcare needs seem to take center stage in guiding how many people are reacting to his murder.
This is true even as those expressing schadenfreude can also feel sincere empathy for Thompson's family and those who loved him.
Schadenfreude and Gluckschmerz. Emotion Review. R Smith. 2018.
van Dijk, W. & Ouwerkerk, J. (2014). Schadenfreude : Understanding pleasure at the misfortune of others . Cambridge University Press.
Smith, R.H. (2013). The joy of pain : Schadenfreude and the dark side of human nature . New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, T.W. (2018). Schadenfreude: The joy in another's misfortune . Little, Brown.
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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.