IT'S A WIN-WIN

Celebrating other people's victories can bring on more of our own

- Juli Fraga

WHEN EUGENIE GEORGE first heard that her friend passed a financial counselling exam, her heart sank. She’d failed that test weeks earlier, and needed the credential to advance her own career.

“My inner child got upset,” recalls George, a financial writer and educator from Philadelphia. But then, instead of stewing, she called her friend. “I told her I failed and admitted I was jealous,” she says. George knew that being upfront would defuse her envy, but she was surprised when it shifted her attitude so she could share her friend’s happiness and experience her own, in turn.

“I congratulated her and told her she inspired me,” she says.

Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune is what social scientists call freudenfreude, a term (inspired by freude, the German word for “joy”) that describes the bliss we feel when someone else succeeds, even if it doesn’t directly involve us.

Freudenfreude is like social glue, says Catherine Chambliss, a professor of psychology at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It makes relationships “more intimate and enjoyable.”

Erika Weisz, an empathy researcher at Harvard University, says the feeling closely resembles positive empathy—the ability to experience someone else’s positive emotions. A study in 2021 examined positive empathy’s role in daily life and found that it propelled kind acts, such as helping others. Sharing in someone else’s joy can also foster resilience, improve life satisfaction and even help people co-operate during a conflict.