In her book entitled Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune, the author and academic Dr Tiffany Watt Smith argues that it is “part of how we cope with inferiority or our own failures”. She and others view it as a natural reaction. A study by the psychologist Mirella Manfredi from the University of Milano-Bicocca illustrated that your brain has decided you are going to laugh at, say, someone tripping over or even scoring three own goals in a football match whether you like it or not.
The latter happened to the New Zealand Women’s centre-back Meikayla Moore in the first half of their game with the United States in the SheBelieves Cup this week. A perfect hat-trick. As it turns out only one of them – the third – approached anything close to Jamie Pollock levels of hilarity. The others were just a bit unlucky – but nevertheless it is quite the achievement.
