When Eugenie George first heard that her friend passed a financial exam, her heart sank. She'd 1 the same test weeks earlier.
"Envy was eating me up," recalls George. But anyway she 2 her friend. "And I told her I failed and admitted I was 3 ," she says. George knew that being 4 would ease her envy, but she was surprised that it also enabled her to 5 her friend's happiness and experience her own in turn.
Finding 6 in another person's good fortune is what social scientists call freudenfreude, the great joy we feel when someone else succeeds, 7 it doesn't directly involve us. Freudenfreude is like a kind of social 8 , says Catherine Chambliss, a professor of psychology. It makes relationships "closer and more enjoyable."
Too often, we think our friends 9 us most during their hard times: a job 10 , getting divorced. In fact, how friends 11 our joy is even more important for us than how they respond to our 12 . Too often, we think of joy passively. We see it as something that come to us, instead of something we can 13 . While it can be difficult in practice, freudenfreude can lift us up and 14 our day. So celebrating our friends' 15 is a win-win to us all.
