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The joy of observing the suffering of others comes from the observer's feeling that the other's failure represents an improvement or validation of their own group's (in-group) status in relation to external (out-groups) groups (see: In-group and out-group). This is, essentially, schadenfreude based on group versus group status.
Lerner hypothesized that the belief in a just world is crucially important for people to maintain for their own well-being. But people are confronted daily with evidence that the world is not just: people suffer without apparent cause. Lerner explained that people use strategies to eliminate threats to their belief in a just world.
This also means that individuals see their own violence as justified and moral, while the outgroup's violence is unjustified and morally wrong. Lack of empathy – because individuals are concerned with their own suffering, they tend to be unwilling to divert interest to the suffering of others. They will either ignore the suffering others or ...
[64] Fieger said that Kevorkian revolutionized the concept of suicide by working to help people end their own suffering, because he believed physicians are responsible for alleviating the suffering of patients, even if that meant allowing patients to die. [64] Kevorkian spoke at Presbyterian and Episcopal churches to gain support for euthanasia.
If people have too much external justification for their actions, cognitive dissonance does not occur, and thus, attitude change is unlikely to occur. On the other hand, when people cannot find external justification for their behavior, they must attempt to find internal justification—they reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes or behaviors.
The experiential problem is the difficulty in believing in a concept of a loving God when confronted by evil and suffering in the real world, such as from epidemics, or wars, or murder, or natural disasters where innocent people become victims.
In psychology a person who has a martyr complex desires the feeling of being a martyr for their own sake and seeks out suffering or persecution because it either feeds a physical need or a desire to avoid responsibility.
Those who suffer, many of whom participated in violence as a matter of social expectation, find it beneficial to know that they are having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation, and are not uniquely cowardly or crazy. Traditional remedies of atonement, forgiveness, and bearing witness have also stood the test of time as being helpful. [17]