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Benign envy

December 2011
Academy of Marketing Science Review 1(3):117-134

Authors:

York University

Envy has long been held to be a harmful emotion involving the desire to deprive others of the qualities or possessions that they possess and we covet. When the various religious injunctions against such malicious envy were conceived, the consumption landscape was vastly different. There was no branding, advertising, mass media, consumer credit, or Internet; neighbors knew neighbors; social hierarchies were relatively fixed; and discretionary income was largely unknown. This conceptual synthesis suggests that contemporary consumption is driven far more by benign envy involving a desire to “level up” through consumption emulation rather than “level down” by harming others. The concept of benign envy is developed along with an analysis of the forces leading to its displacement of malicious envy and its key role as a motivator of consumption. The paper concludes with a theoretical development of forms of envy and being envied and derives implications for theory and research. KeywordsEnvy–Social comparison–Benign envy–Leveling–Aspirational goods–Desire–Emulation–Covetousness–Relative deprivation–Positional goods–Conspicuous consumption–Cultural capital

Types of consumer envy

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Envy and being envied-benign and malicious

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DOI 10.1007/s13162-011-0018-x

Benign envy

Russell Belk

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Benign envy

Russell Belk

Received: 11 October 2011 / Accepted: 17 November 2011

#Academy of Marketing Science 2011

Abstract Envy has long been held to be a harmful emotion

involving the desire to deprive others of the qualities or

possessions that they possess and we covet. When the

various religious injunctions against such malicious envy

were conceived, the consumption landscape was vastly

different. There was no branding, advertising, mass media,

consumer credit, or Internet; neighbors knew neighbors;

social hierarchies were relatively fixed; and discretionary

income was largely unknown. This conceptual synthesis

suggests that contemporary consumption is driven far more

by benign envy involving a desire to “level up”through

consumption emulation rather than “level down”by

harming others. The concept of benign envy is developed

along with an analysis of the forces leading to its

displacement of malicious envy and its key role as a

motivator of consumption. The paper concludes with a

theoretical development of forms of envy and being envied

and derives implications for theory and research.

Keywords Envy .Social comparison .Benign envy .

Leveling .Aspirational goods .Desire .Emulation .

Covetousness .Relative deprivation .Positional goods .

Conspicuous consumption .Cultural capital

One instructive story of consumer envy is the fairy tale we

know as Cinderella. It is an enduring tale that some have

traced to early civilizations (e.g., Bettelheim 1977;Philip

1989). There are hundreds of versions of the tale, but the

Brothers Grimm (1997) version offers a more telling account

of envy than the more familiar Disney version of the story. In

the Grimm tale Cinderella’s stepsisters take away her pretty

clothes, make her wear an old grey bed gown and wooden

shoes, confine her to dirty kitchen tasks, and dub her

Cinderella. When their father is going to a fair one day, he

asks the three girls what presents he can bring them. The

stepsisters ask for pearls, jewels, and beautiful dresses, while

Cinderella asks only for a twig. She takes the twig and plants

it on her mother’s grave, where she waters it with her tears. It

grows into a tree inhabited by birds that grant her wishes.

When the king organizes a ball so that his son may choose a

bride, the sisters have Cinderella help them into their finery

and then tell her she cannot come because she is dirty and

has no gown or fine shoes. But Cinderella goes to the ball

with the help of the birds which deck her out in a ball gown

and slippers made of silver and silk. At the ball Cinderella

dances with the captivated prince, but her sisters do not

recognize her. Leaving hurriedly at midnight, she loses a

slipper which the prince uses to seek his bride. At Cinderella’s

house, at the behest of their mother, one of the stepsisters cuts

off her toe in an effort to fit into the shoe and the other cuts off

her heel. Nevertheless, the prince ultimately claims Cinderella

as his bride. The sisters attend the wedding in order to claim

their share of the royal largesse, but the birds peck out their

eyes as punishment for their wickedness.

As others have suggested (e.g., Ulanov and Ulanov

2008), this is a morality tale about envy and being envied.

The sisters are cruel to Cinderella out of envy, while

Cinderella remains modest and humble, doing nothing to

provoke their envy. As the marriage to a prince and the

pivotal role of fine dresses and slippers make clear, this is a

story about upward status mobility and consumer behavior.

It illustrates a number of issues that are the focus of this

theoretical treatment. I will consider what envy is and how

R. Belk (*)

Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing,

Schulich School of Business, York University,

4700 Keele Street,

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

e-mail: rbelk@schulich.yorku.ca

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it differs from other emotions like jealousy and resentment.

I will show that there is a realm of consumption where a

more benign form of envy exists that contrasts with the

malicious envy of the Cinderella story. I will also consider

the relationship of envy to a number of interconnected

consumption phenomena including social comparison,

covetousness, pecuniary emulation, positional goods, con-

spicuous consumption, relative deprivation, and cultural

capital. I will argue that the old conception of envy seen in

the Cinderella story is outmoded and inappropriate for

understanding envy in contemporary consumer behavior. I

then offer an expanded view of different types of envy and

different ways of regarding others’envy, with implications for

consumer theory and research.

Key neglected concepts in consumer research

The concept of envy has long been of interest in such diverse

fields as anthropology, economics, psychology, sociology,

psychoanalysis, philosophy, neuroscience, English literature,

history, organizational behavior, and religion. Yet envy has

received scant attention within consumer research where it

would seem to be among the most fundamental factors

influencing consumption processes and outcomes. We are

quite familiar with characterizations of consumption motiva-

tions based on social comparisons, including “keeping up with

the Joneses”(Matt 2003), invidious distinction seeking,

vicarious consumption, and snobbery (Veblen 1899), status

seeking (Packard 1959), status symbols (Levy 1959), and

status anxiety (de Botton 2004). Yet these terms are seldom

encountered in consumer research. Reference groups, fashion,

celebrity endorsements, word of mouth, and interpersonal

influence are among the areas of consumer research that

recognize the role of others in consumption processes. But

none of these areas of research deals explicitly with envy.

As Belk (1988) concludes, consumer-object relations are

seldom simply about a person and a thing. Rather they are

almost always person-thing-person relationships. Directly or

indirectly we consume the things that we do based upon the

desires and reactions of other people. What we drive, where

we live, how we furnish our homes, what we wear, and how

we amuse ourselves are all choices guided by our beliefs that

these things are seen by others as expressive signs of our

identity (Belk 1988). Mimetic consumption is the rule even

in imaginary online worlds where we are cloaked by a

pseudonym or avatar (Boellstorff 2008). De Botton (2004)

suggests that our concern for social status and the social

comparisons that we make to see how we stand are

underwritten by a desire to receive some evidence that we

are loved or respected by those who are important to us. As

Adam Smith (1759) argued, success is seldom absolute, but

depends upon the good opinion of our neighbors and equals.

If it were merely the case that we care what others think of us

and that this influences our consumption choices, this would be

interesting, but not particularly problematic. Where the prob-

lems lie are in the relative nature of social comparison and in the

malicious nature of envy, at least as it is classically conceived.

In that conception, if there are winners, there must also be

losers. The relative nature of most conceptions of status means

that our absolute gains mean little if those against whom we

compare ourselves gain an equal or greater amount (Easterlin

1995). Being on the losing end of a social comparison can

create strong negative emotions that, in most views of envy,

include animosity toward those on the winning end:

Envy is a feeling of pain a person experiences when

he or she perceives that another individual possesses

some object, quality, or status that he or she desires

but does not possess. When the envious person is

unable to obtain the desired object, quality, or status

that individual usually hopes that the envied person

will lose the desired thing and may even conspire to

make it happen (Schimmel 2008, p. 18).

It seems little wonder that one of the Bible’s ten command-

ments condemns coveting your neighbor’s spouse, property,

or other belongings as well as the related sin of envy. At a

more aggregate level, envy between groups, religions, and

nations has been characterized as driving such antipathies as

Jihad vs. McWorld (Barber 1995) and the poor masses versus

wealthy ethnic minorities (Chua 2004). Yet envy has been

characterized as “a driving wheel of our modern world”and

“the passion that governs our economic life”(Palaver 2005,

p. 139). In light of such arguments, envy is foremost among

the concepts deserving more attention in consumer research.

Objectives and outline

I will begin by reviewing traditional perspectives on envy

and social comparison as well as some of the key findings

and debates about these phenomena. I then present an

alternative view of envy. I argue that there has been a

largely unrecognized change in the nature of envy and

social comparison processes. This thesis is developed and is

followed by a consideration of how marketing utilizes and

influences benign envy. The concept of benign envy is then

refined and a model of envy and feeling envied is derived.

Envy and related concepts in traditional views

Envy, jealousy, covetousness, and desire

Joseph Epstein (2003)beginshisshortbookonenvyby

noting that envy and anger are the only vices among the

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seven deadly sins that are not much fun. Pride, gluttony, lust,

greed, and sloth all have their pleasures and even the release

of anger may prove emotionally satisfying. But envy is a

gnawing bitterness that is only relieved if the person envied

is brought low. Ever since Plato there has been a tradition

connecting envy to Schadenfreude, the pleasure taken from

another’s misfortune (Powell et al. 2008;Sundieetal.2009).

Did the neighbor who just got an impressive new car get into

a fender-bender? Great; we secretly chuckle. Does the

woman with the great body and the Jimmy Choo heels have

spinach on her teeth? We smirk. Is our over-achieving

professional colleague headed for an acrimonious divorce?

We gloat and feel much better. Contrary to most

assumptions of self-interest, some studies have shown that

many people will even pay their own money in order to

reduce the earnings of envied others (e.g., Zizzo 2003;

Zizzo and Oswald 2001). Such “money burning”confirms

that our sense of well-being is dependent on others’apparent

well-being.

When a friend tells us of the fabulous vacation she is

taking, we might respond with either one of the English

expressions “I’m so jealous”or “I’m so envious of you,”

taking them as equivalent. They are not. We are jealous

about what we possess and envious of what others possess.

Thus, we may be jealous when someone shows too keen an

interest in our significant other, but envious of someone

else whose wedding celebration is clearly superior to our

own. Both jealousy and envy can evoke passionate, if not

violent, responses. But when jealousy is sexual, as it often

is, we are apt to empathize with the perpetrator of the act of

violence (Stearns 1999). However if we act out of envious

malice to ruin someone’s vacation or wedding, this is apt to

be seen as horrid. Envy is a more shameful emotion and

one we are likely to suppress or hide. There may however

sometimes be a relationship between jealousy and envy. As

Schoeck (1966) observes, a child may feel that although she

has the love of her parents, another sibling has more. She is

therefore jealous of her parents’attention to the other child

with whom she feels an intense sibling rivalry (e.g.,

Cinderella). Although Schoeck does not discuss it, it is

reasonable to assume that if the child sees a gift to her

sibling as a token of the parents’love, it is natural that she

would feel envious when the sibling receives a gift and she

does not. Starting in the 1920s, some child-rearing experts

began telling parents to minimize sibling envy and rivalry

by providing gifts to all of their children when one of them

has a birthday (Matt 2002,2003). This is a message

congruent with the rise of consumer culture, since it implies

that rather than suppress the urges of envy, children were to

be taught that there was no need for malicious envy since

they could have whatever they want (Matt 2002; Stearns

1999). They are effectively being taught to replace malicious

envy with benign envy, as we shall see. This was a lesson

lost upon Cinderella’s stepsisters who received far more

beautiful gifts than Cinderella but nevertheless remained

intensely envious of her. They harbored a malicious zero-sum

mentality.

A distinction also must be made between enviousness

and covetousness. We may envy another person when they

possess a good that we covet. Coveting is wishing to have

what the other has, while envy is the ill will we feel toward

its possessor. That is, coveting is directed at the object and

envy is directed toward the person. But coveting is not the

same as consumer desire (Belk et al. 2003). Coveting is

rather the wish for a particular good that is in the

possession of a particular other person. Although the Bible

condemns envy per se in stories like that of Cain killing

Abel (Schimmel 2008), the Biblical commandment instead

condemns coveting the things that others own. The

Mahabharata condemns covetousness not as a sin in itself,

but as leading to the sins of deception, pride, arrogance,

malice, vindictiveness, and malevolence (SantiParva, Section

CLVIII, quoted in Tickle [2004], p. 13). As Schoeck (1966)

and Alicke and Zell (2008) point out, the envious person can

covet something without actually desiring to own it. For

instance, we can covet a person’s yacht without ever

intending to set foot on a ship. The mere ownership of this

object by an envied other increases its importance for us. We

can also envy the body, beauty, or mind of another person

(Lyman 1978). This may suggest that when we envy a

person because they possess a particular coveted good, what

we really wish is that we were that other person—something

that Belk et al. (2003) found in their study of consumer

desire, especially in less affluent Turkey. Thus, in the classic

view covetousness differs from consumer desire because it

is focused on a particular person’s possession and because

the coveted object may be a mere synecdoche for the

envied person.

Envy avoidance and limited good societies

The phenomenon of envy may or may not be culturally

universal (Lindholm 2008), but it is clearly widespread,

ancient, and feared. Gell (1986) describes the Muria Gond

in India who strive to avoid others’envy by avoiding fine

clothes, fashionable hair styles, and wearing jewelry. Those

who have more wealth avoid displaying it and do not buy

conspicuous goods beyond basic bicycles, wristwatches, or

radios, even though they could well afford more. In Foster’s

(1972) terms, the Muria, through their conformity and

unwillingness to stand out, are practicing concealment,

which is one of the chief means of avoiding others’envy.

Other means include denial (“It’s really nothing; just an old

rag I had lying around”), the sop (a token form of sharing to

deflect others’envy), and true sharing (e.g. throwing lavish

community feasts).

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In an earlier paper Foster (1969) characterized envy

avoidance as being especially common in limited good

societies in which it is assumed that one person’s gain is

another’s loss. This is equivalent to the zero-sum game that

psychologists and behavioral economists are fond of setting

up experimentally. It is also a critical assumption for

philosophers like Rawls (1971) and sociologists like

Schoeck (1966). This is sometimes a reasonable assump-

tion, as in the case of fans of rival sports teams for example

(Theodoropoulou 2007). On the other hand, in unlimited

good societies, the pie is not perceived as finite and

everyone can get a piece.

Social comparison, social justice, and cultural capital

If we did not compare ourselves to others, there would be

no envy. According to Festinger (1954) we compare our

opinions and abilities to others with the result that there is

upward pressure in competitive arenas like athletics and

academic grades, and a tendency toward group uniformity

in opinions. While Festinger stipulated that social compar-

isons are made to similar people and those who are slightly

“upward”in terms of the comparison of interest, subsequent

research has documented downward social comparisons as

well (Buunk and Gibbons 2007), although they are thought

to be less common. Apart from the Freudian concept of

penis envy and a few treatments of envy between men and

women (e.g., Lyman 1978; Petersson 2004), most con-

ceptions of envy assume that same sex comparisons are

dominant (Epstein 2003).

Stereotypes suggest that wealthy high status people

deserve what they have due to higher intelligence,

diligence, and competence, and that the poor deserve their

lowly status due to a lack of such traits. Fiske and Cuddy

(2006) have found that these stereotypes are prevalent

among both rich and poor from around the world, but with

some differences. North Americans, who are more inclined

to believe in a just-world, are also more likely to see such

traits as deriving from dispositions rather than structural

inequalities. Such stereotypes and just-world beliefs raise

issues of social justice and relative deprivation. Deprivation

may be felt relative to specific others, specific groups of

others, our past experience, expectations we hold for our

future, or some external standard like reaching a milestone

income level (Leach 2008). We may feel relatively deprived

with regard to possessions, income, rewards, or procedural

treatment. But the majority of relative deprivation research

does not invoke the concept of envy (Walker and Smith

2002). Still, Smith and others (Ortony et al. 1988; Smith

1991; Smith et al. 1994) maintain that a sense of injustice is

essential to envy. When we lack what those perceived as

less deserving have, we feel deprived and envy the less

deserving others. Since Aristotle, philosophers have labeled

this moral emotion “resentment”and have regarded envy as

being more about competitive struggles for social status

rather than striving for social justice (e.g., D’Arms and Kerr

2008; Rawls 1971). Whether or not it is a motivating force

behind the ill will felt toward a rival, no doubt feelings of

injustice intensify this feeling of envy.

Most researchers do agree that envy involves feelings of

competition and rivalry, striving for relative prestige or

power within some hierarchal status group. This desire for

status is the reason we feel envy according to D’Arms and

Kerr (2008). But rather than a Hobbesian war of all against

all, we may have some choice of the particular groups

within which we seek status (Frank 1985). It could be

within our work organization, our profession, our favorite

online multi-player game, or our antique car collectors club.

We can also conceive of status in more dichotomous terms

as when someone either is or is not accepted as a member

of a high status group. Although consumer goods may well

be symbols asserting status claims or marker goods proclaim-

ing membership in a group (Douglas and Isherwood 1979),

according to traditional thought they are generally not

determinants of status, despite economists’concern with

positional goods and the envy theory of needs which contend

otherwise (Hirsch 1976). Status is a purely social phenom-

enon; it must be awarded by others. Bourdieu (1984)also

regards status as social, but argues that it is articulated much

more through taste cultures deriving from habitus (upbring-

ing and education) rather than from the possession of status

symbols. That is, it is our preferences, knowledge, and

opinions much more than our wealth per se that determine

cultural capital (Holt 1998). Thus the futility of the

conspicuous consumption, conspicuous waste, and conspic-

uous leisure that were critiqued by Veblen (1899,p.95)as

marks of the nouveau riche trying in vain to demonstrate

taste through “costliness masquerading under the name of

beauty.”

Like Bourdieu, Veblen recognized that in the modern

world taste was ultimately a more useful marker of high

status than the trophies of accumulated possessions, slaves,

servants, and partners that may have sufficed in earlier eras.

He called these taste markers immaterial goods:

In our time there is the knowledge of dead languages

and the occult sciences; of correct spelling; of syntax

and prosody; of various forms of domestic music and

household art; of the latest proprieties of dress,

furniture, and equipage; of games, sports, and fancy

bred animals, such as dogs and race horses (Veblen

1899, p. 47).

Manners too are a part of the status code in Veblen’s view.

Like Veblen (1899), Vance Packard (1959) emphasized

conspicuous consumption and status display, but he also

recognized that this alone was not enough to carry off a

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status claim. He listed more subtle and taste-related

behaviors involving language, vocabulary, expertise in

restaurant ordering, and our games and entertainments as

being among the “behaviors that give us away.”

Luxury, like status itself, is an ever-changing social

judgment. Schoeck (1966, p. 218) stipulates that “to

indulge in luxury is to provoke envy.”Historically, at times

and in places when the luxurious status symbols of the elite

were in danger of being democratized and used by those of

less elite heritage, sumptuary laws were enacted to forbid

commoners from, for example, wearing silk, eating red

meat, or having more than a certain number of guests at

their weddings. Although there are multiple reasons for

sumptuary laws (Belk 1995b), chief among them has been

this attempt to keep the emulative masses from copying the

status symbols of the elite. And with virtually all of these

laws, consumers have found ways around them. For

example, when gold and silver clothing fabrics were

forbidden in Europe, consumers began to line their clothes

with such fabrics and slash the sleeves so that these

luxurious linings would show through (Hughes 1983).

There are few sumptuary constraints today so visible luxury

goods are a common focus of reference group influence

with comparison others (Bearden and Etzel 1982).

Leibenstein (1950) distinguished between three types of

conspicuous consumption, depending of the consumer’s

motivations and strategies. Veblen effects involve con-

sumers using expensive products to display wealth and

thereby gain social status. Those who employ snob effects

seek high quality scarce objects in order to gain distinction

by the rarity of their purchases. And bandwagon effects

involve buying objects in order to be identified with a

particular social group. Of these three, Veblen effects are

closest to what is normally meant by status symbols.

Bandwagon effects are most conformist, while snob

effects are most individuating.

While Mason (1981,1998) traces conspicuous consump-

tion to 18th century Europe, even in the contemporary

sense of buying status signalling goods, it goes back at least

a hundred years earlier to late Ming China and Golden Age

Netherlands (Belk 1995b) and sumptuary laws go back to

ancient civilizations. Economists and socio-biologists view

such consumption as costly signalling to demonstrate

fitness and attract mates or gain other social advantages

(e.g., Miller 2009). Evidence of the rivalrous and compet-

itive nature of such displays is suggested by the heightened

testosterone and serotonin levels in males seeking higher

status (Elias 1981; Madsen 1994; Mazur and Lamb 1980).

Such aggressive arousal is consistent with the malicious

anger involved in the traditional view of envy. Such

Schadenfreude has also been suggested by fMRI brain

scans of people who are imaging envied others (Joseph

et al. 2008).

Summary of the traditional view of consumer envy

In the traditional view shared by most of the social sciences

as well as philosophy, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis,

envy is malicious ill will directed toward a referent other

who possesses something of importance to us that we covet.

Whether conscious or unconscious, it is an intense emotion.

We long to have the envied other lose the thing we covet

more than we long to acquire this object ourselves. The

envied other is usually someone close to us who is equal or

slightly above us in social status. When this envied other

flaunts his or her superiority via status symbols and

conspicuous consumption, our feeling of envy is likely to

be even more intense. Status symbols are likely to be

expensive, rare, and visible. The scarcity and assumption of

limited good means that someone else’s gain is our loss.

Within organizational behavior the social comparisons

and relative positions of greatest interest involve income

and promotions. Within consumer research the relevant

comparisons of interest are possessions, consumption-

related taste cultures, and, to the extent they are regarded

as malleable or capable of enhancement, others’bodies,

beauty, and brains. In each context the focal concept is

status, conceived of as standing or prestige within some

social hierarchy. Status is conferred by social consensus of

our reference groups and is likely to result in deference,

honor, acceptance, prestige, and other social advantages

such as more and “better”mates.

An alternative view of envy

Key historical changes

During the times that the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Sutras,

the Talmud, the Bible, and the Quran were written, there was

no advertising, no mass production, no mass consumption, no

mass media, no Internet, and no brands. Thus, the objects that

these foundational religious tracts enjoin us not to covet were

not the sort of possessions we are familiar with today. The

same was true when Aristotle, Plato, and other early

philosophers were writing about envy. Furthermore, most

people lived in rural villages or small cities and even those

within larger cities were usually familiar with others in their

communities and neighborhoods. Kinship and clans were

often quite important and for the most part rulers were

hereditary and those who were ruled understood their “station

in life.”Someone who stood out by having especially good

crops, attractive and strong children, or a fine piece of clothing

like Jacob’s“coat of many colors”(Genesis 37) was likely to

attract envy and potentially suffer its malicious consequences.

Protective amulets, incantations, incense, and other forms of

apotropaic magic to ward off the evil eye (an envious

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embodiment of the wish to do harm) were prevalent in many

parts of the world (Dundes 1981; Maloney 1976). As noted

earlier, such strong fear of others’envy is seen in the

anthropological literature to lead to a variety of strategies to

minimize or avoid this envy (Foster 1972). Lyman (1978)

adds that when modesty, charity, and self-effacement are not

enough to deflect others’envy the enviable rich may resort to

the use of military or police protection or, more subtly, wage a

campaign against the sinfulness or psychopathology of envy.

While evil eye practices and fear of others’envy have not

entirely disappeared, their strength is much diminished in

most societies today. Much has changed since the initial

religious condemnations of envy and covetousness, although

most social science approaches to envy do not reflect these

changes. In the subsections below I highlight some of the

major changes in the environment of social comparison,

covetousness, and ostentation and how I believe these shifts

should change our conceptualization of consumer envy.

Democratization, differentiation, and the cultivation effect Envy

in today’s consumer cultures is qualitatively quite different

than it was when the earliest and still very influential

critiques of envy were formulated. Miles (1998) offers a

summary of the role of consumption in contemporary

consumer cultures:

Our city centers are more remarkable as sites of

consumption than they are as cultural centres; our

homes might be described as temples to the religion of

consumerism; our lives apparently amount to little more

than a constant juxtaposition of diverse consumer styles

and tastes (p. 1).

It is this constant juxtaposition of consumer styles and

tastes that provokes envy. What makes this description of

contemporary life in consumer culture fundamentally

different from that of several thousand or even several

hundred years ago can be highlighted in structural terms.

1. We have far more possessions now and they have brand

and model names, often with personalities created by

marketing, even though they are mass produced.

2. We have greater discretionary income and more access

to consumer credit that we use to purchase goods and

services in the marketplace.

3. A more urbanized population allows better distribution of

goods and services with more diverse product assortments.

4. Our identity and the initial impressions we form of others

are often dominated by possessions as visible signs.

5. Advertising, store displays, and mass media provide us

with attractive views of consumer goods and services as

well as images of those who purportedly use them.

6. The Internet not only provides opportunities to buy

consumer goods and services, but also to see what

others have bought and what they have to say about

these goods.

The first three of these changes affect the ability to acquire

mass produced branded objects. Boorstin (1973)referstothe

impact of these changes as the democratization of luxury,

while Leach (1993) refers to the outcome as the democra-

tization of consumer desire. The last three changes highlight

our expanded ability to use these goods to make social

comparisons between ourselves and others. Schudson (1984)

suggests that these changes lead to more widespread envy:

Luxury was not democratized so much as made much

more visible, more public, and more often articulate—

through advertising—than it had been before. The

department stores did less to provide equality in

consumption than to encourage a democracy of

aspirations and desire. They contributed to the

democratization of envy (p. 151).

In considering the impact of these changes on the nature

of envy, it is also important to recognize several more

subtle changes. One such change is the rise of anonymity

that accompanied the growth of urban centers. Greater

anonymity can lead to greater loneliness, anomie, and

crime, but it also means that we come out into society

literally without a name and without a status. It is now

possible for most of us to appear in the center of our city

and be reasonably certain that we will not be recognized by

others who know us, our job, our family, and our place of

residence. With more geographic mobility and tourism, we

experience more far flung and complete anonymity. This

means that others’assumptions about our status derive

more from our possessions and appearance than was once

the case. The influx of rural people to the cities has meant a

continual supply of people relying, in part, on their

appearance and clothing to make a good impression and

get a good job (Matt 2003). We assume, often rightly, that

we will be treated better by others if they perceive us as having

higher status (e.g., Doob and Gross 1968; Rosenbaum 2005).

Goffman (1967) calls these behaviors status rituals. Only as

we begin to interact with people do we become less

anonymous and does cultural capital or the possession of

immaterial goods and habitus come into play (Bourdieu

1984;Holt1998). But for the majority of daily urban

encounters our anonymity means that our presumed status

and treatment are based almost entirely on our appearance

and visible possessions.

Veblen (1899) recognized the impact of anonymity on

the ways we demonstrate status:

One’s neighbors, mechanically speaking, often are

socially not one’s neighbors, or even acquaintances;

and still their transient good opinion has a high degree

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of utility. The only practicable means of impressing

one’s pecuniary ability on these unsympathetic

observers of one’s everyday life is an unremitting

demonstration of ability to pay. In the modern

community there is also a more frequent attendance

at large gatherings of people to whom one’s everyday

life is unknown; in such places as churches, theaters,

ballrooms, hotels, parks, shops, and the like. In order

to impress these transient observers, and to retain

one’s self-complacency under their observation, the

signature of one’s pecuniary strength should be

written in characters which he who runs may read

(pp. 71–72).

Today standard, visible, and identifiable brands with brand

personalities and known degrees of costliness make it easy for

“he who runs”to read signs of our status and personality. The

democratization of envy that Schudson (1984) discerns,

involves different types of goods as well as different types

of others than the envy of old. The goods and people are

both anonymous. While the people are anonymous because

they have no known name or background, the goods are

anonymous because they have a known but shared name and

features common to all other goods endowed with this brand

name. As we shall see, this leads to a different type of envy

and a different type of covetousness than those envisioned

by religious writers, philosophers, and most social scientists.

Moreover, although Veblen did not anticipate it, anonymity

combined with consumer credit and scrimping on less visible

portions of our expenditures can lead to false or misleading

presentations of self through presentations of luxuries that

are atypical of the rest of our consumer lifestyles, much like

the transformation of Cinderella for the ball.

The flowering of the overt display of the unique individual

self within the anonymity of the city echoes a similar

blossoming of display within commercial spaces. Thanks in

part to the development of plate glass windows, grand

department stores began to present lavish displays of mer-

chandise not only to shoppers, but to anyone passing by (see

Leach 1993). Mannequins presented images of fashion ideals

that, coupled with new lighting techniques, showed off new

consumer goods both day and night. This too contrib-

uted to the development of a new type of envy. The

development of big lavish hotels, restaurants, and

theaters in cities also contributed to this new spirit of

showing off as they simultaneously provided images of

grand and conspicuous consumption (May 1980). That

is, the conspicuous display of sumptuous luxury in retail

spaces very likely disinhibited and encouraged a similar

displaybyindividualconsumers.

A further complimentary influence on conspicuous display

was the rise of mass media and mass media advertising. The

effects of advertising in cultivating exaggerated images of the

role of consumption in the good life are easy to appreciate

(Belk and Pollay 1985). But there are more subtle effects of

general media exposure suggested by cultivation theory

(Gerbner and Gross 1976; Gerbner et al. 1980). The theory

observes that television and film portray a more upscale

world than actually exists, even (or especially) in the affluent

United States. This prediction is borne out by the evidence

(e.g., Shrum 2001). Heavier viewers of television are

especially likely to overestimate American affluence, includ-

ing the incidences of swimming pools, maids, expensive

automobiles, and millionaires (Fox and Philliber 1978;

O’Guinn and Shrum 1997; Shrum et al. 2005). These

inflated images of average lifestyles in turn stimulate

consumer aspirations, expectations, and desires (Englis and

Solomon 1997). To the extent that these mediated images of

others enjoying unrealistically affluent lifestyles are taken to

be representative of what most others have, they are likely to

inspire a particular type of envy that has no concrete or

personally known referent other. Like digital avatars and

plastic mannequins, the conspicuous objects of our envy are

arguably becoming increasingly virtual.

Besides increased anonymity, the rise in individualism,

and the growth of conspicuous display in advertising,

retailing, and mass media, one final factor in the recent

environment that has given rise to a new type of envy is the

emergence of the Internet. Schau and Gilly (2003) analyzed

the role of consumption on personal web sites before the

explosion of the popularity of social networking sites,

online forums, blogs, and virtual worlds. Nevertheless, they

find that web sites encourage social comparisons and envy.

But such acts of identity presentation through possessions

and other manifestations of the extended self are far more

prevalent in more recent social networking Internet spaces

(Westlake 2008). We can see participants’many friends,

read about their latest travels, see photos and discussions of

their pets, cars, and clothes, link to their favorite films, get

instant “status”updates, and much more. There are both

individuating and affiliative motives revealed in such self-

expressions. Those inclined to show off can reproduce the

equivalent of the braggadocio found in the yearly “family

Christmas letter”but with daily or even more frequent

updates. Such entries may be expressions of the blogger’s

interests, but they may also be a form of bragging calculated to

build self image and incite the envy of others. The

Internet also contains a number of fan sites where those

with common interests can compete with one another

for expertise and ownership of enviable possessions, as

well as celebrate common tastes. The nearly instanta-

neous online reactions to the latest fashions, music, and

technological innovations are instrumental in shortening

fashion cycles and exacerbating attentiveness to fashion

trends. These media also exponentially expand the set of

others whose consumption we might envy, far beyond our

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friends and neighbors. This too helps set the stage for a new

type of envy.

Benign envy Matt (2002) quotes an incident from early

20th century America that provides a concise illustration of

the shift in the nature of envy:

An Alabama minister reported that “a little girl in one of

my church schools was asked the other day, What was

the Tenth Commandment? The reply was ‘Thou shalt

not covet.’When asked what covet meant, she replied,

‘not to want other folks [sic] things, but to get Sears,

Roebuck Catalogue and buy for yourself’” (p. 298).

Belk (2008) suggests that branded consumer goods have

now become the chief object of our covetousness. We may

still desire others traits and friendships, but people are

convinced that these things too would be theirs if only they

had others’“stuff.”Recognizing that malevolent envy can

lead to hatred, violence, or vandalism, Belk suggests

instead that most contemporary consumer envy is better

characterized as “benign.”Benign envy is a characterization

suggested by several others (e.g., Smith and Kim 2007;

D’Arms and Kerr 2008) who distinguish it from “envy

proper”because it lacks a sufficiently malicious nature.

Rather than being motivated by a desire to cause the other

to lose their coveted possessions, benign envy inspires the

envier to purchase the equivalent of this same possession.

And given the changes described in the preceding section,

this is hardly surprising. How seriously could we want to

hurt the anonymous others we see with these goods, much

less the non-human mannequins or avatars we see in store

windows or online? Stearns (1999) documents how during

the early 20th century, the moral condemnation of envy in

the West gave way to embracing envy as a healthy motivator

of consumption and a strong competitive work ethic. Matt

(2003) detects in popular culture of the 1920s the related

concept of aspirational envy, but this refers more to the work

domain than the consumption domain. Aspirational envy is

also the type of positive envy that Adam Smith refers to in

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Rawls (1971)

recognizes benign envy as well as the related constructs of

emulative envy and excusable envy. His emulative envy, in

which the envier is motivated to achieve what the other has

achieved, is closest to the current use of benign envy.

Lyman (1978) suggests that benign envy is sublimated

malicious envy. But if Lyman (1978) is right about this,

benign and malicious envy are very likely parts of a

continuum where the middle state is a combination of

benign and malicious envy. Thus rather than two types of

envy, it is more useful to consider three points on this

continuum as depicted in Table 1.

Thus far, I have argued that anonymity and the presence

of generalized others in the cases of advertising, display,

and encountering strangers facilitate benign envy. We do

not feel malicious envy toward these others,partly because

we do not know them. But there are other possibilities,

especially when the envied other is known. One alternative

reaction when such an other possesses a desirable object or

trait is admiration. Rather than resent or feel maliciously

envious toward this person, we might regard them as a role

model or consumption hero (Alicke and Zell 2008). In The

Rhetoric, Aristotle referred to this as “emulation”or “good

envy”(Epstein 2003; Palaver 2005). Here too, rather than

attempt to tear down the envied other, we desire to be more

like them. Or we might simply be in awe of them, as with

sports heroes before the days of performance enhancing

drugs and media publicity of moral indiscretions.

An even more positive reaction to a potentially envious

situation in which another person possesses or accomplishes

something that might otherwise provoke malicious envy is to

instead feel vicarious pride in their achievement, as we do

with our partner’sorchildren’s successes (Belk 1988). This

shared sense of enhanced self esteem is especially likely

when the other is part of our extended sense of self. And it is

evident in the feeling of basking in the reflected glory

(BIRGing) of successes by “our”sports team or members of

Table 1 Types of consumer envy

Characteristic Benign Mixed Malicious

Emotion toward the other Admire Mixed Hate

Behavioral inclination Emulate, BIRG Outdo Harm

Target others Known or mediated Known or mediated Known

Goal Level up Invert Level down

Relation to coveted good Actionable Partly actionable Impotent

Relevant moral discourse Upward Mobility Social justice Sin, crime, psychopathology

Relevant hierarchy Individuality/affiliative cool Individualistic cool Social status

Amount of good Unlimited Scarce Limited

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our in-group (Alicke and Zell 2008; Cialdini et al. 1976).

Here too the difference seems to lie in whether the others are

part of our extended self, inasmuch as superior accomplish-

ments by members of an out-group may cause the resentment

and the schadenfreude of malicious envy. In a multicultural

society of diversity and difference, we may have multiple

group identifications within which we potentially share

multiple in-group BIRGing tendencies.

As van de Ven et al. (2009,2011) demonstrate experimen-

tally, benign envy aims at moving-up by improving the

envier’s position relative to the envied person’s, whereas

malicious envy aims at altering their relative positions by

pulling-down the envied person. In contrast, as suggested by

money burning studies (Zizzo 2003; Zizzo and Oswald

2001), acting on malicious envy may not even improve the

relative position of the envier.

The potential for benign rather than malicious envy toward

another person is facilitated by their possession of a branded

good that can be acquired by the envier. It is actionable envy

rather than impotent envy and thus leads to purchase rather

than rage (Lyman 1978). This differs from a pre-brand, pre-

mass-production era, when the coveted objects were far less

replicable. However, this emulation potential appears less

tempting in the case of malicious envy. Van de Ven (2009)

found that when an envied other was described as having an

iPhone, those who experienced benign envy were willing to

pay more to get an iPhone themselves, whereas those who

experienced malicious envy were not. On the other hand,

those who felt malicious envy were willing to pay more to

buy a BlackBerry, while those who experienced benign envy

were not. Van de Ven (2009) attributes this to what Lemaine

(1974) called social differentiation. It can be thought of as a

form of one-upsmanship in which the maliciously envious

person seeks to differentiate him or herself by imagining that

they would then be able to claim that they own a “more serious”

BlackBerry compared to the envied other’s“frivolous”iPhone.

Although van de Ven (2009) does not address the point, the

BlackBerry versus iPhone context also suggests another

difference in the new conceptions of envy and covetousness.

Unlike the focus of Veblen (1899) and many other dis-

cussions of luxury focusing solely on dimensions of social

class and social status (e.g., Berry 1994;Twitchell2002),

there is reason to desire goods owned by (benignly) envied

others apart from the singular motive of status competition.

In the case of the iPhone and BlackBerry at the time of van

de Ven’s(2009) study, we might instead see the underlying

motivation as the pursuit of cool (e.g., Frank 1997; Pountain

and Robins 2000). Although coolness may simply be another

status system (Belk et al. 2010), it is an alternative system

that opposes mainstream status hierarchies and social class

(see Fraiman 2002;MajorsandBillson1992).

In Asia, Chadha and Husband (2006) suggest that coolness

may be at least as important as status-seeking in the purchase

of luxury brands. Coolness may not be the only alternative to

status seeking as a motivational basis for emulating benignly

envied others. McCracken (2008)seesupwardenvybased

on social status as being a pre-modern phenomenon from

Veb l en’s era and earlier which gave way to a modern

concern with radical individualism. He suggests that we have

now moved on to a postmodern era in which there is no

singular coherent self to express. Rather, the self is freely

changeable and there are no more elites; popular culture is

culture. This suggests that we no longer envy the elites, only

those who have more currency within popular culture. The

production side counterpart of this consumption shift is

moving from an emphasis on designing products to appeal to

a certain social class of consumers (e.g., Alfred Sloan’s

approach to automobile segments at General Motors) to

designing products to appeal to certain lifestyles.

Partly as a result of such trends, others (see Matt 2003;

Stearns 1999) have observed that envy has become much less

of a feared deadly sin than it was once held to be. Another

important reason is likely the concomitant rise of benign

envy. Benign envy seems at worst a mild affliction, something

to be laughed at in a television sitcom. And so perhaps it is

understandable that we now have perfumes named Envy and

Covet, but we lack eponymous brands for most other deadly

sins, such as food products with gluttony in their names.

Between benign and malicious envy lies the mixed motive

envy described in Table 1. While the more socially desirable

admiring emotions of benign envy may be displayed, the

consumer with mixed envy harbors a secret hatred of the

envied other. This mix of benign and malicious feelings may,

for instance, explain our seeming love/hate relationship with

celebrities and our delight in seeing them fall (e.g.,

Johansson 2006). When the target of mixed motive envy is

known and possesses an enviable possession, we may

express our admiration, but feel that we are more deserving.

As a result we may seek to both undermine the target’swell-

being (levelling down) and simultaneously seek to acquire

the coveted good. In this case we not only seek to match the

target person’s consumption, but to outdo them and thereby

invert the our relative positions. If the target responds

similarly, an escalating consumption race could ensue.

Summary of the alternate view of envy Unlike early con-

ceptions of malicious envy and its associated covetousness,

benign envy and its desire are directed toward consumption

models and replicable branded goods. This is possible

because both the goods and most other people with whom

we have contact are anonymous. These others do not know

the rest of our life beyond what they see in our visible

consumption. The branded goods are fungible with other

goods bearing the same logo. Because we can aspire to own

the desired consumer goods that inspire benign envy, we

wish to “level up”by acquiring them rather than “level

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down”by depriving other owners of the goods we long for.

These othersare comprised not only of the those we encounter

in person, but also the mannequins, Internet participants, and

mediated images we see in advertising as well as in the

editorial and entertainment content of mass media.

The objects of our desire in the case of benign envy are not

as much symbols of status as they are lifestyle goods that we

see as contributing to our individualistic or affiliative identity.

To the extent that cool, stylish, or novel goods operate within a

status system, it is apt to be a bounded status system of those

sharing similar lifestyle interests. At the other end of the

familiarity continuum from anonymous strangers are those

who form a part of our extended self—not just family and

close friends, but those within our consumption communities,

fan groups, and interest groups. With these others we are not

only more likely to feel benign envy rather than malicious

envy, we may also vicariously bask in their reflected glory

such that their consumption-related happiness becomes our

own. Mixed envy lies between these two extremes and

displays characteristics that could lead to a coolness race in

which each person envies the other and strives to have the

coolest car, clothes, sneakers, MP3 player, travel destinations,

and so forth. Such competition strives to outdo the other and

invert our relative statuses in such a way that the envier

considers the desired outcome to be more just.

Given these distinctions between benign and malicious

envy, it is useful to consider how marketing attempts to take

advantage of these differences. The literature on malicious

envy has little to say about these strategies and tactics, but

benign envy presents a number of possibilities.

Marketing and benign envy

Be the envy of your friends John Berger (1972) describes

how publicity (promotion) takes advantage of our benign

envy at the same time that it contributes to it:

It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves,

or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it

proposes, will make us in some way richer ....

Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by

showing us people who have apparently been trans-

formed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of

being envied is what constitutes glamour. And

publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour....

The image then makes him envious of himself as he

might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be

enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social

relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure,

but of happiness: happiness as judged from the

outside by others. The happiness of being envied is

glamour (pp. 131–132; see also Thrift 2008).

Berger (1972) goes on the suggest that to be envied, besides

possessing enviable goods, we must feign indifference to

the gaze of envious others. In other analyses, this is

highlighted as the essence of being cool (e.g., Majors and

Billson 1992). But accomplishing this is a three-step

process in Berger’s view. First we become envious of our

self-as-we-might-be, as represented by promotional images.

We then acquire the good that has been suggested to make

our future self the object of envy. And thirdly, by displaying

this good and wearing a mask of cool indifference, we

become the object of others’envy.

Use of celebrity spokespersons In McCracken’s(2008)

view, status demarcated by social class is either dead or

chaotically confused. Others, like Bauman (2000)and

Touraine (1998) agree. McCracken (2008) offers three

evidences of the decline of status: 1) Many in the upper

classes refuse to participate in making claims of status; 2)

The newly wealthy no longer strive to become upper class,

and 3) We are no longer envious toward those of high

social standing and expect them to be dishonest and

unfulfilled. Although I would instead argue that mixed

envy underwrites our regard for the famous, fostering a

love-hate relationship toward them, I agree with McCracken’s

(2008, pp. 381–382) contentions that old conceptions of

status are in decline and that celebrities have become our

new elite.

Even though celebrities supplanting the upper classes as

targets of admiration may be new, the elite status of

celebrities is not. Some have pointed to the collapse of

distance between celebrities and their fans (e.g., Hills 2006;

Jenkins 2006). The old thinking centered on malicious envy

was that superstars are like kings and so far “above”the

masses that they would not provoke envy in the way that a

friend or neighbor might. As Alicke and Zell (2008) put it,

“There is not shame…in comparing unfavorably to a

superstar. Thus, envy can be forestalled via the belief that

the superior performer’s status renders him or her beyond

reach”(p. 87). But with the rise of benign envy and the

collapse of boundaries between celebrities and fans, this all

changes. Rather than being so distant as to forestall

malicious envy, celebrities have become so close as to

prompt benign envy (Ditmar 2008; Richins 1991,1992).

This means that even fabulously rich or otherwise privileged

celebrities potentially become models for emulation. We now

think that wetoo can be like the celebrity, merelyby acquiring

the branded good that he or she endorses (e.g., Gatorade’s“I

want to be like Mike”campaign using Michael Jordan—

Goldman and Papson 1998).

Luxury, populuxe, and counterfeits Luxury has long been

part of various moral discourses and has been condemned

as being feminizing, debilitating, sinful, decadent, and

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wasteful. Behind these charges there was often a more

profound concern with social injustice and malicious envy

provocation (Berry 1994;Sassatelli2005). From a discursive

perspective, the concept of benign envy can be seen as a key

part of a strategy by the rich and their apologists to justify

their lavish consumption. If malicious envy is castigated as

sinful, criminal, or psychopathic (Table 1), then un-begrudging

benignity is the cure. In addition to arguments that benign

envy is motivating and that it stimulates emulation which

spurs economic growth, Simmel’s(1904) trickle-down theory

is invoked to explain how the luxuries of today’s elite will be

adopted by successively lower social classes as greater

demand drives down their price (e.g., de Tarde 1962). A

variation of this argument is seen in the Deng Xiaopeng

apology for the rise of the consumer class in China, stressing

that it is ideologically correct “to make some people rich first,

so as to lead all the people to wealth”(Schell 1984,p.14).

Rather than relying on the declining prices of consumer

luxuries pushing them toward being regarded as necessities,

Deng’s argument is that everyone will become wealthy

enough to afford luxuries in the future, thanks to the

expenditures of the economic avant-garde. For certain luxuries

like fans, air conditioners, radios, televisions, and wrist-

watches, evidence of their increasingly broad global adoption

suggests that both processes (lowering prices and rising

incomes) are occurring. Moreover, as Schoeck (1966) notes,

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s dire prediction in 1920

that class warfare would be incited by the envious gaze of the

masses seeing the elite in their motor cars has certainly not

come to pass in either the U.S. of the 1920s or China today.

No longer is mere ownership of a car a luxury in the more

affluent world and today’s luxury model becomes tomorrow’s

base model (Frank 1997). According to Twitchell (2002),

such democratization of luxury is the most significant

marketing phenomenon of our times. Still, there are classes

of luxuries that seem to be immune from democratization,

such as mansions, exotic automobiles, rare vintage wines,

exclusive club memberships, and luxury brands of like Louis

Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada. However, at least in the latter

category, marketers have begun to cater to the mass desire for

luxuries previously available only to the elite. This probably

first showed up in ready-to-wear clothing imitating bespoke

tailored clothing, knockoff dresses replicating the latest haute

couture styles, and clothing patterns for home sewing of

otherwise unaffordable garments in the latest fashion styles

(Matt 1998).

A second way of emulating unaffordable luxuries is with

what Thomas Hine (1987) called populuxe goods. Popular

in postwar America, these goods were faux luxury goods

made of cheaper materials such as Naugahyde for leather

furniture, plastic laminate instead of marble kitchen

countertops, and wood-grained Con-Tact paper applied to

walls (Twitchell 2002). While admitting that such goods are

vulgar imitations, Hine (1987, p. 12) explained their appeal:

“People wanted to be known for their good taste, but they

wanted to have great showy things that demonstrated that

they had arrived.”Along with large suburban lots with the

equivalent of mass-produced houses, multicolored applian-

ces, and cars with jet-like tail-fins, this too was perceived as

levelling up and trading up, although ultimately it was a

mass market movement that did more to placate pent up

desire for “luxuries”than to ameliorate class inequalities

(McCracken 2005).

A third strategy for acquiring luxury on limited means is

through goods that Twitchell (2002) calls opuluxe. Examples

he cites are brands like Prada, Montblanc, Mercedes, Ralph

Lauren, Gucci, Lexus, and Armani. They have become more

affordable because their brands have brought out more mass

market versions (Danziger 2005; Nueno and Quelch 1998).

The clothing that many of these luxury brands are known for

actually comprises less than 25 percent of their sales (Nueno

and Quelch 1998). The majority of their sales revenues

comes from less expensive accessories, fragrances, and

ancillary goods like key-chains, wallets, and socks, that

provide a taste of luxury without costing thousands of

dollars. These goods are especially popular in the more

affluent and emerging Asian economies that now constitute

the biggest market for many of these brands (Chadha and

Husband 2006; Wong and Ahuvia 1998).

A fourth means of acquiring luxuries when they are

unaffordable by some sober reckoning is to sacrifice

“necessities”for “luxuries.”In the less affluent world, Belk

(1999) has called such improbable appearances of luxury

goods “leaping luxuries,”implying that their possessors

have leapt over supposedly more fundamental hierarchical

need categories in order to service higher order needs. An

example would be sacrificing food to buy a refrigerator into

which the new owners cannot afford to put food. In cases

such as this, the trade-off may be pursuing desires for

status, prestige, and material achievement rather than

satisfying needs for adequate nutrition, comfort, and safety

(Ger 1992).

A final consumer strategy for acquiring unaffordable

luxury goods is buying counterfeit imitations, including

“genuine fakes”that cannot be distinguished from the

original (Chadha and Husband 2006). It is a way around

sumptuary constraints, intended to provide a feeling of

status that, it is hoped, accompanies the purchase and

display of the fake brand (Belk et al. 2005). To the extent

that others perceive the fake as genuine, it may prompt

envy of the owner. However, as Chadha and Husband

(2006) point out, it is easier for the wealthy to successfully

pull off such a deception than for poorer people to do so,

for they are less suspect of having done so. Furthermore,

since the owner is generally aware of the counterfeit

status of their purchase, it is unclear whether it is truly

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effective in reducing their own envy of others who own

“the real thing.”

Thus, there are a variety of ways in which marketers and

consumers conspire to facilitate the sort of consumer

emulation that is characteristic of benign and mixed envy.

The democratization of luxury (Boorstin 1973; Twitchell

2002), the democratization of envy (Schudson 1984), and the

democratization of desire (Leach 1993) have all combined to

facilitate mimetic imitation of those we admire. While this

may involve specific known referent others, it is now more

likely to be models and celebrity others as well as the

imagined others whom we encounter on the Internet and in

retail and advertising displays. Compared to the impotent

rage and hatred provoked by malicious envy, the emulative

urges prompted by the benign envy, into which malicious

envy has been partly sublimated, seem relatively innocent.

Just what it feels like to envy and be envied within this more

benign framework is the subject of the next section.

The experience of envy

From envy avoidance to envy provocation

Just as envy has been split into benign and malicious varieties,

the phenomenon of being envied may be split into benign and

malicious types. Here too there is likely a middle ground, but

to keep it simple I deal with only the benign and malicious

extremes in Table 2, which compares envying and being

envied. Under communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR

and during the Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976),

there was a great levelling down. In China this went as far as

the standardized Sun Yat-sen suit for both men and women

(Finnane 2008). Consumers feared conspicuous consump-

tion, not only because it could provoke envy in what were

officially classless societies, but also out of concern that

others might turn the conspicuous consumer over to

authorities as a hated “capitalist roader”(e.g., Schell 1984).

In the early 1990s, after the demise of communism in the

former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Ger and Belk

(1996) measured materialism in 12 countries including the

U.S., Turkey, and India as well as countries in Eastern and

Western Europe. They found the highest levels of material-

ism and envy in two recently communist countries: Romania

and the Ukraine. In addition they found a significant increase

in materialism and envy in Germany between pre-unification

and post-unification. These findings as well as a separate

qualitative study by these authors (Ger and Belk 1999)

suggest a dramatic shift from avoiding others’envy to

provoking others’envy.

What is seen in these rapid shifts from communism to

capitalism is arguably seen more gradually in the rise of

consumer cultures generally. Despite some temporal and

regional variations, with the rise of consumer culture we

would expect to see a concomitant rise is benign envy over

malicious envy, as documented in the U.S. by Matt (2003).

The rapid growth of mass luxury and counterfeiting

discussed in the previous section is further evidence of this

trend. In Foster’s(1969) conceptualization, we should expect

that there is also a shift from a limited good worldview to an

unlimited good worldview. If there is enough for everyone,

then some of the guilt that conspicuous consumption might

otherwise evoke is attenuated. Rhetorically, framing escala-

tions in consumption in terms of deservingness, social

justice, and decency—a category mid-way between necessity

and luxury—is a potentially effective discursive strategy. As

Table 2 Envy and being envied—benign and malicious

Type Characteristic Envying Being Envied

Benign

Deservingness Close to what I deserve More than I deserve

Motivation Striving Humility, gratitude

Behavior Desire/buy Give/share

Related Emotions Admiration Guilt, sympathy

Desired Effect Be loved, respected Be loved respected;

make other feel better

Malicious

Deservingness Less than I deserve What I deserve

Motivation Harm envied other Conspicuousness

Behavior Destroy other’s possession

;

one-upsmanship; ignore

Flaunt it, guard it, demonize envy

Related Emotions Hatred Pride, pity

Desired Effect Make other feel worse Make other feel worse

In a world of branded replicable commodities and property insurance, this strategy is limited or temporary in its ability to achieve the desired effect.

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Drakuliç (1991) observed just after the demise of commu-

nism in Eastern and Central Europe:

What is the minimum you must have so you don’tfeel

humiliated as a woman? It makes me understand a

complaint I heard repeatedly from women in Warsaw,

Budapest, Prague, Sofia, East Berlin: “Look at us—we

don’t even look like women. There are no deodorants,

perfumes, sometimes even no soap or toothpaste. There

is no fine underwear, no pantyhose, no nice lingerie.

Worst of all there are no sanitary napkins. What can one

say except that it is humiliating?”(p. 31).

With arguments like these the switch to conspicuous con-

sumption and intentional envy provocation was easy to justify.

Itcouldevenbeseenasstrikingablowforsocialjustice.

Cultural differences

The benign versus malicious envy distinction is recognized in

many languages. In Russian the two types are called white and

black envy. In Spanish benign envy is called "good envy"

(envidia de la buena) or "healthy envy" (envidiasana),

whereas malicious envy is simply envidia.InDutch,benijden

is benign envy and afgunst is malicious envy. In Polish and

Thai there are also separate words for benign and malicious

envy (van de Ven 2009). In German we have encountered the

term schadenfreude for joy in the other’s misery, whereas in

Sanskrit there is a separate word, mudita, for sympathetic joy

in others’happiness, and this is an important virtue in

Buddhism. In Norwegian unne has a similar meaning to

mudita,whilemisunne means envy. More accurately unne

means to not begrudge and the sentence “Jeg unnner deg

dette”means “I feel you deserve this.”Perhaps this sentiment

is related to the principle of Janteloven (the law of Jante)

suggesting that we are all the same and no one is better than

anyone else, although this involves more of a levelling down

rather than a levelling up. This is a strong Scandinavian norm

that was codified and given the term Jantaloven in a 1933

novel by Aksel Sandemose, after which it became both a

sociological term and a part of the vernacular language in

Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. There are likely

some further cultural differences suggested by these linguistic

shades of meaning involved in the emotions of benign, mixed,

and malicious envy, but they must await further research.

In Islamic cultures like that of the Pukhun in Pakistan,

envy is bound up with systems of honor and hospitality

(Lindholm 2008). Hospitality is a Muslim ideal that, like

Mexican peasant fiestas (Foster 1972), should serve to

dissipate envy by sharing. However, unlike the Mexican

case, Lindholm (2008) notes that the Pukhun seek to excite

the envy of their neighbors with their banquets. At the same

time both the Mexicans studied by Foster and the Pakistanis

studied by Lindholm seek to avoid the malicious envy of

their possessions by building walls around their property

with activity concentrated in an inner courtyard that is not

visible from the street; and both cultures share a strong

belief in the evil eye.

Modesty and avoiding the envious (female) or lustful (male)

gaze of others is also the rationale for the covering or veil

within Islam (Sandikci and Ger 2010; Sobh and Belk 2011).

Notably, however, both the envy-avoiding modesty and

concern with honor are not as much individual matters in

Arabian Gulf Islamic cultures as they are concerns for the

family or clan. Thus a woman may cover in public even if

she does not believe in the practice because to fail to do so

would bring dishonor to her family (Sobh and Belk 2011).

Still Sobh and Belk (2011) find that in Qatar and United Arab

Emirates an influx of Western media, foreign visitors out-

numbering locals, and great wealth created by petrodollars,

are causing an increasing display of wealth and individualism

both in coverings for women and in facades of homes. Far

from the envy-deflecting ostensive purpose of veils, new

trends in the design and wearing of these coverings by

including jewels, allowing some of the hair to show, using

heavy makeup and designer sunglasses, handbags, and

watches, and allowing abayas (robes) to be open enough to

reveal expensive Western clothing beneath, all suggest envy-

provoking, if not lust-provoking, attempts to attract attention.

Like Islamic Gulf cultures, in the Confucian cultures of

East Asia there is also a concern with family or clan more than

individual reputation, framed in terms of face (Bond 1992;

Wong and Ahuvia 1998). As Douglas and Isherwood (1979)

suggest, collectivist or interdependent societies tend to stress

modesty and humility as the proper means to suppress envy.

Saving face is thus a matter of avoiding provoking envy.

This may seem at odds with the previously noted boom in

the luxury goods market in these same countries. Chadha

and Husband (2006) summarize a study of Tokyo women in

their 20s in which 94 percent reported owning at least one

Louis Vuitton item, 92 percent reportedly owned Gucci, and

the figures for Prada (57 percent) and Chanel (51 percent)

were also amazingly high. In Seoul more than 50 percent of

all women reported owning a Louis Vuitton bag—either

genuine or fake. But with figures this high, such consump-

tion is luxurious, but not ostentatious. That is, owning such

items becomes more a matter of fitting in than standing out.

Not to own such items is not only to fail to fit in, but also to

lose face. It is clear that there is a burgeoning luxury goods

demand in China as well. Even more dramatically than the

shift from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe and

the former Soviet Union, the conformity of Sun Yat-sen

jackets in China has given way to the conformity of high

fashion. But as Wong and Ahuvia (1998) conclude, the

younger generations of Chinese consumers may be changing

and flaunting their wealth in a more nouveau riche manner

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than prior generations. Still, hierarchical society is also a

foundation of Confucianism and the implications of individual

behavior for family face are never far out of mind.

In a demonstration of fitting in rather than standing out

in Asian versus Western societies, Ariely (2008) and Ariely

and Levav (2000) found that Westerners at a restaurant

table tended to all order different beverages and meals from

one another in order to assert their independence, whereas

Hong Kong Chinese tended to follow the choices of others

in the party in a demonstration of their interdependence and

face-saving.

The changing patterns of conspicuous consumption between

the Cultural Revolution and today’s China also serve to remind

that while cultural differences in patterns of envy and

consumption may be enduring, social sanctions or incentives

for consumer luxuries can also change (e.g., see Chaudhuri and

Majumdar 2006 on change in India; Üstüner and Holt 2010

on change in Turkey). The generational shifts in luxury

consumption in China also suggest that we should pay

attention not only to generational cohorts, but also to changes

in envy and envious consumption over the life-span (e.g., Suls

1986).Andmoregenerally,aswehaveseen,theriseof

benign envy concepts and the decline of the fear of malicious

envy are also trends that have accelerated over time but that

proceed at different paces in different cultures.

Conclusions

The role of benign envy in consumption

Malicious envy is not entirely dead in the contemporary

world. But the view that all envy is malicious is an outmoded

characterization that was developed in a pre-brand era when

the social, technological, and economic environments were all

decidedly different. If the stepsisters were at the ball today,

they would most likely ask Cinderella where she got the

slippers and how much they cost. Or if their envy was more

mixed and retained a tingeof maliciousness, they would try to

trump her with an even nicer pair of Manolo Blahniks. Rather

than ad hoc heel and toe surgery they would more likely try to

enhance their beauty with a face lift, Botox injections,

liposuction, laser treatments, and other surgical and non-

surgical enhancements. And they would buy Versace gowns

and hire a chauffeured Rolls Royce to carry them to the ball. In

other words, their envy would have become largely benign.

Although benign envy lacks the destructive nature of

malicious envy, it is equally rivalrous and competitive. But

rather than attempt to harm rivals or bring them down to the

envier’s level, benign envy motivates striving for consump-

tion that will makeothers envious of us. We not only bear their

envy, but seek it, because what is ultimately sought is

admiration, respect, and love.

I have also argued that rather than the envious pursuit of

moving up in social class status as envisioned by Veblen

and others, we now strive for a combination of individu-

ating and affiliative distinctions that relate more to lifestyle

and personality. The envious images we draw from in this

pursuit are more anonymous and the brands that we choose

are also anonymous in the sense of being part of an

identical stock of goods bearing a common brand logo.

Limited editions and very high prices for luxury goods may

increase the scarcity of some brands, but in most cases they

are available to anyone with the money to buy them. Such

democratization of envy does not mean a democratization

of desire; we do not all want the same things. But it does

mean that we in the more affluent world have a far broader

set of potential remedies for the insecurities fostered by

encountering others’consumption. The Greeks may have

feared that the hubris of overly lavish consumption would

evoke the envy and wrath of their gods, but if celebrities are

our contemporary gods, we show no fear of enraging them

by imitating their consumption. And if we cannot recreate

their entire lifestyle, then we can at buy a fragment of it,

perhaps some Prada sunglasses, to contribute to the fragmented

pastiche that is our own lifestyle.

The metaphorical referents of benign and malicious (or

malignant) envy are potentially cancerous tumors. The fact

that a tumor is found to be benign is a great relief, but it

does not mean that having the tumor is a good thing. The

same is true with envy. While benign envy may be a key

engine of economic growth, fashion, and the passionate

material pursuit of respect and love, it is not in itself a good

thing. As Ackerman et al. (2000) find, benign envy that

motivates consumption desire still feels bad. Others have

found that the social comparisons we make to models’

bodies can lead not only to positive emulation, but also

negative self derogation (e.g., Belk 2001; Stevens and

Maclaren 2005). But like a benign tumor, benign envy is a

fact of life. As a powerful emotion that has been at work for

millennia, and perhaps as long as humankind, envy can be

counted on to continue indefinitely. As Schoeck (1966)

concludes, even with attempts to level societies, humans

will always find someone else to envy because they possess

something we covet or desire. But this careful scrutiny also

means that we can potentially envy others’greener consump-

tion, healthier foods, or more active lifestyles. And these too

are subject to benign envy; there is enough for all.

The traditional assumptions have been that we are

inherently competitive and that we live in a limited good

world (e.g., Gouldner 1965). If we long to know how we are

doing, comparisons to others provide an easily accessible

benchmark, even if specific referents are replaced by an

image of “most others.”It is difficult to change our fitness,

physique, or personality, but it is relatively easy to change

much of our consumption, especially in an unlimited good

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world (Belk 1995a). In a fashion-oriented consumer culture

this is mandatory if we do not wish to appear old-fashioned.

While other motives like novelty-seeking may help drive the

fashion system, it is likely, as Simmel (1904)suggested,that

envy is responsible for much of the impetus to renew our

wardrobes. And what applies to wardrobes applies to most of

our visible consumption. It is my contention that benign

envy now drives such consumption.

Future research

I have presented benign envy as qualitatively different from

malicious envy because it is actionable and aims to level up

rather than level down. I have argued that as participants in

an affluent society with ample consumer credit, we can

acquire the same fashions or other branded goods owned by

those whom we envy. Moreover, with leaping luxury

sacrifices, populuxe goods, the democratization of luxury,

and counterfeits, more and more of us can transform

otherwise malicious envy into benign consumer envy. Just

how this theorized transformation takes place and the

degree to which benign envy truly supplants any feelings

of animosity, are topics for future research.

Although van de Ven (2009) found that those who feel that

they are the object of benign envy do not seem to mind it

and do not feel motivated to engage in prosocial acts toward

enviers as do those who feel themselves to be the objects of

malicious envy, this is still a finding based on feeling guilt or

no guilt. It has been suggested here that instead of merely

feeling guiltless, in turning from avoiding others’envy to

intentionally provoking it, we may quite enjoy the feeling of

being envied. This is the glamour to which Berger (1972)

refers. It is the malicious state of being envied in Table 2.

Woot e n ’s(2006) findings are suggestive of the desire to be

envied among adolescents with cool possessions, but perhaps

this braggadocio is either compensatory for youthful insecu-

rity or due to a lack of nuance similar to that displayed by

stereotypical nouveaux riches (Costa and Belk 1990;

LaBarbera 1988). We can see the same flaunting of friends,

possessions, and experiences on many blogs and social

networking sites, especially among relatively young partic-

ipants. This suggests that a life-course perspective on envy

and social comparison can be particularly useful. Perhaps we

outgrow our own feelings of envy (benign, mixed, or

malicious) and the malicious desire to provoke others’envy,

but research is needed here too.

The most basic challenge posed by the rise of benign envy

is to the economic, psychological, and philosophical assump-

tion that life is a zero-sum game in a world of limited good.

Competition exists to be sure, and we set up most sports and

games, including political contexts, within this framework.

Butnolongerdoothers’possessions of fine clothes, cool cars,

or fashionable gadgets preclude us from acquiring the same

desiderata. Quite the opposite; enviable others’possession of

these things increases the likelihood we will acquire them.

And even though benign envy sustains and promotes

consumer culture, this may be preferable to a society of

festering malicious envy.

The cultural differences discussed here raise some intrigu-

ing and promising topics for future research as well. The

changing status of veiling within Islam, as well as the debates

that such practices have recently engendered about modesty,

vanity, and privacy (e.g., Sobh et al. 2009) suggest a possible

shift from avoiding others’malicious envy to provoking

others’benign envy in some Islamic cultures. Just as people

in maliciously envious societies may eat in private to avoid

envy provocation and avoid the necessity of sharing (Foster

1972), hiding beauty may ostensibly be intended to serve a

similar purpose. But as veiling in the Middle East Gulf States

becomes more ostentatious, it appears that a shift to envy

provocation is taking place. This bears further investigation.

So does the difference between avoiding other’senvyand

saving face in Confucian societies versus rampant luxury

consumption which may have opposite effects in these same

societies (Wong and Ahuvia 1998). Because cultures differ

in the particular consumption practices they deem excessive-

ly ostentatious, appropriate, or laudable, further work on the

factors leading to these shifting distinctions across cultures

and time periods is also needed. Recent world economic

events suggest that definitions of “obscenely”ostentatious

consumption can change rather quickly. Given the rapid

economic changes taking place in many world cultures, these

cultures are likely to prove instructive arenas for investigat-

ing changing consumption practices as presumably more

benign envy becomes dominant.

Given the democratization of luxury that has been discussed

here, it is doubtful that Schoeck’s(1966) claim that luxury

consumption necessarily provokes envy can be sustained.

The “inflation of signs”that occurs when nearly everyone

seems to drive a Mercedes and carry an LV handbag likely

makes these status markers less envy provoking than was

once the case. Perhaps this is just an indication that trickle

down fashion has transformed another of yesterday’s luxuries

into today’s necessities. But longitudinal research is needed to

test for sign inflation.

Hopefully many more issues have been raised in this article

that can prompt meaningful research. I will end with one more

example that has not been emphasized: the development of

benign and malicious envy in children. Just when and how

these envious feelings arise, how they are dealt with, and

whether the case of children is special because they must

depend more on parents and relatives to make their envy

actionable (e.g., the gifts from Cinderella’s father), are topics

that call for investigation. Zhao and Murdock (1996) refer to

the unevenly distributed rise of consumerism and conspicuous

consumption in China as fueling “reservoirs of envy,”probably

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no more so than among children and the poor who cannot act

upon their feelings of envy and frustration. Near the dawn of the

20th Century, relatively poor Americanelementaryschool

children were found to exaggerate and lie about the possessions

that they or their families owned (Hall and Smith 1903; Kline

and France 1899). When you cannot actually level or invert

status hierarchies, deception may have to suffice. And while

the Brothers Grimm version of the Cinderella story may have

warned earlier generations of children about the shallowness

of envy and the retribution that awaits the maliciously

envious, the moral that children are more apt to glean from

the now dominant Disney version of the tale is that with the

magic of the right consumption, they too can marry the prince,

become the object of others’envy, and live a totally

transformed and wonderful life.

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Abstract and Figures