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Envy and Social Comparison
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Abstract
Upward social comparison can give rise to the emotion of envy: the pain caused by the good fortune of others. We explain what envy is, and what the possible function of envy is to an organism experiencing it. We provide an overview of past work on envy, the distinction between two subtypes (benign and malicious envy), possible antecedents of envy, possible consequences of envy, and the responses to being envied by others. In each of these areas there are clear links to research on social comparison, and research on envy has greatly benefitted from insights from the social comparison literature. Given the surge in research on envy in the last decade, we hope that the findings on envy can also inspire those investigating social comparisons.
... Such posts driven by 'impression management' (Kuznekoff, 2013) often cause other users to make subconscious social comparisons, which can result in selfuncertainty, doubt about self-worth and low self-esteem (Lee, 2014). Empirical studies have found that social media usage makes people engage in more frequent social comparisons (Lian et al., 2017;Wang et al., 2017), which can evoke negative emotions such as envy and depression (Alicke & Zell, 2008;Hu et al., 2021;van de Ven & Zeelenberg, 2018). People especially tend to experience such negative emotions when others possess things that they do not (Krizan & Johar, 2012). ...
... Comparing oneself with those who seem 'better off' often arouses negative emotions such as jealousy, dejection and the feeling that others lead better lives (Lin, 1999;Rozgonjuk et al., 2019;Swallow & Kuiper, 1992;Wang & Wang, 2011). Van de Ven and Zeelenberg (2018) noted that envy is a pain that people inflict upon themselves when they witness others' good fortune. They further argued that envy can be benign or malicious; benign envy drives people to improve themselves to diminish the gap between themselves and the people with whom they are comparing themselves, whereas malicious envy involves people wishing to see others fail. ...
... LEE, LIU and YU 7 a higher value indicated greater ease. It has been argued that people who find it easier to achieve their goals experience negative emotions less frequently (van de Ven & Zeelenberg, 2018). Last, we also controlled for the type of community in which the respondents lived. ...
... social envy and schadenfreude belong to a social comparison of self-esteem linked with material possessions(van de Ven, 2016;van de Ven & Zeelenberg, 2018;van Dijk et al., 2015). ...
... There has been some recent debate on whether envy should be conceptualized as a unitary form or as subtypes (Cohen-Charash and Larson 2017; Van de Ven and Zeelenberg 2018). This study adopts the latter view. ...
In the age of social media, consumers are constantly exposed to idealistic images of others arousing social-related emotions such as envy. Yet, very little is known about the effects of envy on purchase intention. Our pilot study and experiment investigated the effects of Facebook envy on purchase intent involving female Facebook users, aged 18–25 years. The pilot study and experiment manipulated the envy subtypes (benign and malicious). A serial mediation model via two mediators to purchase intent was then tested. It tested the persuasion pathway via attitude towards the brand user (human-related social effect) and via the brand (brand-related effect). Results indicated that the human-related social effect was stronger than the brand-related effect. Further analysis into product types (body-related vs non-body-related) found that not all products induce invidious reactions. The effects were only present for the body-related products.
In 2022, approximately 90% of the entire population in Taiwan actively used social media. Although several studies have examined emotional changes among social media users in Taiwan, the endogeneity problem stemming from reverse causality has not been recognized and properly addressed. Therefore, this study examines the effect of social media usage on negative emotions using ‘the frequency of using mobile phones as opposed to landline phones’ and ‘the frequency of using the Internet to run errands’ as instrumental variables for social media usage. Using data collected from the 2017 ‘Taiwan Social Change Survey’, our estimation results showed that Facebook usage significantly increased the frequency with which users experienced negative emotions, including envy, feelings of inferiority, and depression. The findings suggested that the negative emotions caused by social comparison via social media likely outweighed the happiness derived from social media, resulting in Facebook users experiencing more negative emotions. One important implication of our study is that reducing social media usage can alleviate mood swings.
Development and validation of a measure of individual differences in social comparison orientation (the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure [INCOM]) are described. Assuming that the tendency toward social comparison is universal, the scale was constructed so as to be appropriate to and comparable in 2 cultures: American and Dutch. It was then administered to several thousand people in each country. Analyses of these data are presented indicating that the scale has good psychometric properties. In addition, a laboratory study and several field studies are described that demonstrated the INCOM’s ability to predict comparison behavior effectively. Possible uses of the scale in basic and applied settings are discussed.
Using a process model of emotion, a distinction between antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation is proposed. To test this distinction, 120 participants were shown a disgusting film while their experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses were recorded. Participants were told to either (a) think about the film in such a way that they would feel nothing (reappraisal, a form of antecedent-focused emotion regulation), (b) behave in such a way that someone watching them would not know they were feeling anything (suppression, a form of response-focused emotion regulation), or (c) watch the film (a control condition). Compared with the control condition, both reappraisal and suppression were effective in reducing emotion-expressive behavior. However, reappraisal decreased disgust experience, whereas suppression increased sympathetic activation. These results suggest that these 2 emotion regulatory processes may have different adaptive consequences.
We asked 26 subjects to recall and describe social situations in which either a close or a distant other performed better or worse than the self at an activity that was either high or low in relevance to the self. Subjects then rated the extent to which they experienced each of 18 different emotions in each situation. They also rated each situation on a series of dimensions that Smith and Ellsworth (1985) found to be consequential for differentiating emotions. In a series of analyses guided by intuitive hypotheses, the Smith and Ellsworth theoretical approach, and a relatively unconstrained, open-ended exploration of the data, the situations were found to vary with respect to the emotions of pride, jealousy or envy, pride in the other, boredom, and happiness. We discuss the results in terms of their relevance to emotion theories and to the self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior.
72 6–11 yr olds were read 12 stories in which the protagonists failed to excel or attain something in each of 6 areas: possessions, sports, art, appearance, mathematics, and reading. In 6 stories, one child failed, whereas another excelled; in 6 stories no other child was involved. Ss rated the importance of the 6 areas to themselves and completed the PPVT-R and the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. Measures from the responses to the stories were grouped into 3 components of social-comparison jealousy––spontaneous comparisons, affect, and thoughts about jealous behavior. Jealousy was a common response to comparison failure situations. Older Ss revealed more social-comparison jealousy in areas of greater importance to themselves, whereas younger Ss did not show this differentiation as clearly. No sex differences in the experience of social-comparison jealousy were found. Results are discussed in terms of social-comparison theory, and a stage model of jealousy development is proposed. (32 ref)
This article describes the nature and significance of the distinction between the emotions of envy and jealousy and reports 2 experiments that empirically investigated it. In Experiment 1, Ss recalled a personal experience of either envy or jealousy. In Experiment 2, Ss read 1 of a set of stories in which circumstances producing envy and jealousy were manipulated independently in a factorial design. Both experiments introduced new methodologies to enhance their sensitivity, and both revealed qualitative differences between the 2 emotions. Envy was characterized by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment, and disapproval of the emotion. Jealousy was characterized by fear of loss, distrust, anxiety, and anger. The practical importance of this distinction, the reasons for its confusion, and general issues regarding the empirical differentiation of emotions are discussed.
The recent surge in envy research has brought with it a line of inquiry differentiating between “benign” and “malicious” envy. “Benign” envy is the motivation to improve the self, leading to socially desirable reactions. “Malicious” envy is the motivation to harm the envied other, leading to socially undesirable reactions. We suggest that studying “benign” and “malicious” envy involves confounding envy with its outcomes, which causes confusion and impairs the understanding of envy. We discuss the roots of this differentiation, the theoretical and methodological challenges it involves, and its negative ramifications for envy research. We provide theory and findings showing that envy, conceptualized and measured as a unitary construct, can lead to a wide range of reactions, including socially desirable and undesirable, depending on personal and situational moderators. Therefore, we believe the distinction between “benign” and “malicious” envy is unwarranted and advocate for the use of envy as a unitary construct.
Purpose
Very limited research exists examining envy from the viewpoint of an envied consumer, rather than an envier. This paper aims to address this gap by examining whether and how the experience of being envied actually affects consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents three experiments. Study 1 investigates the ambivalent experience of being envied. Study 2 examines the effect of being envied in consumption contexts on consumer satisfaction, analyzing the combined ambivalent effects of positive and negative feelings. It also investigates the moderating role played by consumer coping responses to enviers (mitigation vs exacerbation). Finally, Study 3 applies the hypothesized model in a specific context (i.e. a material possession context), focusing on adult consumers.
Findings
Results show that negative (e.g. guilt and anxiety) and positive (e.g. sense of well-being and prestige) feelings for being envied depend on the type of relationship between the envier and the envied, and the type of desired object, and consumer satisfaction is driven by the combined ambivalent effects of positive and negative feelings, where coping responses by envied consumers moderate the effects of such feelings on satisfaction.
Originality/value
This paper makes three main contributions: it extends prior research by highlighting the role of personal relationship factors and the type of object of desire in the experience of being envied; demonstrates that both positive and negative feelings of being envied affect consumer satisfaction; and shows conditions regulating the influence of positive and negative feelings on satisfaction, demonstrating that mitigation strategies decrease the effects of negative feelings on satisfaction, whereas exacerbation strategies failed to regulate the effects of positive feelings.
It is widely assumed that narcissists are envious. Nevertheless, evidence supporting this claim has remained elusive. In five studies (N = 1,225), we disentangle how grandiose narcissism predicts divergent envious inclinations. Specific facets of narcissism and forms of envy shared the same underlying motivational orientations (Study 1) and distinctively related to each other (Studies 1 to 5) via differences in emotional appraisal (Study 4). Moreover, envy was linked to opposing social consequences of different narcissism facets (Study 5). Specifically, hope for success related to narcissistic admiration, predicting benign envy, which entails the motivation to improve performance, translating into the ascription of social potency by the self and others. In contrast, fear of failure related to narcissistic rivalry, predicting malicious envy, which entails hostility, translating into the ascription of a proneness for social conflict by others. These results converged with envy measured as a trait (Studies 1 and 5) or state in recall tasks (Studies 2 and 4) and as response to an upward standard in the situation (Study 3). The findings provide important insights into narcissists' emotional complexities, integrate prior isolated and conflicting evidence, and open up new avenues for research on narcissism and envy. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology
At first glance, envy appears to be a maladaptive emotion. A great deal of subjective distress, workplace angst, and sibling rivalry owes itself to this potentially destructive emotion. Envy, however, is as ubiquitous as it is socially undesirable. Young children and adults alike are quick to take note when something is "not fair," although over time they become more adept at keeping such observations to themselves. The recognition of another's advantage, and the feelings of unfairness and hostility that sometimes follow, are an important part of what it means to be human. Despite its reputation as being distasteful, tacky, petty, and downright gauche, it is likely that envy has played an important role in humans' quest for the resources necessary for successful survival and reproduction over the course of evolutionary time. This chapter provides an evolutionary psychological account of envy. First, it explores the hypothesized function of envy by detailing the adaptive problems for which it is hypothesized to be an evolved solution. It then addresses how an evolutionary account of envy organizes existing empirical discoveries about the nature of envy. Finally, the chapter presents suggestions for future directions of envy research that are made possible when viewing this emotion from an evolutionary psychological perspective.
Outperforming others may be an ambivalent experience, simultaneously evoking pride and discomfort. Two experiments examined the role of deservingness in reactions to being an upward comparison target. Study 1 took place online and experimentally manipulated deservingness by modifying a self-report measure of Sensitivity about Being the Target of a Threatening Upward Comparison (STTUC). Participants predicted more distress and less positive affect under conditions of undeserved (vs. deserved) success; several individual difference variables moderated these effects. Study 2 systematically varied a confederate’s effort to manipulate the perceived deservingness of an outperformed person. Participants were especially likely to downplay their score in the presence of a confederate who appeared to work hard on a task but nevertheless performed poorly. Collectively, findings suggest that people respond most strongly to STTUC when a mismatch exists between deservingness and outcomes.
Two studies assessed envy across adulthood. Study 1 (n = 987) examined subjects’ experiences of feeling envy. Study 2 (n = 843) examined being the target of another's envy. Envy primarily occurred between same-gender and similarly aged others. Fewer older adults reported envy incidents. Envy was reported in both distant and close relationships. Both studies found that the likelihood of envying certain domains shifted across the life span: scholastic success, social success, looks, and romantic success were less envied with age, whereas money was more envied with age. Envy in some domains (luck, overall better life) was fairly consistent across the life span. 2015
Researchers frequently disagree about the latent structure of emotions. Taxometric analysis-a method for determining whether the latent structure of a construct is best defined as categorical or purely dimensional-can be a useful tool for resolving these debates. The present study used taxometric analysis to investigate the latent structure of envy. Scholars disagree about whether envy is necessarily malicious or whether it can also be benign. Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters (2009) claim that benign envy exists, and that it is distinct from malicious envy. Much of their evidence for this claim relies on latent class analysis, which can be biased toward creating categories with data that actually vary dimensionally (Cleland, Rothschild, & Haslam, 2000; Uebersax, 1999). Therefore, taxometric analysis provides a more conservative test for an underlying categorical structure. A daily diary procedure was used to measure participants' day-to-day experiences of envy. The results support van de Ven et al.'s claim that benign envy exists, and that is distinct from malicious envy. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
On Facebook, users are exposed to posts from both strong and weak ties. Even though several studies have examined the emotional consequences of using Facebook, less attention has been paid to the role of tie strength. This paper aims to explore the emotional outcomes of reading a post on Facebook and examine the role of tie strength in predicting happiness and envy. Two studies – one correlational, based on a sample of 207 American participants and the other experimental, based on a sample of 194 German participants – were conducted in 2014. In Study 2, envy was further distinguished into benign and malicious envy. Based on a multi-method approach, the results showed that positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions while browsing Facebook. Moreover, tie strength is positively associated with the feeling of happiness and benign envy, whereas malicious envy is independent of tie strength after reading a (positive) post on Facebook.
Envy stems from a social comparison with a superior standard. Its 2 distinct forms are directed at changing this situation in different ways, either by becoming as successful as the envied person (in benign envy) or by lowering the envied person's advantage (in malicious envy). In essence, envy is thus a social phenomenon. Nevertheless, most previous research has focused on its underlying intrapersonal processes, overlooking envy's interpersonal core. In contrast, we show in 6 studies (N = 1,513) that envy and pride are intertwined in a social-functional relationship. Envy and pride often co-occur (Study 1) and pride displays enhance envious feelings (Studies 2 and 3). Specifically, authentic (success attributed to effort) and hubristic pride (success attributed to talent) modulate envious intentions and behavior toward their benign and malicious form (Study 2 to 6). This effect is mediated via liking, perceived prestige, and perceived dominance (Study 4). In accordance with a social-functional approach, the effects emerge only when authentic and hubristic pride are expressed by the superior person and not when the respective information about the superior person's feelings is simply available in the environment (Study 5). These effects are present when participants recall envy situations (Study 1), when they imagine being in a competitive situation (Studies 3, 4, and 5), or when envy is elicited in situ (Studies 2 and 6). Our findings show the value of studying envy as a social phenomenon and open up numerous avenues for research on envy at the interpersonal and intergroup level. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Greed is an important motive: it is seen as both productive (a source of ambition; the motor of the economy) and destructive (undermining social relationships; the cause of the late 2000s financial crisis). However, relatively little is known about what greed is and does. This article reports on 5 studies that develop and test the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS). Study 1 (including 4 separate samples from 2 different countries, total N = 6092) provides evidence for the construct and discriminant validity of the DGS in terms of positive correlations with maximization, self-interest, envy, materialism, and impulsiveness, and negative correlations with self-control and life satisfaction. Study 2 (N = 290) presents further evidence for discriminant validity, finding that the DGS predicts greedy behavioral tendencies over and above materialism. Furthermore, the DGS predicts economic behavior: greedy people allocate more money to themselves in dictator games (Study 3, N = 300) and ultimatum games (Study 4, N = 603), and take more in a resource dilemma (Study 5, N = 305). These findings shed light on what greed is and does, how people differ in greed, and how greed can be measured. In addition, they show the importance of greed in economic behavior and provide directions for future studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this new perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experiences of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing.
Previous research has conceptualized dispositional envy as a unitary construct. Recently however, episodic envy has been shown to emerge in two qualitatively different forms. Benign envy is related to the motivation to move upward, whereas malicious envy is related to pulling superior others down. In four studies (N = 1,094)-using the newly developed Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (BeMaS)-we show that dispositional envy is also characterized by two independent dimensions related to distinct motivational dynamics and behavioral consequences. Dispositional benign and malicious envy uniquely predict envious responding following upward social comparisons. Furthermore, they are differentially connected to hope for success and fear of failure. Corresponding to these links, dispositional benign envy predicted faster race performance of marathon runners mediated via higher goal setting. In contrast, dispositional malicious envy predicted race goal disengagement. The findings highlight that disentangling the two sides of envy opens up numerous research avenues.
© 2014 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Previous research has yielded inconsistent findings concerning the relationship between envy and schadenfreude. Three studies examined whether the distinction between benign and malicious envy can resolve this inconsistency. We found that malicious envy is related to schadenfreude, while benign envy is not. This result held both in the Netherlands where benign and malicious envy are indicated by separate words (Study 1: Sample A, N = 139; Sample B, N = 150), and in the USA where a single word is used to denote both types (Study 2, N = 180; Study 3, N = 349). Moreover, the effect of malicious envy on schadenfreude was independent of other antecedents of schadenfreude (such as feelings of inferiority, disliking the target person, anger, and perceived deservedness). These findings improve our understanding of the antecedents of schadenfreude and help reconcile seemingly contradictory findings on the relationship between envy and schadenfreude.
Caution: The print version may differ in minor respects from this draft. Posted only for scholarly/educational use. Please contact the publisher directly for permission to reprint. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to the psychological sciences in which principles and results drawn from evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, and neuroscience are integrated with the rest of psychology in order to map human nature. By human nature, evolutionary psychologists mean the evolved, reliably developing, species-typical computational and neural architecture of the human mind and brain. According to this view, the functional components that comprise this architecture were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and to regulate behavior so that these adaptive problems were successfully addressed (for discussion, see Cosmides & Tooby, 1987, Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). Evolutionary psychology is not a specific subfield of psychology, such as the study of vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it -including the emotions. The analysis of adaptive problems that arose ancestrally has led evolutionary psychologists to apply the concepts and methods of the cognitive sciences to scores of topics that are relevant to the study of emotion, such as the cognitive processes that govern cooperation, sexual attraction, jealousy, aggression, parental love, friendship, romantic love, the aesthetics of landscape preferences, coalitional aggression, incest avoidance, disgust, predator avoidance, kinship, and family relations (for reviews, see Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Crawford & Krebs, 1998; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Pinker, 1997). Indeed, a rich theory of the emotions naturally emerges out of the core principles of evolutionary psychology (Tooby 1985; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a; see also Nesse, 1991). In this chapter we will (1) briefly state what we think emotions are and what adaptive problem they were designed to solve; (2) explain the evolutionary and cognitive principles that led us to this view; and (3) using this background, explicate in a more detailed way the design of emotion programs and the states they create.
It is argued that emotions are lawful phenomena and thus can be described in terms of a set of laws of emotion. These laws result from the operation of emotion mechanisms that are accessible to intentional control to only a limited extent. The law of situational meaning, the law of concern, the law of reality, the laws of change, habituation and comparative feeling, and the law of hedonic asymmetry are proposed to describe emotion elicitation; the law of conservation of emotional momentum formulates emotion persistence; the law of closure expresses the modularity of emotion; and the laws of care for consequence, of lightest load, and of greatest gain pertain to emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents a theory of norms and normality and applies the theory to phenomena of emotional responses, social judgment, and conversations about causes. Norms are assumed to be constructed ad hoc by recruiting specific representations. Category norms are derived by recruiting exemplars. Specific objects or events generate their own norms by retrieval of similar experiences stored in memory or by construction of counterfactual alternatives. The normality of a stimulus is evaluated by comparing it with the norms that it evokes after the fact, rather than to precomputed expectations. Norm theory is applied in analyses of the enhanced emotional response to events that have abnormal causes, of the generation of predictions and inferences from observations of behavior, and of the role of norms in causal questions and answers. (3 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Close counterfactuals are alternatives to reality that "almost happened." A psychological analysis of close counterfactuals offers insights into the underlying representation of causal episodes and the inherent uncertainty attributed to many causal systems. The perception and representation of causal episodes is organized around possible focal outcomes, evoking a schema of causal forces competing over time. A distinction between 2 kinds of assessments of outcome probability is introduced: dispositions, based on causal information available prior to the episode, and propensities, based on event cues obtained from the episode itself. The distinction is critical to the use of almost, which requires the attribution of a strong propensity to the counterfactual outcome. The final discussion focuses on characteristic differences between psychological and philosophical approaches to the analysis of counterfactuals, causation, and probability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Although envy has been characterized by resentment, hostility, and ill will, researchers have begun to investigate envy's benign manifestations. We contend that the substance of envy has been confounded with its consequences. We conceptualize envy as pain at another's good fortune. This reconceptualization allows envy to result in both positive and negative consequences. We then examine how envy affects interpersonal behaviors and job performance, contingent on core self-evaluation, referent cognitions, and perceived organizational support.
We investigated how early attention allocation is biased in envy. Recent research has shown that people experience envy in two distinct forms: malicious envy, which is associated with the motivation to harm the position of a superior other, and benign envy, which is associated with the motivation to improve oneself by moving upward. Based on a functional account of the two forms of envy, we predicted that within malicious envy the cognitive system is geared more strongly toward the other person than toward the superior fortune of the other. In contrast, only within benign envy the cognitive system should be geared toward opportunities to level oneself up. We investigated these hypotheses with dot probe tasks. In line with our reasoning, Experiments 1 (N = 84) and 2 (N = 78) demonstrate that within malicious envy, attention is biased more toward the envied person than toward the envy object, whereas in benign envy, this difference does not occur. Experiment 3 (N = 104) provides evidence that within benign envy, but not in malicious envy, attention is biased toward means to improve one’s own outcome. The results suggest that within benign and malicious envy, early cognitive processing is tuned toward different stimuli and thus highlight the utility of functional and process-oriented approaches to studying envy.
Episodic envy, the unpleasant emotion resulting from a specific negative social comparison, is discussed. A new measure designed to assess it is developed, validated, and cross-validated in 3 studies. The implications of episodic envy are also examined. Results show that episodic envy is composed of a feeling component and a comparison component; and is different from unfairness, admiration, and competition. The feeling component is strongly correlated with negative emotional reactions (anxiety, depression, negative mood, hostility) and behavioral reactions (e.g., harming the other, creating a negative work atmosphere) to envy. The comparison component is correlated with behaviors intended to improve one's position in the organization. Episodic envy predicts reactions to envy above and beyond dispositional envy.
This article deals with the rationality and functionality of the existence of regret and its influence on decision making. First, regret is defined as a negative, cognitively based emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our present situation would have been better had we acted differently. Next, it is discussed whether this experience can be considered rational and it is argued that rationality only applies to what we do with our regrets, not to the experience itself. Then, research is reviewed showing that both the anticipation of future regret and the experience of retrospective regret influence behavior. The influence of anticipated regret can be considered rational as long as the decision maker can accurately predict the regret that may result from the decision. The influence of experienced regret cannot be considered rational, since decisions should be based on future outcomes, not historical ones. However, influence of experienced regret can be called functional since it may result in increased learning from our mistakes.
A model of the impact of envy in groups is proposed and tested in a longitudinal study of 143 groups. Envy was directly and negatively related to group performance. Moreover, envy indirectly influenced group performance, absenteeism, and group satisfaction by increasing social loafing and reducing both group potency and cohesion. This study provides an initial step in identifying the processes through which envy impacts group effectiveness. Implications are discussed and future research directions are identified.
Pride is seen as both a self-conscious emotion as well as a social emotion. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but have brought forth different ideas about pride as either revolving around the self or as revolving around one’s relationship with others. Current measures of pride do not include intrapersonal elements of pride experiences. Social comparisons, which often cause experiences of pride, contain three elements: the self, the relationship between the self and another person, and the other person. From the literature on pride, we distilled three related elements; perceptions and feelings of self-inflation, other-distancing, and other-devaluation. In four studies, we explored whether these elements were present in pride experiences. We did so at an implicit (Experiment 1; N = 218) and explicit level (Experiment 2; N = 125), in an academic setting with in vivo (Experiment 3; N = 203) and imagined pride experiences (Experiment 4; N = 126). The data consistently revealed that the experience of pride is characterised by self-inflation, not by other-distancing nor other-devaluation.
Envy is the pain that arises from the good fortune of others. Recent research identified two subtypes of envy, benign and malicious envy. Malicious envy is the envy subtype with action tendencies aimed to pull down the envied person from their superior position. Benign envy is also a frustrating experience, but activates action tendencies aimed at improving oneself. This article provides an overview of the empirical support for making this distinction in envy subtypes. It then discusses the benefits of a subtype approach to envy, with the main advantages of distinguishing benign and malicious envy being that it (a) provides researchers with the language to be clear in how they conceptualize envy and (b) allows novel predictions. A next section provides a response to some criticism on making this distinction. Finally, I conclude with a section on how envy in general, and benign and malicious envy in particular, could be measured.
We propose a theory of regret regulation that distinguishes regret from related emotions, specifies the conditions under which regret is felt, the aspects of the decision that are regretted, and the behavioral implications. The theory incorporates hitherto scattered findings and ideas from psychology, economics, marketing, and related disciplines. By identifying strategies that consumers may employ to regulate anticipated and experienced regret, the theory identifies gaps in our current knowledge and thereby outlines opportunities for future research.
Two key emotions people can experience when someone else is better than them are envy and admiration. There are conflicting findings in the scientific literature on which behaviour is elicited by these emotions. In one study (with two samples, total N = 345), we test which motivations are triggered by envy and admiration. The main finding is that (benign) envy and admiration both lead to a motivation to improve oneself. This confirms earlier findings that admiration leads to a motivation to affiliate with the admired other and a motivation to improve one's own position. Furthermore, it supports the idea that envy can lead to both a motivation to improve oneself and a motivation to pull down the envied other, finding support for a subtypes theory of envy.
In two studies, feelings of jealousy and envy in a life domain were reliably associated with (a) the importance of the domain to oneself, (b) the degree to which one assesses actual performance in a domain as not measuring up to ideal expectations, and (c) low global self-esteem. The first study reported results from a survey of 6,482 readers of a national magazine. A more conventional sample of 220 adults drawn from the local community participated in the second, replication study. The results suggest the value of self-evaluation maintenance theory and self-discrepancy theory for understanding situations that provoke jealousy and envy, and the nature of these complex emotional experiences.
Airline companies often spontaneously provide unexpected upgrades to please their customers. However, this practice may have negative outcomes for customers nearby who do not receive an upgrade. This study was designed to understand the impact of unexpected upgrades on potential travelers in terms of envy and perceptions of unfairness by focusing on individuals who did not receive an unexpected upgrade. By utilizing a scenario method, this study found practical results for airline companies, as well as other tourism and hospitality industries. Providing another traveler with a high-value upgrade, such as a move from economy to first class, significantly increased participants' envy. More specifically, participants with high social comparison orientations had higher levels of envy and perceived unfairness than individuals with low social comparison orientations. Furthermore, the influence of the level or value of the upgrade on envy differed based on the closeness of the relationship between the participant and the recipient of the unexpected upgrade. Participants' feelings of envy were consistently high when a stranger received an unexpected upgrade, regardless of its value. Comparably, when a friend received a high-value upgrade, participants showed as high a level of envy as when a stranger received such an upgrade. However, when a friend received a low-value upgrade, they did not report feeling envious. Further discussion and implications are provided in the main body of this paper.
How is admiration different from adoration? We provided one answer to this question by examining the pathways through which admiration and adoration linked to self-expansion in a questionnaire and an experimental (autobiographical recall of emotion episodes) study. Both emotions were associated with increased potential efficacy to accomplish goals (i.e., self-expansion), but different action tendencies accounted for these links. While our emotion inductions did not successfully distinguish between admiration and adoration, we could statistically disentangle their effects through mediator models. In both studies, self-reported admiration linked to self-expansion through the tendency to emulate admired others. Adoration related to self-expansion through the tendency to affiliate with adored others. These findings were obtained after controlling for other emotions in response to the target person (awe, love, hope, benign envy) and mutuality of the relationship. Our findings also suggest that considering specific emotions (rather than undifferentiated positive affect) helps uncover different pathways to self-expansion.
Henry Fleming, the central character of (Stephen Crane’s (1952/1895)) Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, eagerly joins the Union army although he knows little about war. Only much later does he realize how ignorant he is about whether he will run when the fighting starts. This uncertainty about himself sets off a disguised but full-scale search for social comparisons until, through the gut check of battle, he can “… watch his legs discover their merits and their faults” (Crane, 1952/1895, p. 21). Much of the classic and current social comparison theory would find support in how Fleming uses social comparisons during the several days portrayed in the novel (Suls & Miller, 1977; Suls & Wills, 1991). Festinger (1954) emphasized the role of uncertainty in motivating a person’s interest in social comparisons, and it is Fleming’s ignorance about his own capacity for bravery that first prompts him to probe for fears among the other soldiers so as “… to measure himself by his comrades” (Crane, 1952/1895, p. 21). Even the seemingly objective test of battle is confounded by social comparisons. In an early battle, Fleming panics and runs, but it is the sight of other soldiers turning tail first that induces his behavior, creating in social comparison terms a form of social validation (Cialdini, 1993) that spurs him to “…speed toward the rear in great leaps” (Crane, 1952/1895, p. 47).
This article presents two studies that address Axelrod’s (1984) prescription to not worry about the outcomes that others receive in a mixed-motive situation. The first study demonstrated that people do attend and react to others’ outcomes, with people whose outcomes were of a lesser magnitude than the opponent being uncooperative and people with greater-magnitude outcomes being very cooperative. This was true even though own and other outcomes were linearly equivalent. The second study showed that dispositional envy can predict rate of cooperation and that referent cognitions theory can be applied to help alleviate the impact of differing outcomes, both by making amends for small-magnitude outcomes at the end of the game (amelioration) and by providing a reasonable explanation for why the differences in outcomes exist (justification), although the former intervention was ineffective with people with high levels of dispositional envy. Discussion focuses on the role of mental simulations in the reduction of envy effects.
It was hypothesized that being outperformed on a task that is relevant to one's self-definition is threatening to self-esteem, and that this threat is greater when one is outperformed by a friend rather than by a stranger. When another's performance threatens self-esteem, persons will be less likely to help the other by making the task easy. To test these hypotheses, 52 friendship pairs participated with strangers in a word identification task described either as a measure of important skills (high relevance) or as a game (low relevance). Participants chose clues for both a friend and a stranger to use in identifying target words. As predicted, they gave harder clues under high-relevance than under low-relevance conditions. Moreover, they gave harder clues to strangers than to friends under low-relevance conditions, but gave harder clues to friends than to strangers under high-relevance conditions.