Do envious people show better performance?: Focusing on the function of benign envy as personality trait

Abstract

This study focused on the differences between two, subtypes of envy known as "benign envy" and "malicious envy" as personality traits, and examined the effects of these traits on academic achievement. Two hundred fifty-one university students participated in the study. Both benign envy and malicious envy were found to be independent as also found in a previous study by Lange & Crusius (2015), and a high criterion-related validity was revealed by an association with characteristic variables such as dispositional envy and self-esteem. The students with higher levels of benign envy were found to set goals higher, and as a result achieved higher levels of academic performance. In contrast, no such effect was found for malicious envy. The importance of focusing more attention on the positive aspects of the emotion of envy is discussed.

Hasad (Malicious Envy) and Ghibtah (Descent Envy): History, Culture and Philosophy

“…The students with higher levels of benign envy were found to set goals higher and as a result, achieved higher levels of academic performance. In contrast, no such effect was found for malicious envy [12].…”

To Help or To Harm? Assessing the Impact of Envy on Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviors

“…We add that these two constructs are separable in part because they produce different motivational states, which in turn result in different behavioral outcomes. Evidence for considering benign and malicious envy to be separate constructs has been further corroborated by research showing that students who exhibit high levels of benign envy as a personality trait had a propensity to set higher goals for themselves, and thus tended to perform better academically relative to their counterparts who had higher levels of malicious envy (Sawada & Fujii, 2016). We found that gratitude was negatively correlated with malicious envy, but showed no such relationship with benign envy.…”

Envy: An adversarial review and comparison of two competing views

“…Research on dispositional inclinations to experience envy (Çırpan & Özdoğru, 2017;Kwiatkowska, Rogoza, & Volkodav, 2018;Lange & Crusius, 2015a;Sawada & Fujii, 2016;Sterling et al, 2017) found two-factor solutions supporting a dual conceptualization.…”