Envy: An Adversarial Review and Comparison of Two Competing Views

Abstract

The nature of envy has recently been the subject of a heated debate. Some researchers see envy as a complex, yet unitary construct that despite being hostile in nature can lead to both hostile and nonhostile reactions. Others offer a dual approach to envy, in which envy’s outcomes reflect two types of envy: benign envy, involving upward motivation, and malicious envy, involving hostility against superior others. We compare these competing conceptualizations of envy in an adversarial (yet collaborative) review. Our goal is to aid the consumers of envy research in navigating the intricacies of this debate. We identify agreements and disagreements and describe implications for theory, methodology, and measurement, as well as challenges and opportunities for future work.

Telescopes and microscopes of motivation: Emulative goals in admiration and envy differ in abstractness and temporal orientation

“…The notion that envy can entail emulative, upward motivation has a long history (see e.g., Parrott, 1991) and has become a consensus among researchers of envy (Crusius, Gonzalez, Lange, & Cohen-Charash, 2020). Indeed, envy can cause increased desire for others' superior goods (Crusius & Mussweiler, 2012;Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2011a), predict higher goal setting (Lange & Crusius, 2015a), elicit more effort (Lange & Crusius, 2015b), and be a precursor for higher performance (Schaubroeck & Lam, 2004).…”

“…Compared to benign envy, malicious envy primarily rests on the appraisal that the superior other's advantage is undeserved as well as that perceived control to attain this advantage is low. Furthermore, in contrast to benign envy, malicious envy involves hostile motivation aimed at reducing the status of the superior other (Crusius et al, 2020;Crusius & Lange, 2014;Lange, Weidman, & Crusius, 2018;Van de Ven et al, 2009.…”

Counterfactual thoughts distinguish benign and malicious envy.

“…In line with research on other emotions such as shame and guilt (Niedenthal et al, 1994) or regret and disappointment (Zeelenberg et al, 1998) these findings underline that the content of counterfactual thinking can clarify pathways of emotional responding in structurally similar situations. The findings also contribute to the recent debate about the nature of envy (for a review, see Crusius, Gonzalez, et al, 2020). In particular, some researchers (e.g., Tai, Narayanan, & McAllister, 2012) have questioned whether the distinction between benign and malicious envy reflects qualitatively different emotional reactions or whether it merely reflects different behavioral outcomes of the same emotion.…”

An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Value of Envy

“…As a starting point, these approaches emphasize that the primary goal of the envier is to level the difference between them and the envied person (for reviews see Van de Ven 2016;Crusius and Lange 2017;Lange et al 2018a). By putting emphasis on the goal that underlies envy, these approaches shift the focus toward a functional perspective on envy and away from a traditional approach influenced by moral condemnation (for an adversarial collaboration discussing previous and recent approaches, see Crusius et al 2020). This shift allows to incorporate components and outcomes of envy that disprove the supposed reprehensive character of envy.…”

“…Furthermore, fragile self-esteem predicted higher malicious envy (Smallets et al 2016) as did fear of failure (Lange and Crusius 2015b;Lange et al 2018c), which predicted lower perceptions of control to obtain the object. Notably, the evidence regarding the influence of personal control and deservingness is partly mixed, requiring more research on central appraisals shaping benign and malicious envy (Crusius et al 2020), also taking other variables, such as the focus of concern, into account (Protasi 2016;Protasi 2021).…”