Envy up, scorn down: how comparison divides us

Comparison compels people, even as it stresses, depresses, and divides us. Comparison is only natural, but the collateral damage reveals envy upward and scorn downward, and these emotions, arguably, poison people and their relationships. Summaries of several experiments--using questionnaire, psychometric, response-time, electromyographic, and neuroimaging data--illustrate the dynamics of envy up and scorn down, as well as proposing how to mitigate their effects. Initial studies suggest the importance of status. Other data show how scorn down minimizes thought about another's mind; power deactivates mental concepts. Regarding envy up, other studies demonstrate that Schadenfreude (malicious joy) targets envied outgroups. However, counterstereotypic information, empathy, and outcome dependency can mitigate both scorn and envy.     

Envy and difference

This paper explores five examples of envy, examining the similarities and differences between the clinical situations. The theory relating to envy is extensively reviewed and a critique of the Kleinian position is offered, suggesting that the aversion to separation and difference is not only prior to, but also has explanatory precedence over, the functioning of envy. Kleinian examples are explored in this light. The experience of separateness and difference is understood to lead to a number of outcomes: envy, admiration, competitiveness, a sense of low self-esteem and inadequacy, or a fear of being envied. It is argued that the individual's particular personality organization and their associated relational pattern will determine their experience of envy. Examples of schizoid, borderline, narcissistic and hysteric functioning in relation to envy are examined in some depth. The link between these phenomena and the death instinct is touched on.     

Episodic 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.     

Economic Envy

Envy of others' material possessions is a potent motivator of consumerism. This makes it a prudentially and morally hazardous emotional response. After outlining these hazards, I present an analysis of the emotion of envy. Envy, I argue, presents things in the following way: the envier lacks some good that her rival possesses; this difference between them is bad for the envier; this difference reflects poorly on the envier's worth; and this difference is undeserved. I then discuss the conditions under which these presentations can be satisfied by differences in material possessions. My conclusion is that no difference in material possessions can simultaneously be all the ways envy presents it as being. Consequently, economic envy is systematically irrational: it is never a warranted response to the distribution of material wealth. Recognising this bolsters the prudential and moral case for reducing the degree to which we feel it and for resisting the inclinations it gives rise to when we do.     

Envy and Generosity Between Co-Therapists

This paper explores the dynamics of envy and generosity between co-therapists. Generally speaking, co-therapists can be drawn into the same social comparisons (overt and covert), competitiveness, and envy as their group members. The list of valued resources can include the group's affection, appreciation, and recognition, or, more generally, one's status, popularity, creativity, sensitivity, understanding, or parental functioning. The group in turn, will sometimes tend to divide the therapists into the good one and the bad one in order to serve its own developmental needs. This process can increase the tension between the therapists, and feed their envy. I present an argument for processing those feelings and assert that awareness of co-therapist envy can promote the expression of generosity and enhance the capacity of group members for similar experiences. Clinical material will be presented to demonstrate how this works.     

La Caze on Envy and Resentment

Abstract

Marguerite La Caze has recently published a stimulating analysis of the emotions of envy and resentment in which she argues that to envy others for a benefit they have received or to resent them for such a reason can be ethically acceptable in cases where that benefit has been unjustly obtained (La Caze, 2001). I question this on the ground that the judgement that the benefit has been unjustly obtained plays a more complex role in the structure of envy and resentment than La Caze allows and should alter the nature of the feeling that is evoked. From the perspective of virtue ethics there is nothing creditable about still feeling envy or resentment in such circumstances.     

Antecedents of Envy Reaction

Antecedents of envy were studied in a multivariate design by means of a semi-projective questionnaire depicting stories of the differential fates of two heroes. Thirty Ss participated. The results supported the predictions that the content and intensity of satisfaction of the other, as well as background information about the heroes describing the “requirements of justice” for both of them, were systematically related to the intensity of envy reaction. Theoretical implications are discussed, mainly relating to Heider's Cognitive Balance Theory.     

Envy, identification, and pride

The constituents of the complex affective experience of envy are delineated, and defenses against each of these constituents are explored. Attention is then called to a common, variably adaptive, and socially approved means of obviating or coping with envious feelings, involving a partial identification and culminating in the conscious experience of "being proud of." A conjecture is made regarding the kind of pathology most likely to interfere with this mechanism.     

Narcissism,Mania and Analysts' Envy

Character traits like narcissism, mania and grandiosity are routinely discussed in the psychoanalytic literature as aspects of psychopathology only. However, many individuals who have both achieved and contributed to society in the most profound ways often have such characteristics. Psychoanalysts, sometimes envious of patients who possess considerable wealth and/or power, may be inclined to overly pathologize such qualities, denying their own desires for the perks of power and material success. Mad Men is discussed largely in this context.     

Envy: Further thoughts

Urges toward the good may be hidden in bad acts. A case in point is envy, which is often motivated by desire for the good. Its ill effects can be counteracted by this realization.Ann Belford Ulanov, M.Div., Ph.D., is Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Co-Editor of theJournal of Religion and Health.     

Envy and Its Consequences: Why It Is Useful to Distinguish between Benign and Malicious Envy

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.