The Psychology Of Envy

The Psychology Of Envy: Envy is the painful feeling that someone else has what we want, whether status, wealth, talent or love; researchers see it as a social comparison alarm that can motivate self improvement or fuel resentment, spending sprees, market bubbles and even violence.

Leon Festinger: His 1954 social comparison theory argued that humans judge their own worth mainly by measuring themselves against others, especially people just like them.

Aristotle: In his Rhetoric he observed that we envy our equals and near rivals, not kings or gods, the same pattern modern studies keep rediscovering.

Bertrand Russell: The philosopher noted that beggars do not envy millionaires, they envy other beggars who are doing better, calling envy one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.

Cain and Abel: The first murder in the Bible springs from envy, when Cain kills his brother after God favors Abel's offering over his own.

Pope Gregory I: In the late 500s he formalized envy as one of the seven deadly sins, and medieval art often showed the envious with their eyes sewn shut.

Hidehiko Takahashi: His 2009 brain scan study in Science found envy lights up the anterior cingulate cortex, a region tied to physical pain, while watching the envied person fail activates reward circuits.

Richard H. Smith: The psychologist behind The Joy of Pain showed that schadenfreude, pleasure at others' misfortune, rises sharply when the person falling is someone we envied.

Niels van de Ven: His research split envy into two types: benign envy, which pushes people to work harder, and malicious envy, which makes them want to pull the other person down.

Sara Solnick: Her 1998 Harvard survey found about half of people would rather earn $50,000 while others earn $25,000 than earn $100,000 while others earn $200,000.

Richard Easterlin: The Easterlin Paradox showed that as countries grew richer, average happiness barely budged, largely because people measure income against their neighbors, not in absolute terms.

Thorstein Veblen: His 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class coined 'conspicuous consumption,' spending designed to be seen and envied rather than enjoyed.

Birkin Bag: Hermès' famously hard to get handbag is a classic Veblen good, where scarcity and a high price make it more desirable, not less.

Keeping Up with the Joneses: Cartoonist Arthur 'Pop' Momand's comic strip ran from 1913 to 1940 and gave English its favorite phrase for envy driven spending.

Tulip Mania: In the 1630s Dutch Republic, watching neighbors seemingly get rich on tulip bulbs pulled ordinary people into a speculative frenzy, a template for fear of missing out in every bubble since.

Frans de Waal: In a famous 2003 experiment with Sarah Brosnan, capuchin monkeys happily took cucumber until they saw a neighbor get grapes for the same task, then threw the cucumber back in protest.

Victoria Medvec: Her 1995 study of Olympic footage found bronze medalists looked happier than silver medalists, because silver winners compared themselves to gold while bronze winners compared themselves to getting nothing.

Facebook: A 2013 German study found about one in three users felt worse after browsing, with envy of friends' vacations and social lives the leading cause.

Aristides the Just: Plutarch tells how an illiterate Athenian asked Aristides himself to write 'Aristides' on a vote to exile him, explaining he was simply sick of hearing him called 'the Just.'

Tarquinius Superbus: Livy tells how Rome's last king answered a question about ruling a conquered city by silently knocking the heads off the tallest poppies, the origin of 'tall poppy syndrome.'

Law of Jante: Aksel Sandemose's 1933 novel spelled out a set of rules telling people not to think they are better than anyone else, a code many Scandinavians still recognize in their culture.

Nazar: The blue eye amulets hanging in homes, cars and shops from Turkey to Greece are meant to deflect the evil eye, the ancient belief that an envious glance can cause real harm.

Antonio Salieri: The play and film Amadeus made him the envious poisoner of Mozart, but the historical Salieri was a respected colleague who later taught Mozart's son.

Iago: Shakespeare's villain in Othello is set in motion by being passed over for promotion in favor of Cassio, making him literature's definitive portrait of workplace envy.

Snow White: In the Brothers Grimm's 1812 version, the jealous queen orders the huntsman to bring back the girl's lungs and liver as proof, and plans to eat them.