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Envy: an Adversarial Review 1 ENVY: AN ADVERSARIAL REVIEW 1 Crusius, J.*, Gonzalez, M. F.*, Lange, J.*, & Cohen-Charash, Y.* (in press). Envy: An adversarial review and comparison of two competing views. Emotion Review. accepted manuscript before copyediting Envy: An adversarial review and comparison of two competing views Jan Crusiusa, Manuel F. Gonzalezb, Jens Langec, & Yochi Cohen-Charashb a University of Cologne bBaruch College & The Graduate Center, CUNY c University of Amsterdam Author Note Jan Crusius, Department of Psychology, University of Cologne; Jens Lange, Department of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam. Manuel F. Gonzalez and Yochi Cohen-Charash, Department of Psychology, Baruch College & the Graduate Center, CUNY, All authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jan Crusius, Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931 Cologne, Germany, E-mail: [email protected], or Yochi Cohen-Charash, Department of Psychology, Baruch College & the Graduate Center, CUNY Box B8-215, 55 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10010, E-mail: [email protected]. ENVY: AN ADVERSARIAL REVIEW 2 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 non-hostile 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 with 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. Keywords: envy, benign envy, malicious envy, social comparison, adversarial collaboration ENVY: AN ADVERSARIAL REVIEW 3 Envy: An Adversarial Review and Comparison of Two Competing Views Scholars agree that envy is an unpleasant emotion resulting from self-relevant, upward social comparisons. However, the conceptualization, nature, and outcomes of envy are debated. Historically, envy has mostly been viewed as motivating hostile reactions (i.e., cognitive, behavioral, and emotional ways of fulfilling the motivational goals inherent to envy), such as harming the envied person or the desired resource. Nevertheless, envy also predicts non-hostile reactions, such as increased effort to self-improve. This diversity has aroused a debate regarding whether these various reactions result from one envy type or from different types of envy. In this paper, we compare two such approaches to envy.1 Traditionally, researchers considered envy as one emotion, referred to here as the unitary approach. In this approach, the experience of envy involves pain and hostile feelings (for reviews see Cohen-Charash & Larson, 2017b; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2007; Silver & Sabini, 1978b; Smith & Kim, 2007) designed to alarm people to their relatively inferior position and motivates behaviors designed to eliminate this inferiority and the pain it entails. Some researchers from this approach maintain that envy motivates hostile and non-hostile reactions alike, explaining the wide range of reactions to envy. Therefore, they differentiate between the hostile feelings that envious individuals experience and reactions to envy, which do not have to 1 There can be various reactions to the better fortune of the other, some pleasant (e.g., vicarious pride, admiration) and others not (e.g., depression, shame, and resentment; for an extensive discussion see Ortony, Clore & Collins, 1988; Smith, 2000). Envy has been theorized and shown to be distinct from other emotions. For example, enviers have been reasoned to respond to both others’ advantages and the self’s inferiority, unlike resentment, depression, and shame, which tend to involve only one of these foci (Smith, 2000). As another example, research from both approaches shows that envy requires social comparisons, whereas resentment, for instance, is dominated by thoughts about intentional immoral actions of others that are not essential to envy (e.g., Smith & Kim, 2007; Smith, Parrott, Ozer & Moniz, 1994; van de Ven, Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2009), even if these characteristics overlap (as in some conceptualizations of the related state of relative deprivation, e.g., Smith & Kim, 2007). ENVY: AN ADVERSARIAL REVIEW 4 be hostile (Cohen-Charash & Larson, 2017a, 2017b; Leach, 2008; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2007; Parrott & Smith, 1993; Tai, Narayanan, & Mcallister, 2012). Recently, a typological approach to envy has gained significant popularity. This dual approach proposes that two distinct forms of envy—benign and malicious envy—can explain envy’s diverse outcomes. Specifically, malicious envy entails hostile feelings, thoughts, and action tendencies aimed at harming the superior position of the envied other, whereas benign envy entails feelings, thoughts, and action tendencies aimed at improving the outcome of the envier. Thus, this account maps divergent characteristics of envious reactions on qualitatively different forms of envy (for reviews see Crusius & Lange, 2017; Lange, Weidman, & Crusius, 2018; van de Ven, 2016). Lately, it has been further suggested that these sub-types of envy share a common element of pain about inferiority (Lange, Weidman, & Crusius, 2018), which may explain why laypersons refer to them under the inclusive label “envy” in everyday language (e.g., van de Ven, 2016). Others in this approach have suggested that, additionally, envy can be conceptualized and measured as general envy, subsuming the specific forms (van de Ven, 2016). Reflecting evolutionary thinking and social comparison theories, both the unitary and the dual approaches maintain that envy2 can be adaptive for the envious individual. Both posit that the painful experience of envy alerts to self-evaluation threats or to being in an unfavorable position with regard to important resources, motivating corrective action (Heider, 1958; Hill & Buss, 2008; Tai et al., 2012; Tesser, 1991). In line with social-functional approaches to emotions (A. H. Fischer & Van Kleef, 2010; Keltner & Haidt, 1999), the functions of envy may also be conceptualized at higher levels of analysis (e.g., Foster, 1972; Schoeck, 1969). For example, 2 In the joint sections, we use “envy” to denote all its potential conceptualizations—envy as a unitary construct, benign envy, malicious envy, general envy, and pain of envy. We also use citations that are relevant to both conceptualizations. ENVY: AN ADVERSARIAL REVIEW 5 envy may contribute to and be shaped by how people navigate social hierarchies (Crusius & Lange, 2017; Fiske, 2010; Steckler & Tracy, 2014) or motivate economic growth (e.g., keeping up with the Joneses; Foster, 1972; Gershman, 2014). However, the two approaches reflect different takes on how envious reactions evolve and contribute to social functioning. Thus, there is no consensus about how to conceptualize, operationalize, and measure envy. Furthermore, disagreements also exist within each approach, as reflected by inconsistencies in how each group of researchers has conceptualized and operationalized envy. These discrepancies have fueled both confusion and debates regarding envy’s nature, measurement, and nomological network (for reviews see Cohen-Charash & Larson, 2017a; Cohen-Charash & Larson, 2017b; Lange, Weidman, & Crusius, 2018; van de Ven, 2016). As proponents of envy as a unitary construct (Cohen-Charash & Gonzalez) and proponents of distinguishing benign and malicious envy (Crusius & Lange), we will compare these competing conceptualizations of envy in an adversarial (yet collaborative) review. We do not intend to resolve this debate in the current paper. Instead, our goal is to enable a direct comparison of the two approaches to facilitate informed decisions on how to conceptualize and examine envy, which will hopefully facilitate a resolution to the debate. To this goal, each group of writers will answer the same questions, first by the unitary approach, followed by the dual approach (which Cohen-Charash & Gonzalez refer to as the typology approach). Question 1: What is the nature of envy? The Unitary Approach Envy has received numerous definitions over decades of theory and research. Here, we define envy as: ENVY: AN ADVERSARIAL REVIEW 6 A painful emotion that involves the beliefs that (a) one lacks a desired object that another person has, and (b) the desired object is important to the person’s self-concept or competitive position. Envy includes the motivation to reduce the pain it entails and to improve one’s relative standing (Cohen-Charash & Larson, 2017b, p. 26). We view envy as involving both psychological pain (Takahashi et al., 2009) and hostile feelings(e.g., Castelfranchi & Miceli, 2009; Smith et al., 1994). The pain results from lacking the ego-relevant resource and being inferior to another on that particular resource (e.g., Leach & Spears, 2008; Parrott, 1991; Parrott & Smith, 1993; Smith et al., 1994; Tai et al., 2012; Tesser, Millar & Moore, 1988), which hurts one’s self-concept (Smith et al., 1994). Another reason for the pain is the perceived violation of the ought force – how things should be (Heider, 1958; Tai et al., 2012). Thus, the pain is a compound
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