Can envy be good for you? With Jens Lange, PhD, and Sara Protasi, PhD

We've all felt a pang of envy watching a friend's success or a colleague's promotion. But does this much-maligned emotion deserve its negative reputation? Psychologist Jens Lange, PhD, and philosopher Sara Protasi, PhD, discuss the difference between envy and jealousy; why we're often most envious of the people closest to us; and how envy may, in the right circumstances, motivate us to grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:32Kim Mills?

  Envy is a much maligned emotion. Our feelings about it are evident even in the language we use to describe it. We say people are twisted, or consumed by, or eaten up with envy. In folktales, books, and movies, envy is a villain. In the Christian tradition, envy is one of the seven deadly sins. But in recent years, some psychologists and philosophers have begun taking a second look at this long vilified emotion and making the case that envy is not always destructive. In some cases, it can even be a force for good. So what exactly is envy and how has it gotten such a bad rap? Why are we often envious of people closest to us? And how does envy affect our relationships?

• 1:16Kim Mills?

  How can we learn to use envy in more constructive ways? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

• 1:35Kim Mills?

  I have two guests today, a psychologist and a philosopher who both study envy. First is Dr. Jens Langa, a professor of psychology at the Health and Medical University in Erfurt, Germany. His research focuses on measuring emotions, especially envy and pride, and understanding the role they play in interpersonal behavior. He is the author of dozens of journal articles on topics including how envy shapes social hierarchies, how personality traits such as narcissism link to envy, and the difference between benign and malicious envy. My next guest is Dr. Sara Protasi. Dr. Protasi is a professor of philosophy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma,

• 2:16Kim Mills?

  Washington, where she studies moral psychology and the philosophy of emotions. She is author of the books The Philosophy of Envy and The Moral Psychology of Envy, and she has discussed the value of envy with media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Globe, and Mail, and ABC Radio Australia. Dr. Langa, Dr. Protasi, thank you both for joining me.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having us, Kim.

• 2:40Kim Mills?

  Let me start by asking how you define envy in your work? And what's the difference between jealousy and envy? Because people often use those terms interchangeably, and they're not really the same. Dr. Langa, why don't you take that one?

• 2:52Speaker 04

  So envy is initially a painful feeling resulting from an unflattering comparison with another person. And so this higher-ranked person is superior in a domain of high personal relevance to the lower-ranked person. So I am, for instance, or I can be envious of Sarah's amazing book on envy, right? Because I am a scientist, it's personally relevant, but I wouldn't be envious of Leonardo DiCaprio's acting skills, because I'm not an actor. So envy occurs when someone else has something that a person desires. And in contrast, jealousy occurs when a person is afraid of losing something that they already have, so typically a romantic partner.

• 3:37Kim Mills?

  Dr. Protasi, you've written about four different types of envy. What are they and what do they tell us about the different ways that envy can show up in our lives?

• 3:47Speaker 03

  So it's funny, because I was also planning to use my envy for Jens as an example. And so he stole my idea, and now I'm very envious of that. So let's take the example of, you know, professional envy, right? And as Jens, you know, beautifully explained, envy is this unpleasant, aversive response to some kind of perceived inferiority or disadvantage vis a vis a similar other. So Jens and I are roughly, you know, the same age, the same occupation. And so he's, even though, you know, he's a man, I'm a woman, there's going to be some other differences, but I can perceive him as similar to me.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  And I can envy him with regard to a good that is relevant to my sense of identity, and such as, for instance, academic success, right? So I envy the fact that he is a renowned expert on envy, and he's all this public, he has many more publications than me. I may have a book, but he has many, many publications, right? But now, there are some other conditions that, so this is the kind of the background that just envy in general situation, right? But then in my work, I present a model that is not meant to be cross-cultural. It's meant to characterize the kinds of envy that contemporary people in Western society is my, like Jens and I, my experience.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Now imagine that I am really concerned with being a good researcher, right? I mean, that's something that is at the core of my identity. I really care about that. And I envy Jens, but what I'm mostly concerned is, okay, I am not as good as Jens, and his academic excellence exacerbates my pain. But it's not the main focus of concern for me. It's just that the fact that he is similar to me is a sort of, as Aristotle would say, it's a reproach to me, why I haven't been able to be as productive. But mostly what I care about is becoming better as a researcher. And let's suppose that I'm a fairly self-confident person, and then thanks to Jens' generosity

• 5:54Speaker 03

  in, you know, he has maybe shown me how to be a successful researcher. I feel confident that I can improve my situation, that I can emulate Jens and become a better researcher myself. And so I feel what I call emulating envy, which is still painful, right? Because it's still a perception of my inferiority compared to this other person, but there is hope. It's a productive emotion that motivates me to self-improve. Now, let's change the example a little bit. Imagine that I'm actually fairly insecure, or perhaps I'm in a difficult work situation. I have a lot of teaching in my institution, and I start fretting, and I'm like, oh no, oh my God, I will never be able to be as good as Jens as a researcher.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  And so even though I, it's not like I'm hostile to Jens, I feel, I start feeling like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't, I shouldn't talk to him as much, otherwise I feel bad about myself. I start withdrawing from the relationship, I start sulking a little bit. And I feel this kind of self-defeating emotion where I want to have something that I perceive as unattainable. And this is what I call, this is the unproductive version of emulating envy, and I've called it inert envy. And I think this, for instance, applies well to cases of like baby envy, where there is someone who wants to have a biological child, and that's really tough sometimes, right? Sometimes it's just a matter of like what your body can and cannot do. And it's not like you want other people to lose their children, God forbid, right?

• 7:22Speaker 03

  But maybe you stop hanging out with your friends with children, because it's a little too painful. Now, imagine instead that, you know, maybe I've known Jens for a long time, maybe we're childhood friends, and I've always kind of, oh, he was always so successful, and I wasn't. And that's kind of irritating. Why is Jens always good at everything, right? And so for whatever reason, I developed this rivalry with this person. And so it's not like I necessarily care about the good that I feel I lack. It's just that there is this background of rivalry. And so I am motivated to kind of pull him down, right? I want him to do less well, rather than improve myself. And so maybe I will engage in these malicious behaviors that are often so salient in envy,

• 8:07Speaker 03

  our discussions of envy. I want to sabotage him in some way. And then I have two options, right? Maybe I feel confident that I can pull him down. Maybe I can metaphorically steal the good, or really steal the good, and I can, you know, sabotage it, and maybe, you know, I get to, you know, take his place in a grant application somehow, but not because I've become a better researcher, right? I've operated in mischievous ways. And so I can steal the good, and that's what I call aggressive envy. Or finally, maybe I can spread rumors about something about Jens' behavior, and so people don't invite him to conferences, or don't invite him to participate in symposiums and all of that, but I haven't improved my situation. I've just spoiled the good.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  I've just spoiled his success without thereby getting anything in exchange. And I call that spiteful envy. And that, again, might be because I don't feel confident in like, you know, taking away the good from him, or maybe the situation is such that it doesn't allow it. So those are the four kinds of envy: emulating, inert, aggressive, and spiteful. And in the book, I talk more about, you know, the moral implications, and also why I think this model might be helpful to think about our envy, and so that we can move from the worst kinds of envy to the better kinds of envy.

• 9:23Kim Mills?

  Dr. Langa, I want to ask you if psychological research draws similar distinctions among the different types of envy?

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think they are similar, right, but not identical. So in psychology in general, and also for envy, people typically take a so-called social functional approach. So the idea being that emotions, also envy, help people dealing with certain social situations, typically social problems or challenges. And for envy, the problem is that someone is better off, right? Or that the self is worse of, in a domain of high personal relevance. So people want to deal with the situation, and they can do this by improving themselves, right? Then problem solved. This is what psychologists often call benign envy. Or they can try to pull the other person down, so harm the other person's position, which also levels the difference.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  And this is typically called malicious envy. And this maps onto the types that Sarah mentioned. So she herself wrote in one of her papers that benign envy is very close to emulating envy, or malicious envy is very close to aggressive envy, and that is benign, malicious distinction kind of misses, especially inert envy. In general, like my personal opinion is that envy is like doesn't occur in different types or in different categories, right? So in my opinion, emotions and also envy are kind of processes that unfold in particular social situations. So in the case of envy, people encounter a higher ranked person, they experience pain

• 10:58Speaker 04

  because situation, because not having this is relevant to them. And then they want to deal with the situation and depending on how they evaluate it, then this may become benign or malicious envy or may lead to self improvement or harming. So for instance, evidence indicates that when people consider the other person's advantage to be undeserved, then the situation is more likely to unfold towards harming behavior. So malicious envy. And when people consider it likely that they will obtain the envy good themselves, then the situation is more likely to unfold towards self improvement. So benign envy. So I find these these types to be interesting and inspiring, right?

• 11:40Speaker 04

  And if it would occur in data, then that would also be perfectly fine. So in in our research, we took a purely empirical approach. So we asked people to rate whether certain elements of this envy process applied to situations in which they experience envy. So for instance, how much did you actually desire the envy object? How much did you feel inferior and so on? And then we used analytic techniques that help you to identify higher order factors. So so things that group certain elements of this envy process together and we find evidence for these painful feelings, for what psychologists like to call benign envy and for what psychologists like to call malicious envy. And we didn't find any other factors.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  And so just based on an empirical level, I think we cannot find these four different types, but we have a very similar distinction. So I don't think that this leads to a deep disagreement between the two of us, right? But I we don't find these four types in the data and I also prefer not calling them types.

• 12:43Kim Mills?

  And in your research, do you find that everybody admits to feeling envy at some point or are there people who never feel envy?

• 12:50Speaker 04

  I think that people often say they don't experience envy, but in my opinion, truth is everyone does, you know? If you ask someone like, are you envious or did you ever experience envy? Then they often say, no, I never did because it's a sin, as we said. But then if you ask them, for instance, have you ever compared to someone else in a domain of high personal relevance to you, right? Let's say in your job, for instance, and then you, you know, were either motivated or you you gossiped about the other person. So I say, yeah, obviously this just happened to me yesterday, right? So this is, so I think if you describe it by not using the word envy, given that it is so, you know, considered to be as evil as you said in your introduction, then people never agree to it.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  But the the basic process, the what I would call the envy process, this is what people frequently experience.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  I do like to think that that my taxonomy has at least some empirical support, partly because I also use a lot of your work to to argue for it. But but maybe the details of that are appropriate to another another place in time. But in my experience, I have to say that when I talk about, once people are familiar with the way I and other people think about envy as not necessarily this, you know, terrible sin or this dysfunctional emotion, they tend to be more willing to discuss their envy and admit it. I find that a lot more people now confess their envy to me in those terms, precisely because they know that I don't think envy is all bad.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  So I do think that the framing is really important, more so than the than the words we use.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, true.

• 14:27Kim Mills?

  Does envy only apply to people or could I envy a thing like your beautiful car or your expensive house?

• 14:36Speaker 03

  I like to think about this as a tripartite relation where you, the agent, the person who's feeling the emotion, envy is directed at a person because of some kind of object where that object that that is perceived as that one perceives as lacking. And the object can be a physical object, a material object, or it can be a property of a person, or it can be something more abstract, right? But in the logical sense, there's always three things. The envier, the envied and the object, the good, something that is perceived as good that I don't have and the other person has, I would say.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  I agree, yeah. And I think it would be strange to say that you are envying the car because of the car's, I don't know, nice steering wheel.

• 15:19Kim Mills?

  Well, let me change the subject a little bit. The two of you wrote a paper together called "An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Value of Envy." What inspired you to take this look at the topic and what can we learn from approaching it from both your perspectives?

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Jens and I met in 2019 at a conference organized by Timo Brier, who had this wonderful idea of this conference that was titled Hostile Emotions: Perspectives from Philosophy and Psychology. And he invited, he thought about a set of emotions. It was disgust, contempt, envy, antipathy, resentment, and maybe a couple of others. And for each session, he invited a philosopher and a psychologist to talk about it. And so that's where Jens and I met and it was, you know, I was super excited actually when I saw the invite, the program, because, you know, Jens had published these very important

• 16:16Speaker 03

  papers that I had read and I was really thrilled to be to be to be part of this of this event. And then, you know, an outcome of the conference was Timo curated this special issue of the journal in which we ultimately published this this collaboration, you know, this collaboration. And and we really wanted to show how this topic has to be investigated from an interdisciplinary perspective. And even though, again, you know, there might be some ways in which, you know, the methodologies are different to some extent, the kind of things and, you know, the explanations and the focus that I'm interested in might, you know, be different from from a psychologist, there is a lot of convergence.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  And so again, for instance, I think philosophers who work about on on emotions and especially what are traditionally considered as sins or vices, really ought to take into account the available empirical evidence. And I also think that sometimes psychologists can benefit from more nuanced conceptual distinctions.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, what I found very interesting about this conference was actually the first time that I engaged with so many philosophers, to be honest. So I never met that many philosophers before. And in psychology, we always have this approach that we are kind of non judgmental. So we just take a concept such as envy and then we investigate it and try to find out whether it's functional or not, or when it is functional, when it is not, and so on. But then all the philosophers at these conferences who are giving all these talks where they were discussing whether a certain emotion is actually good or bad, or when it is supposed to be good or bad. And so and this is where I felt we have actually complementary value, right? So we try to identify what envy leads to, what it includes, you know, what this process

• 18:01Speaker 04

  is and so on. And there, each time you talk to someone from the media, they always want to know, yeah, is it good or can you change it or should we never experience envy or should we always experience envy? And this is something that psychologists kind of never think about, so they cannot answer it because they don't have the means to do so. But this is something where philosophers are actually extremely good at. So we thought that we could join forces and like show how envy may work from a psychological perspective and then take different philosophical perspectives, find out how you should actually evaluate it.

• 18:32Kim Mills?

  We're going to take a short break. When we return, we'll talk about why we are so often envious of the people closest to us.

• 18:41Speaker 00

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  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.

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• 19:13Speaker 05

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• 19:41Kim Mills?

  Dr. Protassie, I want to ask you, a few years ago, you published an essay about envy and frenemies, which leads me to the question, why are we often envious of people we're close to, whether they're our friends, or siblings, colleagues, even our romantic partners? I mean, why can someone else's success be so much harder to celebrate when we know that person well?

• 20:04Speaker 03

  So, it's interesting, because I've seen two reactions. When I suggest that you can envy a person, a beloved, a person you love, people either react by saying, "Well, of course, obviously. This is uninteresting to even discuss." And other people are like, "What are you talking about? I would never, that's impossible. If you envy someone you love, you don't truly love them." And I think both things are true, right? There is, in the religious tradition especially, and in some philosophical approaches, envy and love are seen as complete opposites, incompatible, right? Both descriptively and normatively. But again, that's because, one, I think there are two things happening.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  One is that we think of envy only in its worst manifestations, its most destructive and aggressive manifestations. And so it's true that, of course, if you're very aggressively maliciously envious of someone, the relationship will break down. Or perhaps the love maybe in some sense was never there. But again, envy comes in different forms. And also, descriptively, unfortunately, what happens is that because envy thrives in similarity, in conditions of similarity, and because we often are similar in different loving relationships, the similarity is different, right? For instance, fathers and children will be similar in some obvious ways, right? Or people who are genetically related will be similar in some obvious ways.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  And also, you know, maybe they grew up in similar, you know, friends, childhood friends will grow up in similar environments. But even romantic partners, we know from actually scientific evidence that we, you know, similar attracts, you know, we tend to couple with people who have similar values and similar interests. And so, there is a lot of similarity. I want to be friends with people that I enjoy doing things with, people that I like, that I want to, you know, I am attracted to people in various ways. So, we look for people who are attractive, and we are usually connected to people who are similar to us in various ways. But then, of course, we might find out that they are better than us

• 22:15Speaker 03

  at a variety of things that perhaps we enjoy doing. So, in the essay, I talk about, you know, childhood friends, like high school friends, where you have this very intense relationship with someone, you do all the things together. But then, comparison lurks at every corner. And so, the trick there, and you know, I talk a little bit more about some philosophical discussions of it. We don't have to go, we don't have the time to go into. But for me, the key is, on the one hand, to understand that, you know, actually envy is the dark side of love and vice versa. There are two sides of the same coin. And we have to normalize the fact that, yeah, we envy people we love all the time.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  And it might be hard to confess and estigmatize, but it happens. And if we all normalize it, then, you know, we don't feel monsters and we can talk about it. For instance, with my husband, we have competed for the same jobs. When we were on the drug market, we were both philosophers. We actually work in somewhat similar areas. There's going to be times where, you know, we envy each other. But it's okay to say, "You know what? I'm feeling a little envious here." But of course, we don't want to feel the bad kind of envy. I mean, so that's where the other intervention takes place and where I think my model is helpful in understanding what are the factors that are at play. And so, you know, it's important to find oneself in a kind of growth mindset and think about, "Okay, how can I emulate the person?

• 23:43Speaker 03

  How can I, you know, if my beloved is doing better than me in this regard, what can I learn from them?" And the beloved, the other person, can be generous and share, you know, their good fortune, and we can focus on how we can improve. And we can also focus on the fact that, when there is a loving relationship, our identity is also somewhat shared. And so, their fortune can be seen as our fortune. Although, again, I don't think that's always the case. I think it's also important to acknowledge that we are still individuals and we thrive in our own ways. And so, I'm a little skeptical of the solution of thinking just about shared identity. But so, we can encourage the growth of emulating envy. And when that's not possible, we can acknowledge that envying a loved one is part of the human condition.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  And so, we have to kind of love wisely and be able to, you know, forgive and forget when appropriate. But also, simply just have frank conversations, you know, be mindful about our hostile feelings when they arise and try to kind of not shove them. Because I think a lot of relationships, like my experience, personal and also otherwise, when relationships break down is often because we're not able to talk about these things in the open.

• 24:55Kim Mills?

  Dr. Lange, I want to ask you a personality-related question, which is whether some personality types are more prone to envy than others. I mean, what might make someone particularly vulnerable to becoming envious?

• 25:09Speaker 04

  So, as I said, people experience envy when they compare to someone else, right? In a domain of high personal relevance. So, all kinds of personality traits that describe tendencies to engage in such a process will predict envy. And so, most obviously, social comparison orientation. And so, if people tend to compare a lot, then they're also more likely to experience envy. Then, all kinds of predictors of people, of people preferring to deal with standards of excellence. So, for instance, achievement motivation, approach and avoidance motivation, narcissism, right? So, also narcissism, people are kind of dealing with standards of excellence, so they want to have an excellent self.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  Or they don't want to fall short of certain standards and so on. And also, other dark traits, such as Machiavellianism, psychopathy, entitlement, or greed, right? And envy was also predicted by circumstances that intensify kind of personal relevance of the situation. Most obviously, the self-relevance of the comparison domain. So, as I said, if a certain domain, it's very, goes to my own identity, then I'm more likely to experience envy. And when the higher-ranked person shows pride, for instance, because if it is possible to be proud of an achievement that you have in a certain group, then this signals that this is an important achievement to have. So, this also increases the self-relevance of the domain and can make people more envious.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Or other kinds of signals, then the person is low in status, which is something that people dislike. So, being low in status, something people dislike. They don't want to be worse off, because it has negative consequences for their well-being. So, if these signals occur, for instance, the other person signals that they are very prestigious, or very dominant, or they gain influence, and this can intensify envy. And also, what Sarah already mentioned, for instance, competitions or rivalries, there's also very high self-relevance to outperforming your rival. So, if your rival outperforms you, then this is definitely a circumstance that can intensify your envy.

• 27:14Kim Mills?

  I want to ask if envy is kind of baked into us as humans? Or is it something that we're taught either inadvertently or inadvertently or overtly by, say, our parents or caregivers? And is there an age when it begins to manifest itself?

• 27:32Speaker 04

  So, my boss, Thomas Musburger, always used to say, "Social comparisons, are you big with this?" So, it is very hard to imagine a world in which you don't compare yourself. Like, let's say, even if you want to say that you are a nice person, how would you actually know that you are nice? If not, if you know that you are nicer than most other people, right? In a world where everyone is very nice, then you need to be much nicer than in a world in which not that many people are so nice. So, everything is kind of relative, so people always compare. But as far as I know, there is no behavior genetics research showing how much variance in dispositional envy is caused by variance in genes or so on.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  I mean, surely, there's going to be cultural influences, right? Like, any, anything else, you know, different cultures at different times have shaped the way we feel these social comparison emotions, right? So, in our cultures, we know that, like ancient Greek cultures or peasant cultures, I mean, there is a lot of anthropological work on envy that seems to show that, for instance, the kind of emulating envy that I talk about, or even just what you call benign envy, which, you know, there is some overlap between the two, it is much harder to find examples of that in cultures where resources are very limited, there's a lot of competition just for sheer survival. And so, and that's also why, in some of those cultures, there is this superstition of the evil eye, right?

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Where if someone looks at you, or look at your children, or your cattle, then misfortune happens, right? There is this kind of curse, and so you have to protect yourself from envy. But that's because, again, we are in a cultural context where it's really hard to flourish and resources are limited. And so, malicious envy is much more salient and common. It's hard to find yourself in a situation where you can improve, you know, how you're doing. And so, there is this cultural and just systemic, structural constraints on the kind of envy that we can feel. But I also, coming back to your initial question, Kim, I do think that parents, of course, and the culture in a home will have effects on even simply, you know, whether, you know, you have a growth mindset.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  You think like, you know, you have an outlook on the world that is less zero-sum. If you have parents who have taught you that, you know, it's either you or them, you have to succeed at all costs, you have to be the first one, right? You're probably going to be more likely to feel a certain kind of envy, or if you feel like your parents... Are not supportive, they're not making you feel self-confident, like all of these things, I'm sure, I mean, you know, again, I, I don't, this is, this is somewhat speculative, but I hope it's a reasonable speculation. And again, we, we just know that, that your context is gonna, is gonna affect the way you feel a variety of things. And it's gonna drive some, some, some differences between people, I think.

• 30:24Kim Mills?

  Well, if you have parents who say, why can't you be more like your big sister, or things like that, that-

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. Things like that. I mean, that's, I, I do think that sibling is rival, sibling rivalry, and there is some work on that, is quite interesting. To some extent, I think it's pretty widespread and unavoidable for a variety of reasons that have to do with the fact that you have this very person who's similar to you, and you want your parents' love and all of that. But some parents will exacerbate it, and some parents might be able to alleviate it, depending on how they, yeah, how they, they do things. So definitely, maybe they should not say things like that, I think.

• 30:59Kim Mills?

  So let's talk about a little bit more practical advice. So in addition to parents not saying, why can't you be like your sister or your brother? I mean, if, if you yourself recognize that you tend to feel envious, what can you do with that emotion? How can you turn it into something that is more constructive?

• 31:15Speaker 04

  In my opinion, there is no general need to turn malicious envy into benign envy, or to suppress your envy in general, right? Because from a psychological perspective, envy has a social function, so it helps people deal with certain social situations, in this case being worse off, in a domain of high relevance to the self. And that's something that you shouldn't suppress, right? Also, I think that benign and malicious are kind of misnomers, right? So benign envy can also be bad. So Sarah also always had this a nice example. It can also be benignly envious of a torturer for their torturer skills. And this would be something that's not very nice, right? Also malicious envy can kind of be good, for instance, when it motivates you to, to harm dominant others who initially

• 31:59Speaker 04

  oppressed subordinates or so. But that's something that's good. So that was also part of the paper that we wrote together, that there is no easy answer here. So you, you shouldn't, you shouldn't suppress envy entirely. That, that would be my, and typically most psychologists' perspective, right? Turning malicious envy into benign envy, if you consider that to be more constructive, would kind of require that you evaluate the situation differently. So if malicious envy results because you think that the other person doesn't deserve their advantage, and benign envy is more likely to occur when people think that they can actually obtain the, the envied good, then you would need to find an intervention that helps you to consider the object to be attainable. But I'm not aware of a strategy

• 32:42Speaker 04

  that actually works effectively. So we tried a few things, but it's, but never successfully. So maybe as Sarah knows.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Well, it's more like, I, I do think that here, the philosophical and the psychological perspectives diverge the most. And that's why I think, you know, when I talk about emulated envy, I agree, it's not quite the same as, as benign envy, even though some of the research on benign envy can support some of the things I say about emulated envy. But because in, in my taxonomy, I do integrate the, that moral perspective that you find strange, right? And so true emulated envy, especially when I talk, when I talk about even like virtuous envy, which is one version of emulated envy, is when really the good that is sought after is actually good. And so in those cases, I think that's something that I think we should, we should cultivate, and I think it is important. When I feel

• 33:30Speaker 03

  envy, it tells me that I care about something. And so that's the start of an introspective analysis, that I think is important from a prudential and moral perspective of like, okay, am I really disadvantaged in this situation? Why do I think that? Is that in a correct perception of the situation? And is this really good, right? Maybe I'm envious for bad reasons, and I, and in that case, I should work on my values, and then see if I become less envious. Once I realize, like, I envy someone because they have a more expensive watch, it's like, maybe I should think more about whether this is actually a good thing to have, or maybe, you know, I'm envious, obviously, status drives a lot of envy. And I think I have to start from this kind of mindful self-awareness perspective of thinking,

• 34:13Speaker 03

  okay, what is this envy telling me? And do I want to endorse this envy? And if it is an envy that is, could bring me towards something productive, then again, I can think about, how can I work on obtaining this good? And if this is not achievable, maybe I can find something in the vicinity that I can pursue that is obtainable, right? And then, you know, Jens and I have some disagreement about this idea of deservingness. I think philosophers are very careful in like, thinking that some of these cases that might be cataloged as envy are best characterized as resentment, which is a moral emotion, and so on. We think about justice. So that's a little bit of a, of a, of a different conversation, where

• 34:55Speaker 03

  for instance, you can have resentment or indignation, or some, some sort of righteous anger at the success of people who don't deserve their success. And of course, you can also envy them on top. But I think what's doing the moral work is the moral emotion of resentment, more so. But that's, I think, again, and I, I do think that some of the, the ways in which the empirical evidence seems to show that envy is driven by resentment, I do think it can also be accounted by what I call focus of concern. But anyway, that, that gets too technical. But, but, but I do think that this is where if someone, if a listener were, were interested in this kind of discussion, then I think it's, they, they should look more into my book, for instance, or, you know, the work of, the, the work

• 35:37Speaker 03

  of many philosophers on these topics, in thinking about how sometimes we should try to develop moral approaches to this situation, and, and kind of separate it from our personal envy.

• 35:50Kim Mills?

  Well, speaking of resentment, makes me think of the concept of schadenfreude, which Dr. Lange, you've studied. And I want to ask you, first of all, to explain what schadenfreude is, for some of our listeners who might know, but how does that relate to envy?

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, so what is schadenfreude? So the, it's when people laugh about other people's failure. Let's say someone experiences a mishap, and you are laughing about what happened to them. And this would be schadenfreude. So schaden is harm, a German word for harm, and freude is joy, so enjoying others, yeah, pain, kind of. So there is evidence, or meta-analytic evidence, overwhelming evidence, I would say, that schadenfreude is actually predicted by malicious envy. So if you think that someone else's advantage is subjectively undeserved, that's a psychological idea of it. So it's not from, from an objective moral standpoint, but when I think, like, I don't want this person to be so successful, right? Then, then

• 36:49Speaker 04

  this is more likely to lead to malicious envy. And if you then subsequently see this person fail on another occasion, then laughing publicly about this person actually reduces this other person's standing in the group, right? So if everyone is laughing, if I'm laughing about this person, and no one else disagrees, then, then this person can't be so cool, right? So this is, this is one way how malicious envy can help reduce the problem. So the other person is no longer a social comparison standard of high standing, right? This person has been laughed at by me, and ideally, other people. So, so this, like, this process is most likely for what we call dominant others, so people who initially

• 37:33Speaker 04

  gained influence in a group by oppressing subordinates. So dominant others are more likely to be maliciously envied for their, for their standing in the group. And then publicly laughing about them reduces the fear everyone has towards them. So we actually argue that schadenfreude is a social function, is to reduce the standing of dominant people. So yeah, from a functional perspective, and whether that's good or bad, that's a philosopher's question to answer, really.

• 38:01Kim Mills?

  Well, let me just close with one question, which has to do with social media, and whether that is leading us to feel more envious. Does seeing other people's carefully curated lives online create some very distorted form of social comparison for us? Is it making us more envious?

• 38:23Speaker 04

  So, I mean, there is evidence that social media can foster upward social comparisons, right? And there's also evidence that being on social media can increase people's envy. So there's longitudinal evidence, if you are more on social media, then you're more likely to experience state envy, and not the other way around. So envy is not predicting your social media news. But it is important to emphasize that, that this applies primarily to a specific form of using social media. So if you are passively browsing through other success stories, so let's say, and Sarah is again, sharing news about her latest book

• 39:03Speaker 04

  or amazing envy paper on, on whatever social media, and let's say on Instagram, you know, then, and I'm browsing through my content, and I see this, and this can lead to a social comparison and subsequently envy. But if people, for instance, passively browse through news content, or like actively engage in social, in social media by like posting something on Instagram themselves, this is not making people envy, right? And also this relationship between passive use in, in highly self-relevant domains, whether this leads to more envy also depends on personality characteristics. For instance, a review found that social comparison orientation is a personality predictor of these relationships, which means

• 39:46Speaker 04

  that only for people who tend to compare a lot, passively browsing through, to other people's success stories on social media actually leads to more envy. So as usual, it is, you know, the evidence is mixed and very nuanced. So claiming that these few more state envy experiences then produce kind of a general rise in this position of envy, I think this conclusion is not warranted. So at least there is no direct evidence for this. So my, my personal impression is that social media is just one specific context in which envy can occur, but not that it kind of increases people's propensity to be more envious in general.

• 40:22Kim Mills?

  Well, I want to thank you both for joining me today. I think this has been very interesting, and I, I really loved having the, the two perspectives, philosophical and psychological. Thank you so much.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 40:33Kim Mills?

  You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org, or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at [email protected]. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Thank you for listening. The American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

• 41:40Speaker 06

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