Envy is when you feel bad because a rival did well, and gloating is when you feel good because a rival did badly. Jealousy and envy are closely related, and some writers regard them as synonyms. In envy you want what you never had. In jealousy , you are threatened with the loss of something you have or thought you had.
Envy is a two-person emotion; I want what you have. Jealousy is the three-person love triangle, I want who you have. Wishing the best for your rival may be an effective way to cope with envy. Reassess the situation to determine if you truly need or deserve the envied object. If you want what you have you will prevent envy. In any case, exercise the good judgment and self control to avoid hostility. Listening to our envy While becoming consumed with envy is destructive, listening carefully to our envy can be instructive.
If you envy that fit person you see at the gym, the singing voice of your cousin, or the entrepreneurial success of your neighbor, perhaps it is because these represent goals you would like to achieve. Think carefully about what sincere desires might be triggering your envy, use that insight to carefully reexamine your goals. Revise your goals if doing so will better align with your authentic self.
Other stature-Related Emotions Envy is one of several stature-related emotions. Contempt and gloating are kinds of reverse envy. While we envy those with higher stature , we feel contempt for those with lower stature.
We gloat when we see others suffer a drop in stature due to their own mistake. A study of people aged 18 to 80 by UC San Diego researchers published in found that the young are more likely to feel envy towards other people than the middle-aged or elderly, and are much more likely to envy their peers than those outside their age group.
Roughly 80 percent of the interviewed group aged under 30 reported at least one strong feeling of envy in the past 12 months, but it declined to about 69 percent in the over crowd. Time clearly doesn't cure envy, but it seems to blunt it a bit or your willingness to admit to the emotion, at least.
The researchers also found that people are most likely to envy those of their own gender, and that what sparked envy shifted over time; young people were more envious of romantic success, while older ones were more envious of money and professional accolades.
Envy shifts with our status as we become more established and our priorities change, which makes perfect sense. Scientific American reported something sobering in March this year: we've known for a while that extensive use of Facebook seems inclined to foster depression, and new studies have established that, for young people particularly, the impetus behind that drop in mood is largely motivated by envy.
One study looked at college students and found that when exposure to Facebook — which is largely a platform like Instagram on which people "perform" their successes, travels, weddings, children and other achievements — provoked envy, it was also likely to lead to low mood.
This isn't surprising; a lot of envy can produce a "why not me" set of emotions. And a second study found that it's how we use Facebook that produces envy and negative feelings: what they called "passive" use, i. A fascinating study about feelings of racism and other kinds of social prejudice found that envy is actually intertwined with a very particular form of negative bias: viewing people as seriously good at what they do, but fundamentally untrustworthy or insincere.
The findings came from a study of how people "rank" or assess other people, and divided the sensations they recorded into two parts: warmth, or how trustworthy and kind a group were seen to be, and competence, or how capable and organized they're supposed to be.
The scientists found that one particular way of assessing a group, as exceptionally "competent" but not at all "warm," tended to feed off envy. The very wealthy, Jewish people, and Asians were all put in this category: prejudice against them was rooted in envy of their apparent excellence and how little they seemed to "deserve" it.
In evolutionary terms, it is worth noting that even though emotions are privately experienced almost all of them are meaningless except in relation to others; i. What triggers jealousy, beyond the obvious of someone who is better off? And can the functional logic of these triggers or peculiar combination of social cues be explained in evolutionary terms; i.
Through introspecting on ourselves and through informally surveying friends, students, colleagues, etc. For each item on the list, we will try to come up with a plausible evolutionary scenario. Especially important is the question of why you make a particular choice even though common sense might favor the other choice. We would emphasize that these are at this stage merely preliminary informal surveys, whose goal is to prompt further inquiry using rigorous methodology to collect formal data.
In the study of visual perception, analogously visual illusions have a long and venerable tradition in making important points long before detailed measurements were made to confirm those points. Is a beggar jealous of a slightly more successful beggar or of Bill Gates? The answer is almost always the former 10 out of 11 people we surveyed chose A. This does not make sense. One usually expects the strength of an emotion to be directly proportional to the resource being sought after; e.
Common sense might dictate that the better off someone is than you are, the more envious you should be. You ought — logically — to be more jealous of Bill Gates because he has more resources. The trouble is that in many scenarios commonly considered in EP, these two common sense vs.
What is the evolutionary logic that drives envy; e. The answer is that the whole purpose of envy is to motivate you into action either by independently trying harder envy or by coveting and stealing what the other has jealousy. This is why jealousy has an aggressive component, but envy is more positive sometimes even being tinged with admiration.
Turning to Bill Gates vs. If I am the poor beggar my brain quickly computes that in all likelihood the very rich Gates is either deservedly much richer i. The richer beggar, on the other hand, may be only slightly smarter, luckier, or more hardworking than me, so there is some chance, at least, that envy might motivate me to exceed his access to resources or jealousy might make me steal it away from him with impunity.
Again, note that this makes no obvious sense; if you want to be as rich as your neighbor, what does it matter whether he was undeservedly rewarded or legitimately rewarded. This can be teased apart further. For example, does it matter whether the other guy got rewarded by the boss, A because he is naturally genetically more intellectually gifted than you, B more hard working, or C arbitrarily for no reason?
You might be angry at the boss for being unfair, but not jealous of the recipient. This would be analogous to the beggar vs. The third scenario C would not provoke envy; it would provoke anger toward the person who unfairly rewards your neighbor.
In short, we can show that even though a surface-level analysis of a human psychological propensity makes it seem maladaptive, there is often an evolutionary hidden agenda that drives that propensity, and makes it comprehensible. We are not making a definitive argument here but hopefully providing food for thought.
Who are you more envious of? Most men are more envious of the latter 9 out of 9 males we surveyed chose B. In other words, you are more jealous of what the other person has access to in relation to what you desire , than of the final overall state of joy and happiness.
This is true even though common sense might dictate the opposite. The final state of happiness is too abstract to have evolved as a trigger of envy or jealousy. For similar reasons, if you are starving it makes more sense that you would be more jealous at least temporarily of someone enjoying a fine meal than someone having sex with a beautiful woman or man.
If you are only slightly hungry, however, you might pick sex. This is because there is an unconscious metric in your brain that computes the probability of finding food in the near future vs. If you are starving to death and have one last fling, you have only that single mating opportunity whereas if you eat and live you will have plenty of mating opportunities in the future.
You are jealous. Again evolution prevails over common sense in a very specific manner. The situation is not fundamentally different from you eating cotton candy.
But in the case of more complex emotions like jealousy, the idea has not been adequately explored in the manner attempted in this article. The general idea is that even complex and subtle nuances of a certain emotion can be analyzed in this manner. A You see your neighbor who is similar to you in most respects having moderately enjoyable sex with a woman whom you moderately covet; B you see two ugly tramps having intensely pleasurable sex with each other.
Who would elicit more envy? This is another example of being envious, not of the final level of intense pleasure as one might naively expect but of someone having access to — and only slightly enjoying — something for which you have a modest desire and will only modestly enjoy but access is denied.
All this seems plausible but — once again — we emphasize the need for caution in interpreting such data. Jealousy also stems from feelings of inadequacy, though they are usually more conscious than with envy.
However, whereas envy is the desire to possess what someone else has, jealousy is the fear of losing what we have. We feel vulnerable to losing the attention or feelings of someone close to us. It is defined as mental uneasiness due to suspicion or fear of rivalry or unfaithfulness and may include envy when our rival has aspects that we desire.
By discouraging infidelity, jealousy historically has served to maintain the species, certainty of paternity, and the integrity of the family.
But it can be a destructive force in relationships — even lethal. Jealousy is the leading cause of spousal homicides. Her insecurity also made her jealous. Her beliefs reflect toxic or internalized shame common among codependents. See What is Emotional Abandonment. Studies show that insecure individuals are more prone to jealousy. Jill had healthy self-esteem.
Comparisons are a red flag for underlying shame. The greater is the intensity or chronicity of these feelings, the greater shame. Thus, codependents take rejection hard, because of low self-esteem, toxic shame, and history of emotional abandonment.
See my post about breakups. Typically, shame leads to attacking oneself or another. It gives us a sense of control over the anticipated inevitable abandonment that would hurt even more.
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