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Psychology

Young children’s understanding of envy

Profile image of Laura Quintanilla CobiánLaura Quintanilla Cobián

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https://doi.org/10.7146/PL.V33I1.8772
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Abstract

Precursors of young children’s understanding of self-conscious emotions: envy across cultures

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Envy – an Unwanted, yet Unavoidable and Necessary Emotion
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Envy is a word signifying an emotion that arises from social comparison and signals that one is outperformed by another person, or group of people, which makes one feel painful inferiority. It originates from the Latin "invidere" which means to "gaze maliciously". Yet, this emotion does not want to be communicated. It is hard to identify or admit it, partly because of a range of other negative emotions, such as hostility, resentment and rejection that accompany envious feelings. Envy may also trigger admiration that motivates one to "do better". However, subjective, historical and philosophical accounts overwhelmingly speak of its negative consequences. Not surprisingly, envy is regarded as a social taboo. Even the traditional scientific community considers envy as a "second class" emotion. It is said that envy does not meet the criteria for basic emotions. Only recently, with the paradigmatic shift in modern evolutionary psychology, a new fra...

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Feeling grateful and envious: adolescents’ narratives of social emotions in identity and social development
Judith Gibbons

International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 2015

Feelings of gratitude and envy are familiar to people of different ages, backgrounds, and cultures. For thousands of years, gratitude and envy have been applauded and decried, most notably in the Bible (New International Version, e.g. envy is mentioned in two of the Ten Commandments) and by ancient philosophers (e.g. D'Arms & Kerr, 2008; McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001). Although gratitude and envy are ubiquitous and embedded in daily life, empirical investigation of these topics remains underdeveloped and especially scarce regarding children and adolescents. Here, we attempt to characterise the experiences of envy and gratitude for a group of adolescents from the Midwestern US through interviews and qualitative analysis. We describe their narrative accounts of feeling grateful and envious, as well as being recipients of gratitude and envy; we frame adolescents' experiences with those emotions in terms of their roles in social and identity development. Gratitude Gratitude is a social emotion, in which 'people (beneficiaries) respond with gratitude when other people (benefactors) behave in a way that promotes the beneficiaries' well-being' (McCullough et al. 2001, p. 250). Feeling grateful is closely associated with multiple indicators of well-being; adolescents who expressed more gratitude had higher levels of overall well-being, prosocial behaviour and optimism (Froh, Yurkewicz, & Kashdan, 2009). In experimental studies, early adolescents assigned to a gratitude condition in which they recorded five things they were grateful for every day for two weeks, rated their ABSTRACT Although the ubiquity of gratitude and envy would suggest they are important in the daily lives of adolescents, those social emotions have been relatively unexplored by psychologists. Interviews of 25 adolescents (ages 14 through 16) from the Midwestern US provided narrative accounts that revealed the contexts, antecedents, consequences and meanings of gratitude and envy in their daily lives. Transcripts were coded using an established procedure in the literature, and we present the findings at the thematic level. Adolescent gratitude was characterised by feeling cared for and special, while envy was driven by the desire for material possessions. Both emotions may reflect cultural individualism and contribute to social and identity development; for those adolescents gratitude provides recognition and validation of one's personhood, and envy creates negative social comparisons that can either diminish self-worth or provide the impetus for improvement.

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Envy and its Objects
Alessandra Fussi

Envy and its Objects, 2019

The paper critically discusses the thesis, originally put forth by Taylor (2006), that there is a (mostly benign) form of envy whose target is the good possessed by someone else. Section 2 analyzes the distinction between object-envy and state-envy, discusses the connection between object-envy and benign envy, and develops the ethical consequences that follow from the thesis that envy is never benign. Section 3 presents a thought experiment with five variations developed from the basic elements of object-envy: an agent, a good the agent desires but lacks, and a person who possesses the good. The variations generate emotions like longing, sadness, happiness for, admiration, covetousness, self-disappointment, but they do not generate envy. Section 4 concentrates on envious self-reproach and shows that its nature and genesis are different from the self-disappointment one may experience in other forms of self-assessment. Section 5 argues that the so-called sour-grape syndrome serves different goals when it is connected to a good one lacks and when it is connected to envious comparisons. Section 6 maintains that what looks like benign envy can be better understood as emulous admiration. In conclusion, the paper argues that object-envy is not a useful concept. The desired goods are not valued in themselves when a person feels envy. Rather, they are taken to signal the superior recognition enjoyed by someone else within the reference group that is currently deemed important by the agent.

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The Role of Subjective and Objective Social Status in the Generation of Envy
Manuel Galvan

Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

Envy is a negative emotion experienced in response to another person’s higher status. However, little is known about the composition of its most important element: status. The present research investigates the two main forms of social status (objective and subjective) in the generation of envy. In Study 1, participants recounted real-life situations when they felt envious; in Study 2 we examined whether the effect was the same in a controlled situation. We consistently found that those who were the most respected in the eyes of others were envied more than the richest ones. Furthermore, perceived deservingness of the superior other’s success differentiated between benign and malicious envy. Although previous studies focused on material comparisons when investigating envy, our results indicate that envy is rather a subjective social status related emotion. Not material, but social advantage of the superior other causes the most painful envy and future studies should put more emphasis...

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There Is No Joy like Malicious Joy: Schadenfreude in Young Children
Simone Shamay-Tsoory

PLoS ONE, 2014

Human emotions are strongly shaped by the tendency to compare the relative state of oneself to others. Although social comparison based emotions such as jealousy and schadenfreude (pleasure in the other misfortune) are important social emotions, little is known about their developmental origins. To examine if schadenfreude develops as a response to inequity aversion, we assessed the reactions of children to the termination of unequal and equal triadic situations. We demonstrate that children as early as 24 months show signs of schadenfreude following the termination of an unequal situation. Although both conditions involved the same amount of gains, the children displayed greater positive expressions following the disruption of the unequal as compared to the equal condition, indicating that inequity aversion can be observed earlier than reported before. These results support an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion and indicate that schadenfreude has evolved as a response to unfairness.

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The correlative relationship of envy with personal characteristics
Gulmira Baykunusova

European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine , 2020

Maqolada masofaviy ta'lim olayotgan talabalar uchun psixologik tavsiyalar keltirilgan. Ushbu mutaxassis tavsiyalari talabalarning bilim, ko'nikma va malakalarni mustaqil o'zlashtirishlariga yordamlashadi.

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Cognitive behavioural responses to envy: development of a new measure
Cheryl Jordan

Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 2019

Background: Envy is depicted as motivating destructive desires and actions intended to spoil or destroy that which is envied. Aim: To develop a new valid and reliable measure of malicious envy (C-BRES), which included items representing the cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses empirically associated with this emotion. Method: A total of 203 adults completed the new 22-item cognitive and behavioural responses to envy scale (C-BRES). Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to test for reliability and internal consistency of the C-BRES. Evidence towards the concurrent construct validity (convergent and discriminant) of the C-BRES was assessed through correlations with the Dispositional envy scale and other measures of psychosocial outcomes empirically linked to envy. Results: Factor analysis for categorical data identified five dimensions of envy, namely: injustice, hostility, malicious action tendencies, malicious feelings and behavioural responses. The reliability indic...

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Envy, Competition and Gender
Leyla Navaro

Routledge eBooks, 2007

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THE TWO SIDES OF ENVY: UNDERSTANDING MALICIOUS AND BENIGN ENVY IN RUSSIAN STUDENTS
Найле Аблязимова, Tatiana Volkodav

Annotation. This article is devoted to the research of envy on the basis of the research of young scholars of Kuban State University, attended by N=119 respondents aged from 17-18 years old (F=31, M=27) to 23-24 years old (F=32, M=29). We propose to extend earlier conceptualizations of envy by distinguishing the two forms that constitute emotional pathways in responding to status threats. According to this perspective, benign envy is a reaction to a loss of prestige leading to behaviors directed at regaining status. Therefore, people who are inclined to experience benign envy make more positive impressions on others, improve their performance, and, ultimately, reach better well-being. Thus, we argue that dispositional benign envy may contribute to societal flourishing. In __________________________________________________________________ ФОРУМ МОЛОДЫХ УЧЕНЫХ №6(22) forum-nauka.ru contrast, malicious envy is a reaction to dominant others leading to behaviors directing at harming their status.

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Envy: Everyday and Everywhere
Sue Cowan-Jenssen

Psychotherapy and Politics International, 2011

In psychoanalysis the concept of envy describes a specific defence within an object relational structure that denies the subjectivity, need and entitlement of the other and is the antithesis of gratitude and satisfaction. Yet how far is envy both a representation of a psychological structure which is pathological and a culturally generated phenomenon? Should we not take into account the forces that amplify envy when considering the pathology of our 'envious' clients? With reference to social and political dynamics and a clinical vignette, this paper will consider whether envy can be as much a social disease as a psychopathology that requires psychotherapeutic treatment. It will look at three main areas. What are the conditions in our society that increase envious reactions? What are the economic and social consequences of envy, both negative and positive, and what of our own envy in relation to our colleagues and clients?

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Young children's understanding of envy : Precursors of young children's understanding of self-conscious emotions: envy across cultures
Encarnacion Sarria

Psyke & Logos, 2012

Experiencing envy is an intrinsic part of social comparison of possessions, characteristics or qualities among people or groups. The persons involved in this social comparison are sometimes flattered or, on the contrary, sometimes damaged. When social comparisons lead to negative feelings and people are faced with the lack of a desired good (an item/object) or a trait, they may experience anger, helplessness or inferiority. Hence, some authors have stressed that envy could cause hostility towards the person envied (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2007; Smith & Kim, 2007; Shoeck, 1966). At times, envy is disguised as contempt; sometimes it manifests itself through open aggression, harassment, sabotage or a threat in order to compensate for a lower social position. At times the envious person may attack by diminishing the pleasure or joy of the person envied (

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The niche of envy: Conceptualization, coping strategies, and the ontogenesis of envy in cultural psychology
Laura Quintanilla

Culture & Psychology, 2013

Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it responds to the worries that gnaw at them and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanings and their greed until they believe these to be virtues.—Carlos Ruiz Zafón “The niche of envy” is a cross-disciplinary attempt to capture and understand the complex and self-conscious emotion of envy as unfolded within social relationships and cultural settings. One of our main interests concerns how children come to understand envy in ontogenesis. Accordingly, we review existing theoretical approaches to understanding envy and introduce preliminary data about children’s understanding of envy. This paper consists of three sections. In the first section, we define envy by introducing the conditions and components that form part of it. We emphasize the fact that envy is a complex and embodied emotion, which embraces a triadic relationship, social comparison, and inequality. In this section, we also introduce social...

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Children’s perception of envy and modesty: Does depreciation serve as a mask for failure or success?
Laura Quintanilla

Current Psychology, 2018

The objective of this study was to analyze children's perceptions of characters who try to disguise expressions of success and failure in situations of social comparison. In the case of upward comparison, when the character was surpassed by a peer, his/her expression was either one of disparagement or of admiration for the successful peer. In downward comparison situations, the character gained public social recognition for his/her achievement, and s/he expressed either modesty (self-depreciation) or immodesty. From these expressions of the character, participants (six and eight years old; N = 100) assessed the character's ability and niceness, and the appropriateness of his/her attitude. All the children reported that the unsuccessful envious character in the disparagement condition was unskillful and unfriendly, and his/her response was inappropriate; conversely, in the admiration condition, the unsuccessful character was considered skillful, friendly, and appropriate. Moreover, all participants believed that the successful character was skillful, regardless of his/her modest or immodest response. Only eight-year-olds considered the immodest response to be inappropriate and nasty. We discuss the results considering the consequences of following display rules and the dilemma of being honest in both social situations.

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The role of self-esteem in the experience of envy
Diane Barth

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1988

As a growing number of psychoanalysts turn away from traditional driveconflict and object-instinctual explanations of human dynamics, it becomes necessary to find alternative ways of thinking about behavior previously understood from these perspectives. Envy is one of the emotions in need of such a reexamination. Traditional explanations of envy pay little attention to the role of self-esteem in the development of the emotion and the defenses against it, despite the fact that most authors who write about it seem to recognize that narcissistic needs and issues of self-esteem frequently arise in connection with envy. Little has actually been written about envy as a whole since Klein's (1957) masterful exposition on the subject, although various authors have explored components of the emotion. Freud focused on the concept of penis envy rather than more generalized envy. Homey discussed the concepts of penis envy (1939) and vindictiveness (1948), and Rosenfeld (1971) wrote about the envyrelated wish to destroy both self and object. Eichenbaum and Orbach (1983) have explored the meaning of competitiveness for women, and Rosner (1985) has written about sibling rivalry. Chasseguet-Smirgel (1974) has proposed a theory in which envy is seen as a necessary component of healthy development, and Joffe (1969) and Moulton (1970) have written fine critical reviews of the theories of envy and penis envy, respectively. Chodorow (1978) reviewed the concept of penis envy in relation to female development. While almost all of these authors have observed that narcissistic needs and/or narcissistic injury arise in conjunction with envy, only Homey (1939) paid active attention to the significance of self-esteem in the development of envy. Envy is a complex emotion, involving such traditionally difficult-to-manage feelings as rage, destructive hostility, greed, and shame. It seldom occurs in isolation, but instead is usually an aspect of a more complex set of dynamics operating in an individual. Add to this the awareness that envy, whether

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Influence of Group Identification on Malicious and Benign Envy: A Cross-Sectional Developmental Study
E. Gaviria

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Envy is the result of a social comparison that shows us a negative image of ourselves. The present study addresses the effect of the context of group comparison and group identification on children's expression of this emotion. Through different stories, participants aged between 6 and 11 years were exposed to four contexts of upward social comparison in which they had to adopt the role of the disadvantaged character. From their emotional responses and their decisions in a resource allocation task, three response profiles were created: malicious envy, benign envy, and non-envy. Although we found important differences between verbal and behavioral responses, the results showed greater envy, both malicious and benign, when the envied was an out-group. On the other hand, when the envied belonged to the in-group and competed with a member of the out-group, malicious but not benign envy practically disappeared. With age, envious responses decreased, and non-envious responses increase...

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