Envy: A Deeper Shade of Green

By Dr. Clifton Wilcox

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479704835

Dr. Clifton Wilcox

Dr. Clifton Wilcox is a professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior. He is the author of eight books and has served as a consultant for the federal government.

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Copyright © 2012 by Dr. Clifton Wilcox.

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Contents

AUTHORS NOTE

CHAPTER ONE

What is emotion?

Functional Models of Emotion

Contributions of the Motivation-satisfaction Model of Emotions

Motivation and Emotions

Motivating Emotions

Emotion Prioritization

Goals

Cognition

Behavior

Auxiliary Processes

Outcome Information

Satisfying Emotions

An Illustration

CHAPTER TWO

Understanding Emotions

Schadenfreude

The Schadenfreude Problem

Empirical Problems

Envy

The Elicitation of Envy Motivation

The Motivations of Envy Motivation

The Elicitation of Envy Satisfaction

Punishing Wrongdoers

Morality as an Emotional Issue

Moral Punishment and Punitive Motivation

Punitive Motivation

Motivations of Punitive Motivation.

Punitive Satisfaction

Summary

CHAPTER THREE

The Individual and Emotion

Emotion as a Mediator

Team Goals

Social Comparison

Interpersonal Harming

Social Exchange Process in Harming

The Role of Emotion

Social Comparison Theory

Team Context

Conclusion

CHAPTER FOUR

Group Dynamics and Envy

Intergroup Emotions

Social Comparison and Envy

Adversity, Harm, and Joy

Are stereotypes sufficient?

Harm

CHAPTER FIVE

Comparative Environment and Envy

The Prevalence of Envy

The Student Environment

The Construct of Envy

Envy and Jealousy

The Experience of Envy

Malicious and Non-malicious Envy

Precursors of Envy

Social Comparison

Similarity with Others

Personality Traits

Outcomes of Envy

Anxiety and Depression

Inferiority

Backbiting

Hostility and Withdrawal

Motivation for the Improvement

CHAPTER SIX

Perspectives on Envy

Envy Avoidance

The Mask of Envy

Greed

Jealousy

Depression

Resentment

Admiration

Comparison

Dangers of Envy

Benefits of Envy

CHAPTER SEVEN

Envy and Relationships

Friendship between Women

Envy

Why Do We Envy?

Envy and the Sense of Self

Envy and Narcissism

How Envy Materializes in Friends

Social and Cultural Contributions to Envy

How Women’s Desires are Defined by Society

Women’s Belief about Envy

Women’s Behavioral Responses to Envy

General Experiences with Envy

Envy in Female Friendships

Summary

FINAL WORD

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.

-Harold Coffin

AUTHORS NOTE

Envy has often been associated with the darker side of human nature. Being one of the seven cardinal sins, envy has received a lot of attention in Biblical stories as the sole cause of revengeful motivations. A number of envious accounts are portrayed in the Bible, as in Genesis, chapters 37 thru 50 that tells the account of Joseph and his brothers; and Samuel, chapters 17 thru 31 by telling the story of King Saul and David. In all such stories, one of the characters experiences strong envy for another character. As a result, the envier goes to the extreme to hurt the envied. Thus, envy is thought to translate into severe hostility and ill-will toward the envied. Furthermore, it might be for the vicious consequences of envy that the 10th commandment as told in Exodus 20:17 that strongly condemns it by saying, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s.

Is there evidence demonstrating that envy engenders hostility? There is evidence that feelings of hostility in the definition of envy, suggesting that hostility is a key constituent of envy. A strong link between envy and hostility has been found that envy is associated with the feeling that the envied person be cut down in size. Similarly, there is a strong link that hostility was closely associated with envy when participants rated the emotions that a protagonist would experience in an envy-provoking situation. Further evidence of the link between envy and ill-will comes from an investigation of how stereotypes and emotions shape behavioral tendencies toward social groups. Envied groups are thought to elicit active harm. Hence, envy clearly translates into hostility, which can have potentially negative consequences for the target of envy.

Why is it that people envy, and why do they experience ill-will toward the envied? Clearly, it is not the comfort of experiencing envy that draws people toward it. Unlike other sins of greed, lust, and pride, envy does not yield any sort of pleasure. In fact, envy entails a painful awareness of differences between the envier and the envied. Furthermore, envy is regarded with extreme disapproval. For example, Anderson in 1968 found that out of 555 personality-trait words envious was found to rank 425th in terms of likeability.

Envy is experienced because of a negative social comparison when the envier notices that a similar other, the envied, has something (e.g., material or personal) important that the envier wants but does not have. Along similar lines, some have defined envy as an unpleasant, often painful emotion characterized by feelings of inferiority, hostility, and resentment, caused by an awareness of a desired attribute enjoyed by another person or group of persons. As an alternative, others have defined envy more narrowly as feelings of anger that occur with a desire for a felt desert possessed by another party. Thus, envy is unanimously agreed upon as an emotional consequence of an unfavorable upward social comparison where an individual becomes aware of the superiority of another. Although it makes sense that negative social comparison can elicit longing or desire and feelings of inferiority associated with envy, it is not clear why an envier should experience ill-will which could even lead to direct harming of the envied. The purpose of this book is to provide novel insights into the links between envy, hostility, and ill will.

CHAPTER ONE

What is emotion?

Envy is a complicated and challenging emotion considered ubiquitous to the human experience. Over the years, there have been a number of theoretical and empirical approaches that have been applied to human emotions. These theoretical and empirical approaches have led researchers to present evidence that involves a cross-cultural agreement that facial displays are associated with six basic emotions.¹ Likewise, some researchers have proposed functional models in which emotions ultimately produce adaptive behavior; while others have proposed models of what cognitive appraisals elicit emotions. ² Whereas, others have identified specific neurological correlates of emotions. ³ In contrast to the systematic information processing assumed in the above approaches, a researcher named Russell proposed a circumplex model in which emotions primarily consist of arousal and hedonic valence. ⁴ These distinct theories have led to the modeling of emotions through motivation and satisfaction. The motivation-satisfaction model of emotions is a high level functional theory of emotions which assimilates several existing emotion models that makes a distinctive assertion that there are two fundamentally different kinds of emotions: motivating emotions and satisfying emotions. ⁵

Essentially what researchers using the model assert is that emotions are of two types. In essence, the perception of an adaptive problem will elicit a motivating emotion, and the perception that the problem is solved will elicit a satisfying emotion. Researchers use the motivation-satisfaction model to suggest that—while both kinds of emotions update stored information about the world; it should be noted that there exists a critical difference between the two types of emotions. That is motivating emotions drive problem-solving cognitions and behaviors, whereas satisfying emotions do not.

Functional Models of Emotion

There are a number of previous functional models that provide a rich theoretical backdrop from which to consider emotions. Researchers Keltner and Gross advocated that functional models share four characteristics.⁶ First, functional models consider the evolutionary origins of emotions to address how emotions work and why animals have emotions. Second, functional models suggest that emotions are evolved solutions to adaptive problems, relating environmental input to adaptive output. ⁷ Third, functional models argue that emotions are systems of coordinated components, analogous to how the heart, vasculature, and baroreceptors are coordinated parts of the respiratory system. Finally, functional models of emotion focus on the beneficial consequences of emotion in terms of enhanced survival and reproduction of self, kin, and group; as well as improvements in the social and physical environment. ⁸ In addition, Keltner and Gross emphasize that functional theories of emotions are at different levels of analysis, or granularity. Some emotion models are of fine granularity, focusing on very specific processes; other models are of broad granularity; for example, Tooby and Cosmides presented emotions as grand-orchestrators-of-the-brain’s activities. ⁹

Researchers use the motivation-satisfaction model as a wide-ranging functional theory of emotion. The model assumes that emotions are high-order neurological processes that coordinate the activities of the mind, brain, and body—such as physiological arousal, memory consolidation and recall, information search, mental simulation of possible realities, and behavior—in order to solve adaptive problems now and more efficiently when re-experienced in the future. ¹⁰ Unlike previous functional theories of emotion, the motivation-satisfaction model (a) provides a simple outline of the most common causal chain constituting the life of emotions—from birth, through middle age, to death; (b) suggests the existence of two previously unrecognized types of emotions, motivating emotions and satisfying emotions; (c) is explicitly built of previous theories of emotion and can accommodate additional theories and findings; and (d) suggests a cognition-comparison method for disambiguating even closely related emotions. ¹¹

Contributions of the Motivation-satisfaction Model of Emotions

Like Frankenstein’s monster, the motivation-satisfaction model is a composition of other theories, which is an explicit integration of existing psychological theories and especially (but not exclusively) theories of emotion. For example, the cognitive-appraisal model suggests what information might activate specific emotions and Berridge’s discovery of the wanting and liking systems suggests that there might be more than one kind of emotion. ¹² The motivation-satisfaction model is also like an amoeba—a broad-overview of emotions ready to envelop new or existing lower level theories, to conform to new facts, and to send out feelers into new and unexplored terrain. Despite its potential appearance as a non-pin-downable shape shifter, the motivation-satisfaction model makes a number of novel and testable predictions, and thus has potential to be scientifically valuable as a progressive theory. ¹³

The motivation-satisfaction model can also be used as a context within which to test existing theories. For example, the predictions of the cognitive-appraisal model of emotion can be placed in the appropriate location (i.e., problem perception and, perhaps, solution perception) in the motivation-satisfaction model. ¹⁴ Researchers can then test to see if the information suggested activating an emotion which would result in appropriate problem-solving cognitions and behavior. A good example of this would be applying it to anger. Anger could be activated by disapproving of someone else’s blameworthy action and being displeased about the related undesirable event, as suggested by this cognitive-appraisal model of emotions. If so, then creating a social situation with these parameters should result in thoughts about aggression, weapons, threat, harm, and revenge just to name a few.

The motivation-satisfaction model suggests the cognitive-comparison for disambiguating even closely related emotions. Specifically, emotions can be distinguished based on the identification and analysis of (a) what cognitions reflect the identification of adaptive problems and elicit motivating emotions, (b) what cognitions attempt to solve adaptive problems, (c) what cognitions reflect the identification of adaptive solutions and elicit satisfying emotions. ¹⁶ Within a given context, these variables are predicted to co-vary for each pair of motivating emotion and satisfying emotion. Researchers use the model to suggest that the cognitions of these three components of emotion can be derived based on functional consideration of emotions, and can be based on the following three questions. What information would indicate an adaptive problem? What affordances are relevant to solving the adaptive problem, either as the final solution or as part of a behavioral strategy to achieve the solution? And finally, what information indicates the adaptive problem is solved?

Researchers applying the motivation-satisfaction model have theorized that there are two distinct kinds of emotion: motivating emotions, which motivate cognition along with behavior; and satisfying emotions, which extinguish motivating emotions and updates the stored information for future problem solving. Based on the findings of Berridge, motivating emotions are predicted to share a common neural substrate, the mesoaccumbens dopamine system, as well as a unique area of activation that are specific to information processing underlying the perception of the specific adaptive problem, its solution, and means to achieve the solution. ¹⁷ Satisfying emotions, while more speculative, decrease internal activity and encourage the continuation of the current behavior.

So far in this chapter, researchers studying and testing emotions have found that satisfying emotions exist and that they are distinct from motivating emotions; and that this distinction has implications in the field of psychology. Likewise, there are three superficially related potential satisfying emotions: envy satisfaction, punitive satisfaction, and schadenfreude. These emotions are superficially related because (a) they are pleasant, and (b) they result from cognitive appraisals of another person’s misfortune. ¹⁸ The distinction between envy satisfaction and punitive satisfaction is important because psychologists studying schadenfreude, which is the emotion experienced through the enjoyment of another’s misfortune, utilized experimental manipulations that elicit either envy or punitive motivation towards the person—before that person experiences a misfortune and schadenfreude is measured. ¹⁹ If this is so, this will alter the psychological method, where the mechanisms underlying envy (i.e., envy motivation and envy satisfaction) will differ from the mechanisms underlying moral punishment (i.e., punitive motivation and punitive satisfaction), hereby transforming previous work that equated envy satisfaction, punitive satisfaction, and schadenfreude.

Motivation and Emotions

Evolutionary theorists suggest that, over evolutionary history, repeatedly occurring adaptive problems are selective forces that may produce adaptations, including emotions, which are designed to solve those problems. ²⁰ In humans, in order for an emotion to be activated, the human must perceive information indicative of an adaptive problem. Human problem information exists in two conditions. It is a circumstance of the environment or the human has correlated the information over the evolutionary history with a recurring adaptive problem. Emotions with unlearned elicitors are unconditioned responses to unconditioned stimuli. Alternatively, humans have learning mechanisms—such as classical conditioning, observational learning, and language—that permit information correlated with adaptive problems to be dynamically identified within the human’s lifetime. ²¹ Problem information, that is, information indicative of adaptive problems—comes from either the human’s external or internal environment.

The human’s internal environment includes metabolic needs and mental simulations of possible realities. ²² Many metabolic needs and physiological states are monitored in ancient brain structures; blood glucose levels, for example, are monitored in the hypothalamus. ²³ Perception from mental simulation have resulted from exploratory imaginations or insights. External problem information includes ambient environmental stimuli and communication from another animal. The perception of the ambient stimuli results from information pickup of affordances from the environment. ²⁴ Communications are signals from another animal that indicate adaptive problems through multiple mechanisms; for example, language produces perceptual representations of the information whereas local enhancement makes a stimulus perceptually salient that might otherwise be overlooked.²⁵

Researchers have assumed that adaptive problems are identified via cognitive-appraisal mechanisms. Cognitive-appraisal theories suggest that specific information patterns activate specific emotions. ²⁶ Cognitive-appraisal mechanisms, which are primarily unconscious, produce as their output conscious perceptions of problems. The researchers Cosmides and Tooby described the appraisal mechanisms as demons that wait silently and patiently until appropriate information activates them.²⁷ Each demon is activated by a limited spectrum of information. Once activated, a demon sends signals to appropriate areas of the brain for further processing. As each emotion is assumed to have its own demon, the brain has in reserve an army of demons. Once an adaptive problem has been perceived, it can be addressed. ²⁸

Motivating Emotions

The perception of an adaptive problem activates a motivating emotion.²⁹ Motivating emotions are aroused, valenced states of problem-solving orientation of the brain and body. Motivating emotions—which map onto traditional conceptions of emotions—include a cascade of problem-solving mechanisms, including information processing, physiological changes, and behaviors. ³⁰ The subsequent sections on goals, cognition, behavior, and auxiliary processes elaborate on these mechanisms, which constitute the middle age in the lifespan of emotions. The elicitation of motivating emotions is the birth of emotions.

The existence of motivating emotions as a distinct type of emotion is inferred from Berridge’s work showing that: Core processes of ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ are mediated by different neural systems in the brain. ³¹ Berridge has demonstrated these dissociable brain systems for hunger, pain, and fear. Motivating emotions refer to what Berridge labeled wanting systems, which he characterized as having incentive salience, a feeling of desire, and being primarily mediated by a single neurological substrate: the mesoaccumbens dopamine system. ³² The wanting system should be relabeled as motivating emotions in order to intuitively communicate that the term refers to emotions with both positive and negative hedonic valence, whereas the wanting system referred only to pleasant emotions in Berridge’s terminology. ³³

Emotion Prioritization

When studying emotions, researchers presume that numerous motivating emotions can be concurrently activated. This is especially true of the army of demons that comprise the cognitive-appraisal mechanisms. Multiple demons can concurrently indicate their respective adaptive problem is occurring. However, as the brain may most efficiently solve one problem at a time, concurrently activated emotions are presumably prioritized such that one emotion dominates the brain and body’s resources at one time; while the other emotions are being repressed. ³⁴

Additive summation of the absolute degree of hedonic tone (pleasure or displeasure) associated with each activated motivating emotion may determine which motivating emotion achieves prioritization. In this view, motivating emotions are rank ordered by the absolute amount of their associated hedonic tone and the emotion with the greatest absolute amount of hedonic tone receives top priority.³⁵ Quoting Cabanac, . . . the maximization of pleasure, and the minimization of displeasure, not only leads to useful behavior, but is also the answer to motivational conflicts. ³⁶ Cabanac makes this conclusion based on his findings that when two motives are in conflict, the brain uses prior measures of two motives and their associated pleasure and displeasure in order to predict the motivation with the largest absolute value of hedonic valence. The motive that has the highest associated pleasure or displeasure will control the motivation. ³⁷ Specific moderations between emotions may complicate the picture; for example, a researcher Izard suggests that anger inhibits fear. ³⁸

Goals

Each motivating emotion is conceptualized as having a goal, which is equivalent to the adaptive problem’s solution. ³⁹ The goal phase makes explicit the primary end-point towards which the motivating emotion directs physiological activity, information processing, and behavior. The goal, however, need not be consciously labeled by an emotional person, and researchers presume that it never is by other animal species. ⁴⁰ Goals tend to be categories of events, such as eating nutritious substances; as a result multiple non-arbitrary outcomes can satisfy any one motivating emotion. Furthermore, multiple behavioral sequences may achieve the goal and overcoming obstacles may include trying alternative behaviors in order to reach the goal. In a general sense, goals have the characteristic of equifinality: the invariance of the end and the variability of the means.⁴¹

Cognition

Researchers consider cognition in the broad sense of mental information processing. The prioritized motivating emotion results in information processing focusing on cognitive elaborations on what the problem is and how the problem might be solved, as well as updating memory as to how the problem might be identified and avoided in the future. ⁴² Identifying potential goal-achieving behaviors includes recalling the where’s, what’s, and how’s—that is, affordances; insight into the creation of affordances that can be constructed by creatively combining existing affordances (that are either recalled from memory or in the current environment, e.g., stacking boxes to reach bananas); and simulation and evaluation of possible goal-achievement behavioral sequences.⁴³ Cognitive biases increase the chance that relevant environmental affordances are perceived, as theoretically described by error management theory, the smoke-detector principle, and signal detection theory.⁴⁴

Consideration of information processing activated by motivating emotions is presented in light of the theory of automatic and controlled processes. The frequency and consistency with which a problem has been solved in a human’s life history is probably a major factor for determining if controlled or automated processes are utilized in solving any particular adaptive problem. Controlled processes may be used to solve problems which have not been resolved with