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Envy is the painful emotion caused by the good fortune of others. This research empirically supports the distinction between two qualitatively different types of envy, namely benign and malicious envy. It reveals that the experience of benign envy leads to a moving-up motivation aimed at improving one’s own position, whereas the experience of malicious envy leads to a pulling-down motivation aimed at damaging the position of the superior other. Study 1 used guided recall of the two envy types in a culture (the Netherlands) that has separate words for benign and malicious envy. Analyses of the experiential content of these emotions found the predicted differences. Study 2 and 3 used one sample from the United States and one from Spain, respectively, where a single word exists for both envy types. A latent class analysis based on the experiential content of envy confirmed the existence of separate experiences of benign and malicious envy in both these cultures as well. The authors discuss the implications of distinguishing the two envy types for theories of cooperation, group performance, and Schadenfreude.

“Envy is the great leveler: if it cannot level things up, it will level them down.

”Dorothy Sayers (1949, p. 771)

People around us often do better than we do; your brother may be better in tennis, your neighbor drives a newer model of your car, and a colleague receives the prestigious prize that you were after yourself. Such upward comparisons often lead to the emotional experience of envy. Aristotle (350BC/1954) already defined envy as the pain caused by the good fortune of others. A more recent definition is that “envy arises when a person lacks another’s superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it” (Parrott & Smith, 1993, p. 908). Envy is generally frowned upon (Schoeck, 1969), and is for example one of...