Does Your Envy Push You Up or Pull Others Down?
The emotion nobody admits to, and the two directions it can take
Envy is the one emotion almost nobody owns up to, and research from the Netherlands and Germany suggests it comes in two forms that lead in opposite directions. One makes you study the person ahead of you and raise your own game. The other makes you want them brought down a peg. Most people carry some of both, and knowing which one usually wins in you is far more useful than pretending you feel neither.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think of the people around you - colleagues, friends, siblings - and answer about how you usually react when one of them gets ahead, not how you would like to react.
What it measures
The two forms of dispositional envy in the Benign and Malicious Envy Scale - benign envy, which pulls you upward, and malicious envy, which wants the other person pulled down - plus the pain of envy itself, which later work by the same authors treats as the shared core of both. Envy is not jealousy: jealousy is the fear of losing someone to a rival, envy is wanting what someone else has. It also differs from social comparison, which is about how often you compare; this test is about what happens after you do.
Based on: Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (Lange & Crusius, 2015)
Possible results
Benign envy
Whether someone else's advantage makes you work to close the gap.
Malicious envy
Whether someone else's advantage makes you want it taken away from them.
Envy pain
How much other people's advantages sting, and for how long.
Common questions
Is envy the same as jealousy?
No. Envy involves two people: you want something another person has, such as a job, a talent or a lifestyle. Jealousy involves three: you fear losing a relationship to a rival. Everyday speech mixes the words up, which is exactly why researchers had to separate them carefully before measuring either.
Is benign envy just admiration?
No. Admiration feels pleasant and does not involve wanting the thing for yourself. Benign envy is uncomfortable - it contains frustration at being behind - and that discomfort is what pushes people to act. You can admire and envy the same person, but only envy carries the sting.
Can malicious envy be turned into the benign kind?
Often, yes. Studies point to two levers: whether the other person's advantage seems deserved, and whether you believe you can improve your own position. When both are true, envy tends to turn benign. In practice, finding out how someone earned what they have, and picking one concrete step toward it, shifts the balance more than trying not to feel envy at all.
Sources
- Lange, J., & Crusius, J. (2015). Dispositional envy revisited: Unraveling the motivational dynamics of benign and malicious envy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. doi:10.1177/0146167214564959
- van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. (2009). Leveling up and down: The experiences of benign and malicious envy. Emotion. doi:10.1037/a0015669
- Lange, J., Weidman, A. C., & Crusius, J. (2018). The painful duality of envy: Evidence for an integrative theory and a meta-analysis on the relation of envy and schadenfreude. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/pspi0000118
An honest note The statements are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the Benign and Malicious Envy Scale, so your scores cannot be compared with its published norms. Only the first two bars correspond to that scale; the third, envy pain, is a related construct from the same research group, not a validated factor of it. Most of the evidence comes from Dutch, German and American samples, and people report envy more or less honestly depending on how acceptable the feeling is where they live.