Mitigating malicious envy: Why successful individuals should reveal their failures.

Abstract

People often feel malicious envy, a destructive interpersonal emotion, when they compare themselves to successful peers. Across 3 online experiments and a field experiment of entrepreneurs, we identify an interpersonal strategy that can mitigate feelings of malicious envy in observers: revealing one’s failures. Despite a general reluctance to reveal one’s failures—as they are happening and after they have occurred—across four experiments, we find that revealing both successes and failures encountered on the path to success (compared to revealing only successes) decreases observers’ malicious envy. This effect holds regardless of the discloser’s status and cannot be explained by a decrease in perceived status of the individual. Then, in a field experiment at an entrepreneurial pitch competition, where pride displays are common and stakes are high, we find suggestive evidence that learning about the failures of a successful entrepreneur decreases observers’ malicious envy while increasing their benign envy and decreasing their perceptions of the entrepreneur’s hubristic pride (i.e., arrogance) while increasing their perceptions of the entrepreneur’s authentic pride (i.e., confidence). These findings align with previous work on the social-functional relation of envy and pride. Taken together, our results highlight how revealing failures encountered on the way to success can be a counterintuitive yet effective interpersonal emotion regulation strategy.

Co-worker reactions to i-deals through the lens of social comparison: The role of fairness and emotions

“…P3). All of the above explains why, through fairness perceptions, weak exchange relationships result in more contrastive emotions (schadenfreude or malicious envy), whereas strong exchange relationships lead to more assimilative emotions (sympathy and benign envy), as suggested in previous research (Brooks et al, 2019;Exline and Lobel, 2001). P10b: In a downward i-deal comparison, co-workers develop more (less) favorable perceptions of fairness in a weak (strong) exchange relationship with the i-dealer, leading them to feel more schadenfreude (sympathy).…”

“…P3). All of the above explains why, through fairness perceptions, weak exchange relationships result in more contrastive emotions (schadenfreude or malicious envy), whereas strong exchange relationships lead to more assimilative emotions (sympathy and benign envy), as suggested in previous research (Brooks et al, 2019; Exline and Lobel, 2001).…”

Competitors' envy, gamers' pride: An exploration of gamers' divergent behavior

“…Studies conducted recently have explored how envy influences an individual's behavior in the areas of psychology (Brooks et al, 2019; Lange et al, 2018), organizational behavior (Yu et al, 2018), social network marketing (Liu et al, 2019; Taylor, 2020; Wallace et al, 2017), and tourism (Hajli et al, 2018). The social element of online gaming has created a highly competitive gaming environment.…”

How Envy and Being Envied Shape Social Hierarchies

“…Hence, expressing positivity towards disliked malicious enviers can reinforce the dominance hierarchy. Moreover, appeasing others by sharing one's failures next to one's successes ENVY AND BEING ENVIED 16 mitigates their malicious envy and fosters their benign envy (Brooks et al 2019). Hence, approach following being maliciously envied may protect the dominance hierarchy or even lead to perceptions of prestige when lower-ranked persons start experiencing benign envy.…”