Who Doesn't Want to be Envied? Personality Correlates of Emotional Responses to Outperformance Scenarios

Abstract

Individuals who outshine others may experience distress if their performance poses an interpersonal threat. A scenario-based measure, the Test of Responses to Outperforming Others (TROO), was developed to assess positive and negative responses to outperformance among undergraduates. Three studies provided preliminary validation. Studies 2 and 3 examined personality correlates. Narcissism emerged as a robust predictor of positive emotion on the TROO and anger in response to scenarios involving hostile provocation. Sociotropy consistently predicted greater distress on the TROO. Of importance, sociotropy's role could not be reduced to factors such as self-esteem, depressive symptoms, the Big Five, gender, or social desirability.

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

“…The two emotions emanating from (upward/downward) comparisons can also interact. Schadenfreude and sympathy are not necessarily opposites but can co-exist when employees have ambivalent feelings toward their own superiority (Exline and Zell, 2012). Similarly, positive correlations exist between malicious and benign envy (Lange et al, 2018a; Van de Ven, 2017).…”

“What’ve I done to deserve this?” The role of deservingness in reactions to being an upward comparison target

“…Cultural norms of modesty and social harmony may lead those in collectivist cultures to feel especially uncomfortable when their success visibly upsets another person, whereas cultural norms of independence and uniqueness may temper such reactions among outperformers in individualistic cultures. Consistent with these predictions, autonomy positively correlates with positive emotional reactions to outperforming others (Exline & Zell, 2012). Thus, having a sense of self that is fairly independent of others may predict relatively weak reactions to STTUC, whereas having a sense of self that is intertwined with others may predict relatively strong reactions to STTUC.…”

“…Recent results also suggest that socially anxious individuals may demonstrate particularly strong reactions to STTUC (Koch & Metcalfe, 2011). Results involving a recently developed individual difference measure of STTUC revealed that narcissism and competitiveness positively predicted positive emotional reactions to being an outperformer, whereas sociotropy, neuroticism, and agreeableness positively predicted distress (Exline & Zell, 2012). Thus, agentic traits such as narcissism tend to predict positive reactions to outperforming others, whereas more communal traits tend to predict distress from outperforming others.…”

“…Specifically, we hypothesized that outperformers would report higher levels of distress in the success-undeserved condition than in the success-deserved condition. The original STTUC framework makes no explicit predictions about effects on positive affect (Exline & Lobel, 1999); however, to expand on research that found individual differences in reactions to outperforming others (Exline & Zell, 2012), we report exploratory tests of whether deservingness condition—a situational factor—influences positive affect.…”

People-Pleasing Through Eating: Sociotropy Predicts Greater Eating in Response to Perceived Social Pressure

“…For example, past research has demonstrated that sociotropy is a robust predictor of STTUC distress when controlling for other factors such as the Big Five, depressive symptoms, and selfesteem (Exline & Zell, 2011); however, it is not yet known whether the predictive role of sociotropy would be equally robust in eating situations. Other situational factors might also be important to consider as covariates or mediators, such as the extent to which participants felt tempted to eat, their motivation to lose or gain weight, or the intensity of social pressure perceived.…”