Envy and admiration: Emotion and motivation following upward social comparison [Dataset]

Two key emotions people can experience when someone else is better than them are envy and admiration. There are conflicting findings in the scientific literature on which behaviour is elicited by these emotions. In one study (with two samples, total N = 345), we test which motivations are triggered by envy and admiration. The main finding is that (benign) envy and admiration both lead to a motivation to improve oneself. This confirms earlier findings that admiration leads to a motivation to affiliate with the admired other and a motivation to improve one's own position. Furthermore, it supports the idea that envy can lead to both a motivation to improve oneself and a motivation to pull down the envied other, finding support for a subtypes theory of envy.

当他人优于自身时，人们所能体验到的两种核心情绪为嫉妒（envy）与钦佩（admiration）。现有科学文献中，针对这两种情绪会引发何种行为这一问题，存在相互矛盾的研究结论。本研究借助两项样本（总样本量N=345），探究这两种情绪所触发的动机类型。核心研究结果表明：（良性）嫉妒与钦佩均会引发个体的自我提升动机。这一发现验证了此前的研究结论——钦佩会促使个体产生与钦佩对象建立联结的动机，以及提升自身地位的动机。此外，本研究还支持"嫉妒可划分为不同亚型"的理论：嫉妒既可能催生自我提升动机，也可能引发打压被嫉妒对象的动机，为该嫉妒亚型理论提供了实证支撑。