Whether you have raised your eyebrows at a pal who got a promotion, given your co-worker or subordinate the side-eye after a humblebrag on LinkedIn, or simply found yourself betting against the leader in a reality TV show, then join the club; you have been in the trenches, right along with everybody else.
It is not odd that this should exist, but it is odd how uninquiring we are about this. We all experience it, and a majority of us behave on it, and yet very few feel compelled to wonder why what should pain us the most is usually the success of those people whom we consider our own.
Shall we take a closer look and see whether a little bit of evolutionary theory can perhaps make it all coherent?
How can someone ensure that another person succeeds without feeling that they are challenged?
Why must your new neighbor getting a Tesla or a new book deal that they landed seem at your expense in a world of eight billion people? It is not the abstract envy that is sparking these feelings, and it is not that their being, somehow, strikes some balance of justice or karma that is being upset by their win.
There is a shortage of people today who are getting out of bed in the morning in a huff that Rockefeller used to be rich, and there are a lot fewer people in the U.S. who are walking around fretting at Rockefeller’s Caspian-side palaces being owned by Alisher Usmanov. Wealth and success with a proper sense of distance do not disturb us. It will always be the kind that is much closer to you, familiar, and comparable.
That is, in fact, the secret of it all. The rationale for where all this is coming is referred to by the researchers as social comparison theory. Firstly propounded by one Leon Festinger in 1954, the theory states that we do not base our perception of our self-worth in a vacuum, but we do so by evaluating ourselves according to others, usually those we perceive as being close to us in age, background, or status. When someone close to us sets faster, our inner equilibrium is overthrown, similarly to a pneumatic system.
These are not the only reasons that we are pumped up because of their victory. The reason is that they are successful, as a result of which I am losing.
Recent studies pinpoint the image of how these types of social comparisons stimulate our envy. A good example is the study by Uzum et al., (2022), who investigated the phenomenon of the crab barrel syndrome and established that those with more competitive and Type A personalities were most likely to develop distress when their peers succeed. Adventure lovers can be compared to that extent that those who are the most obsessed with the ladder are also the most agitated to see someone else go up first.
And it is not just psychological mumbo jumbo that fades away as you the n in your research. A neuroimaging experiment has revealed that the process of social comparison elicits even the same brain areas as being hurt physically, specifically the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula (Takahashi et al., 2009). That is why you are not only annoyed by the new car of your friend. It even physically makes one suffer.
Same as we do not like the one who is higher than ourselves, we tend to support the lower side in a process that is called about a dog, the underdog effect: our involuntary habit of cheering on our underdog, the party with the least power, the least resources, or the longest odds.
Take a closer look and you will find it in the March Madness, David vs. Goliath, to international political affairs and corporate battle, where the less advantaged party is projected to win the possible support of the general public, even when they are the less deserving one.
The possible reason is that underdog support is identity management. We think we are not only doing this to identify ourselves with the supposed loser but to protect and preserve our self-esteem and justice. The reason to support the longshot lies in the idea that we want to preserve our belief that success should be the reward of labor, but is not natural-born. It is some kind of correction of offense where there is unfairness in the world.
There is one more viewpoint, which is far more evolutionary: in case you have not joined the former alpha, why not invest in the new one? The social status in ancestral habitat decided who had food, who had mates, and protection. Unless you brought something to the table your top dog was not interested in, you were more likely to count on success with a budding competitor than with an adoption into the core group. Supporting the underdog, that is, is a parasocial strategy whose roots go way back.
The same has the reasoning behind the fact that the “haters” are not necessarily irrational. By the way, winning is a zero-perception game that, however somebody rises, it seems you fall and, therefore, by dismembering them, you save yourself, primitive as it is.
And the matter of fact is, we do not have to see a person fail to feel better about ourselves. A study done by Fiske (2011) revealed that the failure of the overachiever arouses the signals of reward.
It proved to be the social ladder, pneumatic: the harder you kick somebody off, the higher you kick them off, even figuratively speaking, the higher you kick them off, the higher yourself. It is a question, then, whether we are all destined to be little niggly crabs in a bucket.
By no means. These instincts may be built-in, but not fate.
Envy is not to be avoided. It is a Brownian universal that is entrenched and experienced throughout. However, you can use it as a weapon to advance yourself.
Envy is no exception of a behavior; most negative forms of emotion have a positive deflection in case you learn to stop it at its early stages. In the right sense, envy does not simply mean that you are wicked; no, it is a clue to what you are yourself wanting. It is a clear and mature enough warning that somebody has got something you want to have, or at least be seen to have, and that it is time you did something about it.
Feeling envy and then trying to repress it or even being embarrassed and considering it as something bad and lower than you, does not end it. There is another way around. You can pretend you are not jealous and even learn to put the envy away quicker with age or self-realization, but there exists an improved alternative.
Take it as a call to action. A fellow employee received the promotion you had wished unnoticeably? Is it a friend that started the thing on your Notion list? Swell on their side, and up your rocket fuel. The call you are hearing is that you desire that object, or at least the status which accompanies it. As such, do not allow the feeling to decay within you, but pay attention to the cue.
