Harnessing your green eyed monster
It’s generally accepted that envy does us no good. It fails to bring us happiness or joy, just endless social comparisons with others. Yes, envy is indeed a big, bad, green eyed gremlin. Research in positive psychology warns us that both upward and downward social comparisons are not the components of a happy life. The phenomenon that is Jeremy Kyle with it’s daily dose of car crash TV will only serve to bring us down after the initial relief that at least things aren’t THAT bad.
New research from Van De Van et al (2011) suggests that envy takes on different functions for different folk. For some, as we know, envy is painful. Van De Ven suggests that to avoid that pain we translate envy into admiration and that admiration then becomes an admittance of defeat. Once that happens, we’re no longer motivated by our admiration of others, just paralysed by the fear that we’ll never be as good as they are so why bother trying?
This leaves us with something of a dilemma. If admiration for someone who has been a success demotivates us then when we’re looking for a trail blazer to inspire us, what should we do?
Van De Ven suggests there are two types of envy, benign and malicious. When we feel malicious envy it’s usually the result of believing that success is not deserved or earned (feel free to fill in your own blanks here). Benign envy occurs when we believe the success to be deserved (again, fill in the blanks as appropriate). Van De Ven’s research indicates that it is benign envy that becomes a motivating force, whilst malicious envy will usually destroy our motivation to achieve completely.
Van de Ven et al. (2011) tested the two types and found benign envy to be a powerful motivating force. Benign envy encouraged people to perform better on measures of intelligence and creativity, when compared with both admiration and malicious envy.
So if you’re going to be just a little bit green eyed about something or somebody make sure that you choose someone deserving to aim it at.
