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Do We Always Hope To Become “Better” When We Experience Envy? Effects Of Incidental Envy And Social Context On Self-Improvement Behavior, Y. Jin Youn, Kiwan Park

Asia Marketing Journal

Incidental envy is known to motivate self-improvement behavior. This phenomenon occurs in part because feelings of inferiority guide subsequent behavior in a way to self-improve, after experiencing envy. However, no research has yet examined whether this tendency may be affected by social context: private versus public. Although extant literature suggests that envy generally leads to self-improvement, we demonstrate that this effect may be mitigated under public social contexts. Across two studies, we find that although incidental envy generally increases self-improvement behavior (e.g., effort exertion and charitable giving) in private social contexts, this tendency is attenuated under public social contexts. We …