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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 10, 2025

How to Create and Use Binocular Rivalry

How to Create and Use Binocular Rivalry

Published on: November 10, 2010

Envy and help giving.

Ronit Montal-Rosenberg¹, Simone Moran¹

¹Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

|August 28, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Envy can motivate people to help others in ways that maintain dependence, rather than fostering autonomy. This research explores how malicious envy influences helping behaviors toward envied individuals.

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Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Behavioral Science
Envy Research

Background:

Envy is a complex emotion often associated with negative social comparisons.
Understanding envy's impact on prosocial behavior is crucial for social dynamics.
Previous research has not fully explored covert methods of undermining through helping.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate a covert strategy of undermining envied targets by fostering dependence.
To examine the link between envy, malicious motivations, and helping behaviors.
To explore the role of individual differences in envy proneness.

Main Methods:

Four studies were conducted, manipulating envy and measuring helping intentions and behaviors.
Malicious motivations were assessed in relation to envy manipulations.
Individual differences in proneness to malicious versus benign envy were measured in Study 4.

Main Results:

Envy toward superior peers activates malicious motivations.
Malicious envy negatively impacts willingness to help envied individuals.
Helping behaviors were directed in ways that maintained target dependence, hindering autonomy.

Conclusions:

Helping can be a covert tool to undermine envied targets by preserving their dependence.
Malicious envy significantly influences helping behaviors, particularly hindering autonomous assistance.
Individual differences in envy proneness moderate the relationship between envy and helping.