Envy may be one of the seven deadly sins, but it is surprisingly common in the workplace. A study from a few years ago found that nearly 60% of us have exhibited some kind of envious behavior at work.
Whilst envy is traditionally regarded as a sin, a Dutch study found that under the right circumstances it can be surprisingly motivational.
The researchers split envy into two types:
- Benign envy
- Malicious envy
Benign envy was when you believe someones achievements were deserved, malicious envy was when you did not. Here is the thing. When participants in the study had either admiration or malicious envy for another, their subsequent efforts did not change one bit. When they had benign envy however they increased their efforts as a result.
Suffice to say however, malicious envy is perhaps more common than its benign brethren, as a recent study from researchers at the University of Cincinnati showed. They looked at the impact of envy on the workplace, both from the perspective of the person doing the envying but also the person being envied.
Working with envy
The study found that when we feel envious ourselves, we call upon what the researchers term our ‘epistemic motivation’, which is what we do when we try and process a particular situation and its meaning. When we have low levels of this, we tend to use very broad heuristics to categorize situations without taking the trouble to decode them in depth.
When our levels are higher however, we tend to be much better at decoding the nuance in the situation. Whilst beneficial, this tends to come at a cost to us.
“Research has shown that most creative working environments –– ones that require a strong ability to negotiate and attend to detail –– value employees who have a high level of epistemic motivation,” the author says. “But that same ability to process new information for creative output also tends to show its dark side when envy comes into play.”
This negative side effect comes when we take our negative feelings home with us, with the jealousy persisting much longer than those with low epistemic motivation levels.
When we’re the subject
A second study then flipped things on its head and looked at matters from the point of view of the person who is the subject of envious thoughts and deeds.
In this instance, what matters is our level of ‘trait self-esteem’, and whether the envious behavior was hostile or not.
“What we learn from using self-regulation theory is that self-esteem is important,” the authors say. “The trait self-esteem of the envied employee is an important component that will determine whether they are able to recognize the behaviors of their coworkers as being caused by envy or not and this will subsequently determine their behavioral response.”
In other words, if we have high self-esteem and are on the receiving end of hostile envy, we’re much more likely to ponder why someone is doing it than we are to fight fire with fire.
The same occurs when we receive compliments, with those with low self-esteem suspicious and those with high self-esteem responding in a more self-confirming manner.
As for the practical implications of the study, it’s obviously difficult to factor this into our team (if we’re a leader), but it might help us to understand our own behaviors more.
