The psychologists have made a far distinction between envy and jealousy.
Yet so far jealousy and envy are not fundamental to any causal link for the
most of mental illness and disorder. The sociologist Helmut Schoeck (1966/1969)
argued that the concept of envy has been actively repressed in the social
sciences and in moral philosophy since the turn of the country, possibly
because it is unpleasant to admit it. Yet Schoeck’s thesis is that envy has an
important role in all societies – that there are crimes of envy, politics based
on envy, institutions designed to regulate envy, and powerful motives for
avoiding being envied by others. Neglecting envy cost us a complete
understanding of many interesting phenomena, so let us try to give envy it due.
Jealousy is the
reaction to the threat that we might lose the affections of someone important
to us and that these affections be directed towards someone else while envy is
more simply a desire to have what someone else has. So, the jealousy is based
on the possibility of losing an existing relationship and envy is based on the
possibility of possessing some thing that another person has. Generally, jealousy is more powerful and more
intense than envy. Strongman, K.T.(1996) stated that jealousy is linked to the
feelings of suspicious, rejection, hostility, anger, fear of lost, hurt and so
on. Envy is linked to the feelings of inferiority, dissatisfaction, wish-fullness,
longing and self-criticism. Jealousy is similar to envy but it involve three
people. The person who is jealous fears that someone else will take the person
they love.[1]
Envy may be said to
occur when a person lacks what another has and either desires it or wishes that
the other did not have it. It occurs
when the superior qualities, achievements, or possessions of another are
perceived as reflecting badly on the self.
Envy is typically experienced as feelings of inferiority, longing, or
ill will toward the envied person (Salovey, 1991; Neu, 1980; Salovey &
Rodin, 1984). Jealousy may be said to occur when a person either fears losing
or has already lost an important relationship with another person to a rival.
Jealousy may be experienced in anumber of ways, but typically these are thought
to include fear of loss, anger over betrayal and insecurity (Salovey, 1991;
Hupka, 1984; Mathes, Adams & Davies, 1985)
Envy is based on social
comparison, a common and powerful influence on the self-concept (Festinger,
1954; Heider, 1958). Much of our self0esteem comes from the comparison with
others (Morse & Gergen, 1970; Tesser & Campbell, 1980). When one’s
abilities, achievements, or possessions compare poorly with those of another,
there is the potential for a decrease in one’s self esteem and public stature,
and surely this is one route to envy.
Aristotle’s emphasis
was that some forms of envy (emulation) motivate people to improve themselves,
whereas others motivate people to take good things from others.[2]
There are two types of envy: 1) Nonmalicious, and; 2) Malicious. The focus of
nonmalicious envy is to have what other person have. It may be experienced as
inferiority to the envied person, longing for what the other has, despair of
ever having it, determination to improve oneself, or admiration of the envied
person. The focus of malicious envy is
wishing another person to lose what in their possession. The focus of malicious
envy is the removal or destruction of the envied object or quality. It is not necessary to desire what the other
has – only to desire that it be taken away from the other. It may be
experienced as anger or resentment over some alleged unfairness, and may be
generalized to become hatred of the envied person.[3]
For Aristotle, the evil of the envy was desire to lessen the amount of goodness
in the world, or, observably, to experience joy at another’s misfortune.
However in book
Emotional Intelligence by Frances Wilks further explained ‘envy’ in more
detailed and precise. Not only that, the writer also abled to classify and
explain the different types of envy that human being feeling today.
Envy always been the
issue of one of the negative emotions that became the mother of destruction to
any social relationship. However, in the shed of positive picture, the
psychologists see envy as the triggered feeling which benefited the personal
development of an individual. For example, my friend has a good result of the
final examination and I don’t, this might be seen as a prompt for me explore
the possibility of getting one for myself. Nevertheless, envy has been claimed
as one of the shameful emotion to be admitted. It portrayed someone’s weakness
and negative feeling.
Envy comes from the
senses ie from what we see, what we hear, and maybe from what we smell. Here
some of the actions that we have identify what is envy and the subconscious
reaction of being envy.
Envy makes us believe
that if we had the thing that we see/hear someone else having, we would be
alright. We wish to take it from them and have it for ourselves, or we may deny
that want are envious and profoundly say that the thing is worthless. Envy
technique has been popularly used by the capitalists as the business strategy
and to promote profit gain. Envy make us feel ashamed, we realised we are
lacked of something and not successful as we think we are. Envy is a strongly
painful emotions that involves anger, resentment, disappointment, hate,
loneliness and depression. Sometimes we imagine the person losing the thing
that we desire so much. We may secretly feel rejoice to hear that the envied
person has had some misfortune. The writer classified envy into three: 1) The
belittler; 2) The provoker, and; 3) The Self-Denigrator[4] .
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