The causal role of counterfactual thinking in envy

嫉妒是一种负面情绪，当人们与其他人进行比较时，这种情绪可能会出现。许多研究已经证明了这种情绪的重要心理、人际和社会后果：嫉妒可能是一个强大的动机。它可以激励人们提高自己，但它也可能伴随着破坏性的社会后果。尽管它很重要，但人们对引起嫉妒的情景与其行为结果之间的认知过程知之甚少。这项拟议的研究计划将试图通过调查反事实思维在嫉妒中的作用来填补这一空白。当人们从事反事实思维时，他们会将现实与想象中的替代方案进行对比。嫉妒经常被描绘成一种情绪，在这种情绪中，“本来可能是我的人”等反事实的想法主导了人们的想法。此外，如果这样的反事实非常突出，向上比较似乎特别痛苦。然而，很少有研究致力于研究嫉妒中的反事实思维。在这里，我认为反事实不仅有助于嫉妒的强度，而且反事实的内容有助于嫉妒反应的质量。最近的研究表明，嫉妒可能以两种不同的形式发生：良性嫉妒和恶意嫉妒，前者旨在通过向上移动来拉平相对劣势，后者旨在压低优越的他人。结合对嫉妒的新兴功能解释和对反事实思维的研究，我认为不同的反事实通过满足重要的自我调节需求而有助于嫉妒的反应。特别是，鉴于良性的(相对于恶意的)嫉妒需要这样的评价，即优越的地位是当之无愧的，改进是可行的，因此，加性的、自我关注的反事实的向上激励特征应该是良性嫉妒的基础。相比之下，自我保护、以他人为中心的反事实应该是恶意嫉妒的基础。拟议的研究计划将调查善意和恶意的嫉妒者是否自发产生内容不同的反事实，改变反事实思维的突显程度和内容是否会改变嫉妒反应，以及反事实思维的内容是否中介了引起嫉妒的情景的不同行为后果。这样的调查结果可能具有重大影响：它们不仅可以洞察嫉妒的内在机制，并允许将未来的嫉妒研究与反事实思维的其他重要结果联系起来，还可以提供一种方法，将嫉妒中的恶意倾向转化为向上的动机。

Envy is a negative emotion that may arise when people compare unfavorably with other people. Much research has documented the important psychological, interpersonal, and societal consequences of this emotion: Envy can be a powerful motivator. It can spur people to improve themselves, but it can also go along with socially destructive consequences. Despite its importance, little is known about the cognitive processes that link envy-eliciting situations with their behavioral outcomes. The proposed research program will attempt to fill this gap by investigating the role of counterfactual thinking in envy.When people engage in counterfactual thinking, they contrast reality with imagined alternatives. Envy has often been portrayed as an emotion in which counterfactuals such as "It could have been me" dominate thinking. Furthermore, upward comparisons seem to be particularly painful if such counterfactuals are highly salient. Nevertheless, little research has been devoted to investigating counterfactual thinking in envy.Here, I suggest that counterfactuals not only contribute to the intensity of envy, but also that the content of counterfactuals contributes to the quality of envious responding. Recent research has shown that envy episodes can take occur in two qualitatively distinct forms: benign envy, which is aimed at leveling a comparative disadvantage by moving upward, and malicious envy, which is aimed at leveling superior others down. Combining an emerging functional account of envy with research on counterfactual thinking, I argue that different counterfactuals contribute to envious responding by serving important self-regulatory needs. In particular, given that benign (as compared to malicious) envy entails the appraisal that the superior position is deserved and that improvement is feasible, the upward motivating character of additive, self-focused counterfactuals should underlie episodes of benign envy. In contrast, self-protective other-focused counterfactuals should underlie malicious envy. The proposed research program will investigate whether benign and malicious enviers spontaneously generate counterfactuals that differ in content, whether changing the salience and the content of counterfactual thinking will alter envious responding, and whether the content of counterfactual thoughts mediates the different behavioral consequences of envy-eliciting situations. The results of such an investigation may carry significant implications: not only could they provide insight into the inner workings of envy and allow to connect future envy research with other important outcomes of counterfactual thought, they could also offer a way to transform malicious tendencies in envy into upward motivation.