The way I see the world, the way I envy others: a person-centered investigation of worldviews and the malicious and benign forms of envy among adolescents and adults

Abstract

Previous research had extensively studied the consequences of dispositional malicious and benign envy, while relatively few studies examined its determinants. Although one’s worldviews have been proposed to shape the experience of malicious and benign envy, empirical studies directly investigating this notion are scarce. To address this gap, we adopted a person-centered approach to identify different individual profiles that underlie five generalized beliefs about the world, operationalized as five social axiom dimensions. We then examined how these profiles were associated with dispositional malicious and benign envy among both adolescents and working adults (N = 1248). As suggested by latent profile analysis, a 3-profile solution provided the best fit to the data in both groups. Two latent profiles (skeptical-pessimistic and hopeful-optimistic profiles) were similar across groups, while two distinct profiles (flexible and reserved profiles) were identified in adolescents and adults respectively. A series of comparisons indicated that people with different profiles experienced malicious and benign envy differently. In general, dispositional malicious envy was stronger among those in the skeptical-pessimistic profile, while dispositional benign envy was stronger among those in the hopeful-optimistic profile. Overall, our findings facilitate discussions on the similarities and differences in worldview profiles and experiences of envy across developmental groups.