Influence Of Envy Research Articles

Exploring the influence of envy on service engagement

ABSTRACTConsumer retention is central to service firm objectives and is often the focus of firm initiated activities. However, consumer-driven processes that operate independently of firm initiated activities also influence retention. By understanding the consumption goals of service consumers, management can encourage behavioural engagement with service offerings and improve retention outcomes. Positional services provide opportunities for social status enhancement (e.g. higher education) and attract consumers seeking the positional benefits offered. Service consumers compete for positional benefits and monitor their success relative to other service consumers via positional comparisons. Envy, an emotion with benign and malicious types, is experienced if the positional comparison with another service consumer is unfavourable and influences behavioural engagement. This study proposes and qualitatively tests a conceptual model linking positional comparison and envy to changes in consumers’ behavioural engagement with a service depending on the type of envy experienced. The findings support benign envy as a motivator for increased behavioural engagement with a service. The study also supports the existence of a ‘positional’ service category in which envy is an endemic emotional theme influencing behavioural engagement in these service environments. A two-tiered approach to the management of envy involving positional goal recognition and appraisal based tactics is recommended.

Envy and pricing of quality in adverse selection

The paper analyzes the optimal pricing of quality when consumers feel envious of other purchase deals. The influence of envy on the optimal pricing of quality varies depending on whether consumers are concerned about envy in payments or in rents. If consumers compare their payments with those of other consumers, the firm has an incentive to produce lower quality than the first-best level for the high valuation consumer and higher quality than the second-best level for the low valuation consumer. Conversely, when consumers’ disutility from envy arises from envy in rents, the trade-off between efficiency and rent extraction becomes more serious than in the situation where there is no envy.

When Better is Worse: Envy and the Use of Deception in Negotiations

In this paper we describe the influence of envy on the use of deception. We find that individuals who envy a counterpart are more likely to deceive them than are individuals who do not envy their counterpart. Across both a scenario and a laboratory study, we explore the influence of envy in a negotiation setting. Negotiations represent a domain in which social comparisons are prevalent and deception poses a particularly important concern. In our studies, we induce envy by providing participants with upward social comparison information. We find that upward social comparisons predictably trigger envy, and that envy promotes deception by increasing perceived gains and decreasing psychological costs of engaging in deceptive behavior. We discuss implications of our results with respect to impression management and emotional intelligence as well as the role of emotions in ethical decision making and negotiations.

Peter Shaffer's Amadeus as a further expression of twinship conflict.

In Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, which has much of a thematic and symbolic nature in common with its forerunners, Equus and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, stemming genetically from the unique sibling rivalry of twinship, there is more pronounced emphasis on the influence of envy and vengeance on human behavior than in the other two plays. It is postulated that the success of Equus and its implications pertinent to the competitive aspect of the relationship with his twin brother stirred appreciable intrapsychic turmoil in Shaffer and was a decisive motivating factor in his writing of Amadeus.