Abstract:

Envy is a mixed emotion that arises when a person lacks other’s superior quality, achievement, or possession with feelings of inferiority, hostility and resentment, and enviers desire to gain advantage from the envied objects or hope them to lose superiority. As a complex emotion directing to other’s fortune, benign envy and malicious envy will trigger different action tendencies, and mainly depend on the cognitive appraisal process from individual to other’s good fortune. Envy arises from upward social comparison, and then the social events deservingness, subjective fairness and core self-appraisal all impact it. This article analyzes the cognitive psychological process and developing process of envy from social comparison perception, cognitive processing and neurophysiology function. Based on deficiency of the current researches, future research may further improve the aspects of the development and early cognitive basis of envy, measurement methods, and differentiation of motive functions.

Key words: types of envy, social comparison, deservingness, subjective fairness, cognitive processing