Envy and admiration: Emotion and motivation following upward social comparison [Dataset]

There are conflicting findings in the scientific literature on which behaviour is elicited by these emotions. In one study (with two samples, total N = 345), we test which motivations are triggered by envy and admiration.

The main finding is that (benign) envy and admiration both lead to a motivation to improve oneself. This confirms earlier findings that admiration leads to a motivation to affiliate with the admired other and a motivation to improve one's own position. Furthermore, it supports the idea that envy can lead to both a motivation to improve oneself and a motivation to pull down the envied other, finding support for a subtypes theory of envy.