We live in an age when envy comes easy. Most of us walk around all day with a device in our hand that can show us the best of people's lives with just a swipe and a click - we even sleep next to it at night. It’s almost impossible not to compare our own lives to what we see on social media. For others, hearing about someone’s vacation plans or new job can be a trigger for negative emotions that affect self-esteem.
Our tendency to constantly compare often leads to envy. These feelings can make us forget or downplay our own good experiences or draw our focus to the bad things that have happened to us in the face of other people’s happiness. People tend to think more negatively about the future after hearing someone else's good news, using a kind “defensive pessimism” to protect themselves from disappointment.
But it turns out time really can heal some wounds.
A new study published in the journal Psychological Science titled “Yesterday’s News: A Temporal Discontinuity in the Sting of Inferiority” has shed some light on how we experience these emotions as well as get over them. Researchers from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business showed that people tend to become less jealous of others over time. That is, a vacation, opportunity, party, or any other moment inspires less envy once it's over and the farther it moves into the past.
We’ve long assumed that those who get to take a luxury vacation, for example, continue to inspire jealousy even after it’s over because then the enviable experience is theirs to keep - there’s no more hoping that a last-minute rainstorm will send your demoralized colleague from the airport back to her desk at work wearing her sarong and beach hat while you silently gloat next to her. Once the vacation happens, you’ll have to deal with the insufferable Instagram photos, forever reminding you of something you didn't get to do. But the researchers found that people feel much more envy when anticipating events than they do once they’re over. To put it bluntly, you’ll probably get over the bulk of your jealousy by the time their tan wears off.
The importance of studying envy, they said, is twofold: 1) It’s a common emotional affliction and will only become more common as social inequalities increase (along with our ability to see them on social media), and 2) understanding how envy works might help us control it (especially in cases when it leads to low self-esteem or feelings of hopelessness).
The researchers performed 4 experiments that illuminated an interesting phenomenon: "other people’s good lives sting less" when an enviable event is over.
The first experiment involved 600 subjects who were asked to imagine a close friend in 5 enviable circumstances: going on a luxury vacation, an ideal date, getting a dream job, and buying the perfect home or car. Then they were asked to estimate how jealous or inferior they would feel both before and after the imaginary events occurred.
The results showed that the experiences – especially the vacation - were perceived as less enviable if they were something that happened in the past as opposed to something about to happen soon.
The second experiment involved Valentine’s Day - an emotionally tricky holiday. The researchers questioned 100 different people every day throughout the month of February, asking them to gauge their envy towards an imaginary peer’s glamorous Valentine’s Day plans. Feelings of envy increased in the lead-up to the big day, but on February 15th those feeling decreased. Feelings of envy dropped off and stayed low for the rest of the month, indicating that once an event was in the past, it was less likely to make people feel jealous.
They studied the same effect the next year using a slightly different methodology which showed the same pattern – feelings of envy decreased after the event had passed.
The third experiment was designed to see how malicious envy (the kind that makes you feel ill will towards another) and benign envy (the kind that motivates you to go out and achieve your own goals) were tempered by time. Subjects were told to think about a real person in their lives that they’re already envious of and rate their level of envy leading up to and following an enviable experience this person would get to have.
Malicious envy was identified based on answers to questions asking if the anticipating the enviable event felt frustrating, made them “want to scream," replace the person with themselves, or fueled ill-will towards the person.
Benign envy was measured by asking if the event in question made them feel inspired, pleasant, motivated them to try harder to achieve their own goals, and made them want to compliment the person.
This experiment provided more nuanced results. While malicious envy once again died down over time as the event receded into the past, benign envy often remained steady. So in some cases, the motivation that can come from watching friends and colleagues get something you want can outweigh the pain of comparison in the long run. Ideally, this might motivate someone to go out and achieve their own goals or plan their own spectacular moments.
The final study asked 322 university students to think of a person they know who “has an upcoming envy-inducing event” (such as a vacation, wedding, internship, even a party or concert plan). They were then asked how they felt about the event, the person participating in it, how they felt about their own lives as a result, and whether they felt tense or distracted when bringing the event to mind.
One group was asked to answer the questions after imagining the event had concluded, and others answered after imagining the event was even farther into the future (a year or more away). This produced some fascinating results that indicated that envy had far less of a grip on people when they had some time to reflect on it, regardless of whether it was in the past or distant future. The researchers concluded that “Distance of any kind helps, but taking a past perspective reduces envy the most.”
Ed O’Brien, a scholar at Chicago’s Booth School of Business explained that the findings contradicted previous research suggesting that “superior experiences may sting more once they happen” because people continue to focus on them.
...these findings suggest that the passing of time may be particularly linked with reducing the intensity of negative experiences, rather than reducing the intensity of all experiences.
While many have assumed that envy is simply the result of wanting an outcome for ourselves, it turns out it might also be greatly influenced by when it takes place. Upcoming events are the hardest to deal with.
Like any kind of experiment, these showed human tendencies. Not everyone feels envious of other people’s lives or experiences the emotions in this way.
But social media has certainly added a whole new dimension to envy – it has put the best parts of other people’s lives front and center. When I asked O’Brien about the effects of social media on envy, he explained in an e-mail that, in his opinion, “the piece that we add to the puzzle of social media is that the timing of information sharing might matter more than people realize.” This, of course, lines up with the results of the research indicating that temporal distance from an event helps soften the blow.
He said:
The same exact post might elicit more envy if it's framed about a future event than the same event already over (e.g., "All packed for Maui!" vs. "Back home from Maui!").
And this research, he said, could be beneficial for those dealing with tough emotions surrounding other people’s success.
People might be able to better cope with envious feelings if they at least realize this as a possible source of their negative reactions - "Oh, maybe it's not me - I'm just reacting this way because this event is coming up. I'll feel better if I can just make it to when it passes."
In the end, allow time to work its magic. Chances are, you’ll either get over it or, better yet, be motivated to make it happen for yourself.
