516 v. AFFECTI vE PROCESSES
more severe threat than emotional infidelity 
across genders.
Envy
Whereas jealousy arises primarily in rela -
tionship contexts, envy is a broader feeling 
that can arise with any upward social com -
parison that results in an individual’s belief 
that he or she lacks a desired personal at -
tribute compared to the superior individual 
(Parrott & Smith, 1993). An early influential 
definition of dispositional envy  emphasized 
feelings of inadequacy, injustice, and frus -
tration, along with resentment toward the 
superior person; individuals who reported 
high dispositional envy tended to be low in 
self- esteem and life satisfaction, and high in 
neuroticism (Smith, Parrot, Diener, Hoyle, 
& Kim, 1999). In recent years, researchers 
have embraced a more nuanced formula -
tion, in which the construct consists of two 
distinct emotional experiences, both elicited 
by upward social comparisons (van de Ven, 
Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2009). First, benign 
envy involves positive feelings of admiration 
toward a superior individual and a desire to 
affiliate with this person, as well as the mo -
tivation to improve one’s own standing on 
the desired attribute. In contrast, malicious 
envy involves feelings of frustration and in -
justice regarding one’s inferiority, as well as 
a desire to harm, degrade, or otherwise im -
pede the superior individual in the hope that 
he or she will lose the desired attribute or 
status.
Both benign and malicious envy may 
function to help individuals recoup a sense 
of relative status. Consistent with the no -
tion that benign envy is linked to behaviors 
oriented toward improving one’s own status 
relative to others, whereas malicious envy is 
linked to bringing others down to one’s own 
level, adults training for a marathon showed 
improved race performance to the extent 
that they felt benign envy, and this relation 
was mediated by a tendency to set challeng -
ing race goals; in contrast, malicious envy 
was not related to performance (Lange & 
Crusius, 2015a). In another set of studies, 
individuals who witnessed another person’s 
achievement felt benign envy if the other 
person conveyed authentic pride (indicating 
a hard-  earned and status boosting success), but malicious envy if the other person con -
veyed hubristic pride (indicating false bra -
vado and arrogance). These distinct feelings 
were in turn functional; after losing to the 
proud individual in one round of a cognitive 
competition, participants who felt benign 
envy persisted more in a subsequent round, 
whereas those who felt malicious envy as -
signed their competitor more difficult prob -
lems (Lange & Crusius, 2015b).
Humility
Of all the social emotions, humility holds 
perhaps the most clear-cut place in personal -
ity psychology, because it has typically been 
conceptualized as a disposition, virtue, or 
character strength (e.g., Peterson & Selig -
man, 2004). Much like envy, existing mod -
els suggest that humility arises from an eval -
uation of one’s own standing on a desirable 
personal attribute; yet, unlike envy—which 
includes a judgmental focus on a personal 
weakness—  humility involves accurate but 
nonjudgmental perceptions of either posi -
tive or negative personal attributes, as well 
as an awareness or appreciation of desirable 
attributes in other individuals (Chancellor 
& Lyubomirsky, 2013). Consistent with this 
emphasis on accurate self-  knowledge, Davis 
and colleagues (2011) conceptualized humil -
ity as a judgment made about others who 
possess an accurate view of their own abili -
ties and a lack of any desire to self-  enhance; 
these two traits in turn positively predicted 
judgments of an individual’s standing on the 
honesty–  humility factor of the HEXACO 
(honesty–  humility, emotionality, extra -
version, agreeableness, conscientiousness, 
openness to experience) model of personal -
ity.
A more recent model has, however, added 
an important layer of nuance to this overtly 
positive and socially desirable conceptu -
alization. Drawing on historical accounts 
from philosophical and religious texts, as 
well as etymological and dictionary defini -
tions, across a series of correlational and 
experimental studies, we found that both 
momentary and dispositional experiences of 
humility are characterized by two distinct 
factors, one representing “appreciative hu -
mility” and characterized by feelings such as 
kind, graceful, connected,  and understand-