The social construction of envy in scientific community: An analysis of scholarly psychological publications

Abstract

This study explored the different conceptualizations of envy in scholarly psychological publications, in terms of cultural models shared in scientific community, which contribute to the social construction of this emotional experience. A text analysis based on social representation theory was conducted on a corpus of 450 abstracts consulted in PsycINFO Database and allowed the detection of five main representations of envy in psychological literature as primary destructiveness, subjective unfairness, narcissistic defense, competitive tendency and malicious joy. They are conceived along four latent dimensions respectively, regarding source (internal/external agency), function (self-development/other-derogation), self-awareness (low/high control) and legitimacy (moral/amoral values) of envy. The results highlight the psychoanalytic and psychosocial perspective about envy and its paradoxical function for social order.