When a person is envious of someone else, do they still help them? A new paper by DMEP director Simone Moran and Ronit Montal-Rosenberg in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that envy makes people help others in a way that retains their future dependence, rather than in a way that increases their autonomy. In four studies, the authors examined consequences of envy in terms of helping, distinguishing between two types of help: dependent help, which consists of providing the solution to the immediate problem only, and thus reinforces recipients' future reliance on others' assistance versus autonomous help, where the helper also provides tools that develop the recipients' capacities and enables them to later solve problems independently. The study finds that the extent to which envy toward superior peers activates malicious motivations, negatively impacts peoples' willingness to provide these superior peers with help, and increases the likelihood of providing them with dependent rather than autonomous help.
To the full article: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ronit_Montal-Rosenberg/publication/343416475_Envy_and_Help_Giving/links/5f291a12458515b729007f59/Envy-and-Help-Giving.pdf
