Envy and Jealousy
Othello's Green Monster, Neighborly Rivalry, and the Pain of Near-Misses
Everyday conversation blurs envy and jealousy, yet moral philosophers separate them by counting how many people stand in the room. Envy is a two-person ache triggered when a neighbor holds a talent, prize, or status we lack. Jealousy is a three-person alarm triggered when an outside rival threatens to steal someone's love.
Around 700 BCE in Works and Days, the Greek poet Hesiod observed that potter envies potter, carpenter envies carpenter, and beggar envies beggar. A shopkeeper never envies an emperor on another continent. Envy requires proximity—someone close enough in age and station that their good fortune feels like a comment on our own life.
American novelist Gore Vidal captured the intimate sting of peer comparison with disarming candor when he remarked that whenever a close friend succeeded, a small part of him died. A stranger's triumph on the far side of the world leaves us untouched, whereas a peer's triumph measures what we might have been.
In fifth-century BCE Athens, citizens gathered once a year in the marketplace to scratch the name of any overly powerful or boasted citizen onto broken pottery shards called ostraka. Anyone receiving six thousand shards was banished from the city for ten years without losing their property—a civic safety valve designed to cool public envy.
Sociologist Helmut Schoeck documented in 1966 how traditional villages across the Mediterranean and Latin America organized architecture around fear of invidia, or the envious evil eye. Wealthy families built plain, windowless mud walls facing the street while hiding painted courtyards inside, knowing that flaunting good fortune invited neighborhood resentment and sabotage.
In his 1930 book The Conquest of Happiness, philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out why envy is the bleakest of the seven deadly sins. Gluttony, lust, sloth, and even greed offer the sinner at least a brief moment of sensory pleasure. Envy alone gives zero sweetness, feeding strictly on the bitterness of comparison.
In 1995, psychologists Victoria Medvec, Scott Madey, and Thomas Gilovich covered the jersey numbers on television footage from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and asked viewers to rate the medalists' faces. Third-place bronze winners smiled far more than second-place silver winners—because bronze compares downward to fourth place while silver tortures itself over missing gold.
In his 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class, economist Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase conspicuous consumption to explain why wealthy households bought hand-polished silver spoons and sprawling lawns. Beyond basic warmth and food, people spend fortunes on invidious comparison. They buy visible proof that they rank higher than their neighbors.
In Shakespeare's 1604 tragedy Othello, the scheming ensign Iago warns his general to beware jealousy as the green-eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds on. Once jealousy seizes the imagination, it manufactures its own proof—turning an innocently dropped strawberry handkerchief into ironclad evidence of betrayal that destroys everything it loves.
In 2003 at Emory University, primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal proved that resentment over unequal pay is older than humanity. A capuchin monkey happily traded pebbles for cucumber slices twenty-five times in a row. When she saw the monkey next door receive a sweet grape for the same pebble, she hurled her cucumber back.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer condemned Schadenfreude—taking secret pleasure in another person's stumble—as the most diabolical trait in human nature. Yet everyday observation shows that Schadenfreude is simply envy flipped upside down. When a boastful rival who outranks us slips on the ice, the painful pressure of comparison suddenly lets up.
Seventeenth-century French moralist François de La Rochefoucauld observed in his Maxims that it takes far rarer character to rejoice in a close friend's sudden triumph than to weep beside them in misfortune. Sympathizing with a friend's bad luck flatters our generosity, whereas celebrating their success requires quieting our own pride.