Why Does Envy Lead to Anger?

Envy. Long considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins, in both Christianity and Judaism, and even among the early Greeks who labeled it “Ly-pay” meaning sadness, envy has been with us as long as humankind has been keeping track of the ills of the heart and mind. And these days, envy is not just alive and kicking, it’s flourishing.

In fact, envy has festered into one of our greatest sources of anger, especially in our current material-focused culture where symbols of wealth like fancy cars and jewelry (even the fake stuff) are flaunted with reckless abandon. For many people, who feel they too deserve the spoils of wealth, these constant reminders of what they don’t have often lead to resentment and anger. In my 20-plus years of experience as a psychiatrist, I have seen the desire to “get” the things they envy drive people to lose sight of the most important values in their lives. We feel envious of friends, total strangers, TV characters, classmates, or colleagues. We often feel the deepest envy toward those closest to us.

Feeling envy is a part of who we are as complicated and multifaceted beings, just like joy, sadness, and anger itself. The way to defeat the negative feeling of envy is by learning how to recognize and handle it when it sneaks up on you, and to cut it off at the pass; it’s clearly no easy feat.

Learning to envision envy is critical to leading a happier, less conflict-driven, less angry life. When even the smallest infraction like “he got a bigger piece of cake than me” leads to an emotional meltdown and lasting resentment, it’s time to develop an awareness of envy’s relationship to anger and learn how to change your perspective from “take” to “give.” In doing so, you can help shift your internal compass from the “Me” to the broader and more productive “We,” reducing tension and pent-up feelings of anger between people whether they’re strangers, close friends, or even siblings. It is time to move from the “Me” generation to the “We” generation to help us live calmer, safer, and happier lives.

Once you recognize rage you have to figure out why you are angry, to begin with. Perhaps you are envious of someone else. Perhaps you have to envision envy.

Understanding Where Envy Comes From
Envy is that unpleasant, often painful feeling brought on by the good fortune of others. That good fortune could be just about anything; a beautiful possession, a great job, a happy relationship, or the purchase of a new home. We see something we want and we feel envy that someone else has it and we do not. Inside, we might secretly wish the other guy didn’t have it, or would lose it. Envy stems directly from our limbic reaction to the Domains of Resources, Relationships, and Residence; you don’t have enough while someone else has more. Envy is sneaky and manipulative, but whether it’s a twinge or an ache, we all feel it. There is always someone richer than us, faster than us, more beautiful or youthful, and we want what they have. Someone always has a better house or a safer community. Someone always seems to have a hotter boyfriend or girlfriend, a better boss, or a better any type of relationship. When we experience envy, we resent that another person has something that we feel we lack. The true pain is caused when the mind focuses on what one desires but cannot have.

There Are Two Faces of Envy
Before we delve one-sidedly into the typically dark world of envy, “malicious envy” or wanting something bad to happen to the person you envy, it’s important to note that, unlike the other cardinal sins, envy does have a potentially positive side. Anger’s good side once protected us from predators, can be channeled to good use (like pushing for safe driving laws because someone cut you off while they were texting, for example). Envy can sometimes be the force that motivates us to strive harder. If I envy my neighbor’s new, shiny, red Lamborghini, it might get me to thinking that if I saved some money and worked extra hard for a bonus this year that vehicle could be sitting in my driveway too. Sometimes envy serves as an incentive. In this case, it’s called “benign envy,” something that few people have ever heard of but we all have experienced.

You Have More Control Over This Emotion Than You Think
By the age of 4 months, a baby begins to compare bits of information. The infant cries when she sees a stranger’s face because it’s different than the mother’s. When it comes to envy, the same mechanism is at play. We compare bits of information about others to ourselves, and when we feel that we do not compare well, it makes us unhappy and often angry. It is only in this comparison that we can experience envy. This is an important observation. We feel at a disadvantage, which leads us to feel threatened, and then to have to either run away for safety or attack in anger.

But what is remarkable is that we are actually more in control of this emotion than we give ourselves credit for. Sometimes we spend so much time being envious of what other people have that we overlook what we actually do have. This tendency to compare has always been with us but it can be exacerbated by the use of social media. Young people, in particular, spend hours putting up photos of themselves having fun with friends, honing their pages so that they appear cooler, often hiding real feelings and events going on in their lives. Less secure kids then compare themselves to the mostly fiction and wind up feeling bad about themselves and spiteful towards others.

While humans have cooperated to the extent that the species has more than survived, we still, on a deep, limbic brain level are at risk of rarely feeling satisfied or full up. This is a brutal reality about how we have evolved as human beings. Perhaps one of the obvious reasons that envy developed stems from our ancestors’ early days when the acquisition of resources, mainly food, may have meant the difference between life or death. One would have noticed when another had more of something. If you had something I wanted or needed that put you at a survival advantage over me, I might try to take it from you. But if you are already at an advantage, I probably wouldn’t be able to just step in and take it. You might be stronger, smarter, perhaps more overtly resourceful. I would have to be covertly resourceful and plan my actions for the future.

This planning is a PFC function. Envy filtered through the PFC meant being able to assess a situation and plan a response, which in turn enhanced our survival potential. It is a lot more effective than being impulsive. As kids, we are taught to look both ways before crossing a street: an exercise in assessing the relative danger of our surroundings, making a plan based on that assessment, and the anticipation of the outcome. Only then do we actually take the action of crossing the street? Kids need to be taught these basic survival tools because the child and the adolescent brain is an impulsive brain, with a relatively immature PFC compared to the limbic system, which is the brain base location of impulsivity. Even as this limbic system may harbor the emotion of envy, it depends on the PFC to elaborate and execute the plan to level the playing field, or better, to switch the level completely so you are now the one being envied.

The two types of envy, benign and malicious, both push a person to either strive for personal success in a healthy competition or strive to bring the other person down in unhealthy aggression that can lead to war. From an evolutionary perspective, envy is yet another means for survival, to get more resources, relationships, or residence, and therefore not only have more but at the same time deprive the other of those same attributes.