You Can Usually Tell How Emotionally Intelligent Someone Is By How They Act When They Get Jealous
DukiPh / Shutterstock Envy is often seen as a terrible trait, one that makes people act petty and bratty. But a new study sheds light on an aspect that often goes overlooked: the fact that how we deal with envy actually changes how it affects us.
According to the study, there's actually a lot that you can tell about a person's emotional intelligence based on how they deal with envy, and whether or not they will let it turn into full-blown jealousy. For some, envy can be motivating. But for others, it can start a serious downward spiral.
How a person acts when they feel envious tells a lot about their emotional intelligence
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The study, conducted by Professor of Organizational Behavior Christophe Haag, at the emylon business school in France, was intended to look into just how this emotion can affect behavior. It can be quite an uncomfortable feeling to deal with, so how someone responds to it can be very telling about how they deal with emotions as a whole.
According to previous research, there are two distinct types of envy. Benign envy, while generally unpleasant to feel, still motivates the person towards self-improvement. On the other side of things, malicious envy is much more hostile, motivating the person to take down whoever they view as having more than them.
As a result, Professor Haag wanted to find out, "whether emotional intelligence — and particularly the ability to regulate emotions — might help explain these very different motivational trajectories" as we all experience this emotion at one point in our lives and have to respond to it accordingly.
People with more emotional regulation were reported to have higher levels of benign envy
The participants were put through performance-based emotion regulation tests, as well as a self-reported questionnaire on how often they experienced benign and malicious envy. After collecting the data, researchers noted that people who exhibited higher levels of emotion regulation were more likely to report experiencing benign envy rather than malicious envy.
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Even more interesting was the discovery that, despite every other variable, "the cognitive capacity to manage emotions effectively operates independently of a person's general self-worth or relationship insecurities." This means that no matter how self-confident or grounded a person is, they may still experience malicious envy if they're not able to effectively regulate their emotions.
It also means that when a person's behavior is clearly out of jealousy (an actionable form of malicious envy), you can confidently say that they're lacking in emotional intelligence.
People with high levels of emotional intelligence feel envy and manage it
On the other side of things, if you notice someone expressing that they're envious but still carrying on as usual, focusing the attention back on themselves and how they can improve, then their emotional intelligence is well in-tact.
Next time you experience envy, do your very best to allow the feeling to motivate you to push yourself to where you want to go, instead of dwelling on what another person has that you don't, and I mean that literally. Research shows that positive self-talk is highly effective, after all.
Pause and tell yourself, "OK, I'm feeling envious right now, but I can get to where I want to go if I keep pushing forward." It'll save yourself a lot of energy and help exercise those emotional regulation muscles for lifelong fulfillment.
Luke Aliga is a writer with a degree in Technical Writing and Communication who covers relationships, culture, and human-interest topics.
