The Dynamic Cognitive Processing And Neural Mechanism Of Envy Experience In Unfair Contexts

Envy is an important social emotion that is significant for individuals’ interpersonal interaction and social adaptation.Previous studies have revealed the psychological components and possible neural mechanisms underlying the occurrence of envy in general contexts.However,most of these studies have neglected a common and important situation of envy experience,namely,envy in the unfair contexts.The present study focused on examining the experience of envy in the unfair contexts,exploring the cognitive processing characteristics of such envy and elucidating its neural mechanisms.The study consisted of two experiments.In the first experiment,we aim to explore the processing and psychological mechanism of envy in the unfair contexts by using the paradigm of context-induced envy.315 college students were recruited to complete a simple online task.The results showed that the degree of envy increased with the disclosure of self-relevance and strength information,and was accompanied by the increase of frustration and anger,and the decrease of admiration and pleasure.Second,compared with equal strength condition,they reported significantly higher levels of envy,higher levels of anger and frustration,and lower levels of admiration and pleasure in better strength(themselves)condition.Third,envy affects behavioral tendency through other emotions,and the influencing mechanism of different types of envy is different.Compared with trait benign envy individuals,trait malicious envy individuals have a stronger perception of negative emotions,and feel more anger,which makes them wish others to lose their advantages.In the second experiment,the neural mechanism of envy in the unfair contexts was investigated,we aim to study the neural activities of envy by using the context-induced experimental paradigm.42 college students were recruited to complete a functional magnetic resonance imaging task.The results showed that compared to the other conditions,the degree of envy in better strength condition was significantly highest when other people obtained the competitive results.Secondly,the neural activity of envy in the unfair contexts is mainly reflected in the activation of the insula,middle frontal gyrus,superior frontal gyrus,precuneus,inferior parietal lobule and middle occipital gyrus,in addition,the insula is more active in the better strength condition.Thirdly,the activation of brain regions related to envy was negatively correlated with negative emotions,which showed that the greater activation intensity of the left insula,the lower the shame score.These results suggest that the insula may be one of the neural basis for this type of envy,and possibly involved in the processing of negative emotions such as perceived unfairness and anger.In conclusion,this study reveals the dynamic processing of envy with the gradual disclosure of self-relevance and strength information,clarifies that the generation of envy is accompanied by the enhancement of negative emotions and the weakening of positive emotions,and the differences in the performance and mechanism of different types of envy.On this basis,we further explored the neural mechanism of envy and found that the insula is mainly involved in the processing of envy in the unfair contexts.These findings enhance the exploration of the nature of envy,and provide enlightenment for the correct understanding of envy and its cognitive processing.