The Influence Mechanism Of College Students' Jealousy On Aggressive Behavior

Envy is one of the emotions which arises from upward social comparison between individuals.The wealth,beauty,good quality and rich life owned by others may become the objects of envy.Under the influence of social desirability,people are unlikely to show their envy directly.Dual envy theory puts forward that envy includes benign envy and malicious envy.Malicious envy leads to destructive consequences,while benign envy can stimulate the individual's need for self-improvement and inspire the individual to take constructive actions.A few studies have confirmed the dual envy theory:when the subjects recalled the envy situation,some of them wanted to hurt the envied person,while the others wanted to narrow the gap by improving their social status(Van de Ven et al.,2009),which are evidently two completely different experiences.Previously,studies mainly focused on the intrapersonal consequences caused by envy,such as the loss of self-esteem and self-evaluation,etc.However,envy arises from interpersonal social comparison,so studies should also focus on interpersonal consequences.This study supplemented the research on envy from the interpersonal consequences of aggression.First of all,this study focused on whether envy would affect individuals' perception of threat,leading to increased aggression.Secondly,Based on the Dual envy theory,this study will explore whether there are differences in threat perception and aggression between the benign envy and the malicious envy.Finally,based on the Resources and Perception Model(RPM),this study explores strategies to reduce threat perception and aggression behavior from the perspectives of the envy and the envied.The relationship between envy and aggression was investigated in three experiments.In the experiment 1,the difference of threat perception and aggression behavior in different envy conditions was investigated by using a three-level single variable experiment(Envy condition:benign envy vs.malicious envy vs.neutral condition).Results showed that the threat perception and aggression behavior under malicious envy are higher than benign envy and neutral envy conditions,and the threat perception was the mediator between envy and aggression.In experiment 2,a three-level single variable experiment(Information disclosure condition:only successes revealed vs.successes and failures revealed vs.success and extra information)was adopted to explore the influence of envy on threat perception and aggression from the point of view of the envied person when the envious person knew the past failure experience of the envied person.The results showed that,compared with "only successes revealed" condition and "success and extra information"condition,"successes and failures revealed" condition of the person being envied has lower threat perception and less aggressive behavior.Threat perception was the mediator between envy and aggression behavior,and information disclosure condition was the moderator between envy and threat perception.In experiment 3,2(Envy type:malicious envy vs.benign envy)*2(Activation conditions:self-affirmation vs.control)between-subjects design,from the perspective of the person that envy,envy in individual mood after being induced,provided to the individual access to psychological support resources(self-affirmation),will alleviate the perceived threat and aggressive.The results showed that there was no significant difference between threat perception and aggression under the condition of benign envy,but the threat perception and aggression were significantly reduced under the condition of malicious envy.The mediating effect test showed that threat perception was a mediator between malicious envy and aggression,self-affirmation was a moderator between malicious envy and threat perception,and the moderated-mediation model was be founded under the malicious envy condition.To sum up,this study verified the hypothesis of dual envy theory and RPM,indicating that malicious envy can improve the threat perception and increase the aggressive behavior,while benign envy cannot increase the aggressive behavior by three experiments.In addition,the influence of malicious envy on aggression is realized through threat perception.If an individual who have been in malicious envy condition can obtain psychological-social resource,there would be a significant reduction in threat perception and aggression behavior.This study is helpful to explain the influence of envy on aggression behavior and the occurrence mechanism of aggression.This study has certain implications on reducing aggression behavior.