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Positive Effects Of Envy

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“Envy is pain at the good fortune of others.”(Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk II, Chapter 10)
Envy is "a painful or resentful awareness of an advantage of another, and wanting to have that advantage."(-Webster’s) Many individuals hold a variety of different views on envy for many reasons; it can be very beneficial in some ways but harmful or disastrous in others. Despite general opinions, envy cannot just simply be deemed either good or bad because it entails elements from each of the two sides. It can be both beneficial and destructive at the same time.What many fail to see is that envy can in fact create many positive effects, including noticeable increases in motivation and action, higher personal standards and the heightening of one’s abilities and memory. In general, envy is frowned upon and is considered to be a negative emotion to experience because it is believed to control thoughts and cloud judgments.
Sometimes individuals become inordinately envious of others and their achievements, which can be destructive or harmful to them and to others around them, particularly those whom they envy, because the feeling sparks a dark process of thought which can lead even the most resilient human beings into making the most erratic decisions and behaving in a reprehensible manner. Research found in the 2011 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Sarah Hill showed that one of the downsides of envy is that it gets in the way of people thinking and does not allow

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