| It generally feels good to perform better than others, as people feel proud and it enhances their status. At the same time, however, it may also feel bad to be better than others. People can feel concern for the outperformed, as these others might feel bad because they did poorly compared to the better off. Also, people might fear being envied, as envious people tend to feel and act negatively towards the envied. Not surprisingly, experiencing pride or a fear of envy leads to different behavior (e.g., showing off for pride versus becoming more helpful towards others following a fear of envy). Both the positive and negative affective responses following outperformance are well documented in the psychological literature, but it remains unclear when people will react in certain ways. Understanding this is important, not only to predict how people will react and behave when they perform better than others, but also because it can help to understand people?s behavior when they anticipate outperforming others. When people do not want to be better than others, they might reduce their effort leading to suboptimal outcomes. The current research aims to provide an integrative framework of when and how people react following outperformance. |
