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What Drives Jealousy? By Sarah Hill And David Buss

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What Drives Jealousy?
Evolution
Sarah Hill and David Buss, in The Evolutionary Psychology of Envy , find we are envious due to the competition of resources. Social comparisons determine where we stand, in society, and how to adjust. Envy has been shaped by natural selection to signal competitive disadvantage, it also combines with the desire to possess the same advantage.
Unlike common conception, the target of men and women’s envy is not celebrities or millionaires. Most often it is same-sex peers or individuals, with whom we are in direct resource competition. Friends, siblings and co-workers are the primary sources of envy, even though celebrities, millionaires and rulers have greater access to resources. It is those we are in direct competition in day-to-day transactions, in the immediate social group. Personal income can make a person happy or sad, but they are far more likely to be satisfied when their colleagues earn far less than them.
Envy causes a person to focus on the source of envy and motivate them to act upon it. Acquiring resources we lack as well as taking away that which the rival enjoys, in a way that benefits us. Humans respond to envy by submission, ambition or destruction. Ambition is to compete, submission is to avoid and destruction is denigration i.e. criticising or gossiping.
Childhood
The common belief, concerning jealousy, is that we cannot control a lot of it. ‘It is a natural, instinctive emotion that everyone experiences at one point or

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