Blinded by envy, protected by identification: How envy affects creative evaluation

Abstract

Though envy is a commonly experienced emotion in today’s fast-paced, competitive workplaces, its influence on how we judge others' outputs in terms of creativity remains largely unexplored. This paper investigates how different types of envy–malicious and benign–impact creative evaluations of ideas. Through three studies (N = 1,374) (two pre-registered), we find that benign and malicious envy have divergent effects on creativity evaluation and investment decisions. Specifically, we find that individuals experiencing benign (vs. malicious) envy evaluate ideas generated by an envied target as more creative and subsequently exhibit greater willingness to invest in those ideas (Studies 1 and 2).We find that this effect is driven by personal identification with the envied target: benign (vs. malicious) enviers are more likely to personally identify with the envied target, resulting in higher creative evaluations and increased willingness to invest in the idea (Study 2). Study 3 revealed that higher (vs. lower) organizational identification weakens the negative impact of malicious envy on creative evaluation, which in turn reduces its detrimental effect on investment decisions. These findings shed light on the nuanced dynamics of envy and its impact on creativity evaluation.