New Faculty Seminar Series - Argiro Kliamenakis

Envy has long been a morally condemned emotion. To this effect, the present research asks whether experiencing envy can alter individuals’ moral self-concept by lowering their moral self-regard, resulting in morally relevant consumption and behavior. Of the two facets of envy—malicious and benign—only malicious envy is associated with destructive feelings toward the envied other. Drawing on self-perception and self-signalling theories, the current research investigates the effects of type of envy on morally relevant consumption and behavior. Specifically, five experiments uncover how experiencing malicious, but not benign, envy drives consumers to morally cleanse, both behaviorally and symbolically. This effect arises because malicious (vs. benign) envy taints self-perceptions of morality, thus triggering the need to restore a moral self-image through both the purchase of products that are positioned on their ethical attributes and prosocial behavior. This effect is also shown to be exacerbated when the relationship with the target of one’s malicious envy is perceived as close (vs. distant). However, directing thoughts toward the normalcy of experiencing envy reduces the moral cleansing effect, providing an important boundary condition.