嫉妒有益事业？

    我们现在要讨论的情形真是再熟悉不过了：当你发现，自己一直以来努力争取的升职机会给了一位经验不如自己、而且入职时间还比你短的同事时，你的心里就像打翻了五味瓶。你的内心充满了嫉妒。如果能与胜出者握手祝贺，固然是好，但这样的情况鲜有发生。

    现年46岁的Happy Brain Science创始人斯科特•克拉布特里回想起了自己当年的这种感受。当时，他在一家科技公司担任管理职位，他新招的一个员工谈下的薪水只比他当时低了几千美元。他说：“我发现他刚毕业拿到的薪水已直逼我花几十年功夫才达到的水平。”

    克拉布特里经过很多低薪和不那么诱人的工作才获得成功，面对这位迅速获得高薪职位的下属，他的心里非常不平衡。“心情不好的结果是我减少了对工作的付出。”

    想到将要管理一个他如此嫉妒的人，克拉布里特心情很低落，最终促使他另寻高就。后来他创立了自己的企业。他说，这源于他意识到不断与他人攀比只会带来不快——而不快乐的员工为公司创造的投资回报自然会下降。

    因此，如果最终结果是敌意和工作满意度下降，是不是就等于说，嫉妒总是坏事呢？不尽然。

    2011年，一份名为《为什么嫉妒胜于钦佩》(Why Envy Outperforms Admiration）的研究报告称，如果疏导得当，嫉妒可以激发人们的积极性，提高生产率。研究人员尼尔斯•凡德冯和马塞尔•齐林伯格将嫉妒分为两大类：恶意嫉妒，导致谴责和排斥竞争；善意嫉妒，激发效仿和竞争。

    嫉妒的核心是将自己与他人相比较，凡德冯和齐林伯格对善意嫉妒的研究认定，相互比较可以促使人们更努力地工作，实现更高的目标。

    以职业运动为例。“本质上，运动员的一部分工作就是看其他人如何表现，努力赶超，”27岁的职业击剑运动员本•布拉顿说。他是2012年基辅世界击剑锦标赛（2012 Kiev World Fencing Championships）金牌得主。

    干布拉顿这一行，只有怀着不断挑战国家级、世界级和奥运会级别的竞争动力，才能脱颖而出，夺得冠军。这种嫉妒是超越竞争对手的强烈渴望，它不一定是坏事。

    “如果你对自己的表现满意，就很难有动力更加努力、付出更多，”得克萨斯大学（University of Texas）奥斯汀分校心理学教授阿特•马克曼表示。“事实上，需要一些不安来推动你实现更高的成就。运动员就常常这样做，他们会找一位竞争对手，以胜过这名对手为目标。”

    布拉顿承认在看到队友排名靠前时，他有过一段自我怀疑的时期。布拉顿说：“那时，我让其他人给我设定标准。事实是，面对竞争对手充满负面情绪并无用处，它只会将人的注意力从终极目标——自己的成功上转移开。”

    当他看到队友达到更高水平时，布拉顿表示，他意识到自己是多么渴望达到他们的水平。不再内心充满嫉妒，布拉顿采取了积极的态度，而是自问：“他们做了什么我没做的事情？随着嫉妒消失，我也更上一层楼。效果可谓立竿见影。”

    It's all too familiar -- that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you discover that the promotion you have been vying for went to a colleague with less experience and fewer years at your company. You're consumed with envy, and while it would be great to end the day with a "best-man-won" handshake, it rarely goes that way.

    Scott Crabtree, 46, founder of Happy Brain Science, recalls the feeling when he was holding down a managerial position at a tech company when his new hire negotiated a salary that was just a few thousand short of his current pay. "I realized he was going to get a salary right out of school that took me decades to reach," he says.

    Crabtree, who had schlepped his way through numerous low paying and less glamorous jobs, grew resentful of the subordinate who'd essentially taken a short cut to a very high-paying position. "Feeling bad resulted in me putting in less effort."

    Crabtree grew depressed at the prospect of having to manage someone whom he was so envious of and this ultimately forced him to seek job satisfaction elsewhere. He eventually founded his own business, which he says stemmed from the realization that the constant comparison to others only created unhappiness – and, of course, unhappy employees yield less return on investment for the company.

    So if hostility and job dissatisfaction is the end result, does this mean that envy is always a bad thing? Not quite.

    According to a 2011 study called "Why Envy Outperforms Admiration," if channeled appropriately, envy can motivate people and boost productivity. Researchers Niels van de Van and Marcel Zeelenberg separate envy into two categories: malicious envy, which seeks to condemn and remove the competition, and benign envy, which is the desire to emulate and admire the competition.

    At the heart of envy is comparing oneself against others, and van de Van and Zeelenberg's study of benign envy asserts that comparison can drive someone to work harder to achieve more impressive goals.

    Take professional sports. "In essence, part of your job as an athlete is to look at how the other guy is performing and to try and outdo them," says Ben Bratton, 27, a professional fencer and gold medalist in the 2012 Kiev World Fencing Championships.

    In Bratton's line of work, the competitive drive to reach the national, world, and Olympic levels separates the champions from the runners-up. That envy, that aspiration to best your competitors, does not have to be malicious.

    "When you are happy with your performance, then it is hard to be motivated to work harder and to do more," says Art Markman, psychology professor at University of Texas at Austin. "Instead, you need some discomfort to push yourself to a higher level of achievement. Athletes often do this by finding a rival and setting the goal to outwork that rival."

    Bratton admits that he went through a period of self-doubt when he saw his teammates rank higher in the standings. "I was letting other people set the standard for me. The thing is, being consumed with negative feelings about a peer does nothing but take your eye off the ultimate prize -- your own success," says Bratton.

    When Bratton saw his teammates reach a higher plateau, he says he realized how badly he wanted to be where they were. Instead of being consumed by the envy, Bratton was able to put a positive spin by asking himself, "What are they doing that I'm not doing? By letting go of my jealousy I raised the bar for myself. The results were almost instantaneous," he says.