Existing work on the effects of social comparison on envy and generosity typically involves manipulation of social comparison with respect to dimensions that carry personal meaning and reflect upon the self, for example, performance, ability, or achievement. In the current work, we examine the effects of social comparison based on a purely arbitrary, manipulated situation. We measure malicious envy via monetary decisions that have real consequences for the target of comparison, in place of a self‐reported questionnaire. In addition, we test the effects of the preliminary social comparison on generosity in a subsequent and ostensibly unrelated situation. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate the effect of randomly manipulated upward social comparison on a monetary allocation decision, and we establish the link between this allocation decision and malicious envy. In Experiment 2 we show that upward comparison affects not only malicious envy towards the target of the comparison but also decreases generosity towards a third party in a subsequent, ostensibly unrelated situation. Experiment 3 shows the effect of this type of social comparison, beyond a specific direction, on reducing generosity towards a third party.

中文翻译：

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随意进行社会比较，恶意嫉妒和慷慨

现有的关于社会比较对嫉妒和慷慨影响的研究通常涉及操纵社会比较，这些维度具有个人意义并反映自我，例如表现，能力或成就。在当前的工作中，我们研究了基于纯粹任意，可操纵的情况的社会比较的影响。我们通过货币决策来衡量恶意嫉妒，而货币决策会对比较目标产生实际影响，而不是自我报告的调查表。此外，我们在随后且表面上无关的情况下测试了初步的社会比较对慷慨的影响。在实验1中，我们证明了随机操纵的向上社会比较对货币分配决策的影响，并且我们在分配决策和恶意嫉妒之间建立了联系。在实验2中，我们表明向上比较不仅会影响对比较目标的恶意嫉妒，而且会在随后的表面上无关的情况下降低对第三方的慷慨解囊。实验3展示了这种社会比较类型（超出特定方向）对减少对第三方的慷慨影响。