Bidirectional relations between altruistic tendency and benign/malicious envy among adolescents: A longitudinal study and weekly diary study

Abstract Altruism is a prosocial tendency that has developed through long-term evolutionary selection. The present study adopts social comparison and evolutionary psychology theories to examine how benign/malicious envy can affect altruism and how altruism can affect the two types of envy in turn, respectively. In Study 1, 513 adolescents participated in a three-wave longitudinal survey to explore the relationships between dispositional altruistic tendency and dispositional benign/malicious envy. The cross-lagged analysis showed a long-term and stable negative bidirectional relationship between dispositional altruistic tendency and dispositional malicious envy and a short-term positive bidirectional relationship between dispositional altruism and dispositional benign envy. In Study 2, 109 adolescents kept a weekly diary for seven consecutive weeks to record state levels of altruistic tendency and benign/malicious envy in their daily lives. The hierarchical linear model demonstrated that weekly altruistic tendency and weekly benign envy could positively predict each other, and weekly altruistic tendency presented a negative bidirectional relationship with weekly malicious envy. These findings offer an effective way to study the relationship between human behavior and emotions from perspectives of social comparison and evolutionary psychology theories. Meanwhile, it also has practical significance for the harmonious development of society.