Envy and Jealousy: Learned or Innate

[Merrik Waters]

Envy is defined as the coveting of desired attribute belonging to someone else. This could be a physical item, an emotion such as happiness or a attribute such as beauty.

Jealousy is defined as the fear of loss of something (i.e. a special relationship) to a third party.

Everyone in every culture has felt Envy at some point in their lives: A friend get a spiffy new toy, a neighbor gets a beautiful car, so-and-so is happy and I want what they have. These are not uncommon feelings. Envy has even been observed in infants when mothers hold another child. By these definitions I feel that envy is an innate behavior.

Jealousy on the other hand varies widely from culture to culture. What is seen as jealousy in one culture is a standard, socially acceptable behavior in another. This suggests that cultural learning can change the the form jealousy takes and the ways that it is expressed. But does that make it a learned behavior? Or is it an innate behavior since, as far as I know, there has not been a culture that has NOT expressed jealousy?

TLR
I have no clue if envy and jealousy are learned or innate behaviors.
What are your thoughts?

 

[Evonisia]

I think Envy is innate. It seems to me like it's an emotion (or maybe the effect of an emotion) and we have no way to stop it from being a part of us. We can control how we deal with it, though.

If jealousy is part of fear, then it's also something that's just natural, and therefore innate.

 

[Queen Michael]

I think it's natural. Wanting what others have is human nature.

 

[Merrik Waters]

Then you realize there are different forms of jealousy such as Romantic and sexual. Not all cultures feel the sexual jealousy, specifically ones where polygamy is a common place. So that would make it learned. Or am I missing something?

 

[Gigano]

"Envy" is an innate potential human emotion.

What triggers it is culturally and environmentally decided, though. I can only envy what people I know of - and find in some way comparable to myself - have and throw in my face. Some cultures might value things others do not, and hence those will be subject to envy in some cultures, but not in others.

An emotion that exist across all cultures can have different expressions in each and every one of them. Such is but a trivial statement.

 

[Darks63]

Then you realize there are different forms of jealousy such as Romantic and sexual. Not all cultures feel the sexual jealousy, specifically ones where polygamy is a common place. So that would make it learned. Or am I missing something?

I'm not sure if polygamist societies don't feel jealousy really. In the case of men who marry multiple women they often have a favorite who will likely be a source of jealousy for the other wives. Such men also while having no problem with multiple lovers/partners themselves will fiercely forbade their wives from doing the same.

 

[Aurion]

Existence of envy/jealousy is just who we are. How we express it- up to and including attempting to combat the feeling- is a learned behavior.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Completely innate, animals want to have lots of things and they want them for themselves because that insures survival.
Mitigating our primal behaviour is the part we learn and practice, in most cultures at least it is frowned upon to express envy or jealousy publicly.

 

[L. Declis]

Study animals.

Do they feel jealousy? There was a famous study recently with monkeys where they fed the monkeys after completing the same test. One monkey was given a grape in view of the other. That other monkey got a slice of cucumber and then threw a ***** fit in anger over the unfairness of it.

I'd say yeah, it's pretty innate. Most emotions are.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Then you realize there are different forms of jealousy such as Romantic and sexual. Not all cultures feel the sexual jealousy, specifically ones where polygamy is a common place. So that would make it learned. Or am I missing something?

Do you have any proof that some cultures don't feel romantic or sexual jealousy? Because I can't see how they wouldn't. Even in a polygamous society, people (both men and women) might not get to marry the person they are most attracted to, for whatever reason, and will desire someone else's husband or wife. The fact that people can marry multiple wives or husbands still doesn't mean everyone is going to get what they want.

For example, if tomorrow everyone in the US woke up and decided that polygamy was totally cool and we should all have multiple spouses, I still seriously doubt Jessica Biel is going to marry me, and thus I'll remain jealous of Justin Timberlake (and his sick dance moves).

 

[AT God]

Envy and jealousy are innate human behaviors, they must exist within humans for humans to express them sincerely. How we apply jealousy and envy is learned because we no longer operate according to our primal instincts. The only understanding of primal jealousy I have is based in evolutionary-based relationships: males driven to spread their genes to as many others as possible and females are driven to find a male who can be a provider for her and her offspring. Jealousy innately occurs in this structure, one example would be a pregnant female who discovers her partner is out fraternizing with other females. This poses a risk to her safety and the safety of her offspring.

That is just a simplified primal example. To go to the other extreme, being jealous because your significant other is facebook friends with their ex-partner is learned, but it represents the same sort of jealous response shown in the first example: fear of infidelity. The learned aspect is the idea that being facebook friends is somehow equivalent to infidelity, that isn't at all innate, but the response is based one a natural instinct/fear.