More than a decade ago, he and his team ran an experiment to test whether capuchin monkeys can experience envy.
It is a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite.
"We found that if Facebook users experience envy of the activities and lifestyles of their friends on Facebook, they are much more likely to report feelings of depression," Duffy said.
In a followup, van de Ven asked his subjects, every evening for two weeks, whether they'd experienced envy that day; if they had, he probed the specific contours of the emotion and asked them to report how it had made them act.
As Sarah Hill and David Buss explain in their research, The Evolutionary Psychology of Envy, we experience envy because it's enabled us to evaluate our position in the competition for resources.
Elster points out, in addition, that an envy-free allocation does not ensure that no one experiences envy, if an individual can envy someone else's utility, rather than his resources.
"We found that if Facebook users experience envy of the activities and lifestyles of their friends on Facebook, they are much more likely to report feelings of depression," said Duffy.
"We found that if Facebook users experience envy of the activities and lifestyles of their friends on Facebook, they are much more likely to report feelings of depression," said Margaret Duffy, a professor at the MU School of Journalism.
Holly Lancaster, a 52-year-old airline customer service agent from Miami, said she was experiencing tourist envy after a November trip to Greece.
