The use of experimental techniques in economics in recent years has made it possible to discover evidence on thepeople’s decision making, who are not only guided by their own benefit but alsofor the material gains that other individuals may havefrom your social network. Forenvy, definitely.
But within this framework, a challenge remained for scientists: discovering the evolutionary origin of envy and theoretically testing its possible effects on companies. And that is what the Professor of the Department of Economics of the Carlos III University of Madrid, Antonio Cabrales, has tried to do in a new research, recently published in SERIEs, the magazine of the Spanish Association of Economics.
The concept of envy used in the study is what is known in technical terms as“aversion to inequality”. That is, individuals are willing to spend resources of all kinds (monetary, effort, etc.) in order to reduce the differences in material well-being with respect to other people. The research raises envy asresult of a competition for limited resources. ? What is demonstrated in the article is that there arepowerful evolutionary reasonsso that we are envious and, therefore, thatwe carry it encoded in the genes“, says Professor Cabrales.
According to this hypothesis, envy may have its origin in the fact that the resources obtained at work, for example, are used later in some type of interpersonal conflict, such as when obtaining the best partner or dominance in the herd. In these cases, it isimportant to have accumulated more resources than the opposite, so that victory would not only depend on having a lot, but on having more than another person.
“For this reason it is important that education and training correct tendencies with potentially harmful consequences for the individual and the group, as they already do from the Biblical Decalogue to theOthelloof Shakespeare “, remembers the economist.
Envy at work
Game theory techniques applied to interpersonal and intertemporal decision problems have been used in the study. On the other hand, an experimental part has also been carried out to analyze the effects of envy in real subjects. To do this, a group of undergraduate students was put in a computer lab to make decisions that had concrete monetary effects on them and simultaneously on other people. Finally, the research has delved into the analysis of data used in labor markets, to try to discern how envy affects various contractual variables, salaries, movements between companies, etc.
One of the conclusions drawn from the study is thatthere are many labor market phenomena that are easier to understand once envy is taken into account. For example, due to internal promotions or salary ranges, workers are more compressed in companies than would be expected if the productivity of individuals were simply considered.
? The effects of envy – says Cabrales – can be seen in promotions that are slower than what would be recommended for reasons of efficiency and in that the abandonment of the company by people with higher qualifications can have serious effects on those who stay ,? concludes.
