Dante had a particularly gruesome punishment for the envious: their eyes were wired shut. In this episode of Office Hours, I explore why envy is such a powerful happiness killer—and how to stop feeding it in your own life.
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Where to find Arthur Brooks:
• In-person Retreats: https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/
• Newsletter: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
7:15 Dante’s Divine Comedy
11:56 Definition of envy and its purpose
18:46 Benign and malicious envy
24:13 The effects on the brain when you’re feeling envy
28:30 What people envy
33:25 5 ways to be less envious and much happier
45:06 Q&A: Four classic temperaments
46:34 Q&A: Developing your PhD research question
48:40 Q&A: Romantic love: addiction or happiness?
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Referenced:
• The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-of-your-life
• Arthur’s newsletter: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter
• The Happiness Scale: https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale
• Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto 13: http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu/reader?reader%5Bcantica%5D=2&reader%5Bcanto%5D=13
• Josef Epstein. Envy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VQVKUPC?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
•Envy: An Adversarial Review and Comparison of Two Competing Views: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1754073919873131
•The Role of Subjective and Objective Social Status in the Generation of Envy: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.513495/full
•When your gain is my pain and your pain is my gain: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19213918/
•Is envy harmful to a society's psychological health and wellbeing?: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29316510/
•Envy: Functional specificity and sex-differentiated design features: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-11291-001
•What to Do When Social Media Inspires Envy: https://daily.jstor.org/what-to-do-when-social-media-inspires-envy/
•Mitigating malicious envy: Why successful individuals should reveal their failures: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-11196-001
•How gratitude inhibits envy: From the perspective of positive psychology: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33300284/
•Bragging and humblebragging in online reviews: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738319302063?casa_token=2WdCSNbKzdQAAAAA:2PlvLLvja-2c9_454Rnb8h9GB55Kt0Rg3A1pY7XpBxksabWaNZBsbdjbnay4DhKlrJXhk-aEow
• ...References continued at: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours
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