Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

100 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENVY
Reminded that he was permitted to disagree on a secret ballot, he
declared: ' "Yes, I tried to put myself in a public situation, even though I
was sitting in the booth in private. " ,
It would be difficult to think of more striking experimental proof of
David Riesman's theory and concept of the other-directed person than
the behaviour of those Norwegians.
Conformism and the fear of envy
The way in which envy is linked with all these experiments becomes
apparent as soon as we ask ourselves why a man is not prepared to trust
his senses and to defy a group. What is he afraid of? What could the
other students, whose identity he does not even know, do to him if he
trusted himself and contradicted them? Why is he afraid of being
himself?
The nature of the sanctions, or alternatively of the unexpressed
thoughts about him most feared by the subject, can be recognized from
the experiment in Norway and France, where the phased-in remarks
increased to the maximum the urge to conform. A faint snicker was one
of the milder sanctions. But the phasing-in of the sentence: 'Skal du
stikke deg ut?'-'Are you trying to show off?'-had a decisive effect
upon the Norwegian subjects: conformity with the group rose to 75 per
cent. Furthermore, they accepted the criticism impassively.
In France the sentence used was 'Voulez-vous vousfaire remarquer?'
('Trying to show off?') Its effect on the subject was somewhat slighter.
But in contrast to the Norwegians, about half the Frenchmen answered
the critics angrily. (Incidentally, in a control experiment with forty
Norwegian workmen, Milgram found their behaviour very similar to that
of the students.)
What, then, is basically feared by the man who, against his better
judgement, conforms to the group, is verbal reprisal, a reproach for
wanting to be better, more knowledgeable, cunning and observant than
the group. In other words, an expression of envy of his particular
abilities, his individuality and his self-assurance.
But at this point another question arises. Is the misled subject trying to
conform to the judgement of the group because to make a wrong
observation would embarrass him or put him to shame, or is he, while