How Envy Undermines Competition

On Sunday, September 22^nd, some of the world’s top trail runners descended upon the Eastern Sierra in Mammoth, California, for the penultimate race of this year’s Golden Trail Series. The race was 26 kilometers in distance, with 1,400 meters of vertical gain, and deep competitive fields.[1] Early in the race, two American runners—Anna Gibson, of Brooks Running, and Rachel Drake, of Nike Trail—found themselves in contention, vying for the third podium position.

From the outside, the battle between Gibson and Drake looked intense. But after the race, Gibson commended Drake for “what everyone thinks was an epic battle, but what was really just the most fun, unexpected teamwork strategy of all time.”[2] Gibson and Drake also appeared together on the Trail Network Podcast following the race, where they expressed gratitude for one another, praising each other’s strengths, and they celebrated a friendship forged in striving.[3]

Sometimes competition is described as zero-sum. One person’s victory is another person’s loss, and we feel compelled to sorrow in another’s success. But Gibson and Drake present an alternative vision of what excellent competition can look like. We can strive together, calling each other to higher standards. We can be focused, driven, and invested in our crafts without compromising our communities. We can compete without envy.

The Vice of Envy

Envy is the vice of “unhappy self-assertion”[4] characterized by “feeling bitter when others have it better.”[5] It has a negative emotional valence[6] and “arises when a person lacks another’s superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it.”[7]

Envy is connected to vainglory. It is concerned that drawing attention to someone else “diminishes one’s own good name.”[8] And envy is connected to pride.[9] It is aggrieved by the idea that someone else’s good exceeds one’s own.[10]

Envy in Sports

Envy is common in sports, where one’s gain is often perceived as another’s loss. But envy is certainly not required for competitive excellence (as Gibson and Drake demonstrate), and we should avoid it because envy is costly—to communities and to our personal flourishing.

Here are three indications your relationships in sports are characterized by this vice.

1. You can’t celebrate the victories of others.

Thomas Aquinas describes envy as a vice opposed to charity, insofar as charity (or love) rejoices in another’s good. By contrast, envy grieves over another’s good.[11]

A helpful way to determine whether you are animated by this vice is if you struggle to celebrate the successes of other people. Are you undone by loss? Can you be a participant and a fan? Or can you genuinely rejoice when someone else does something great?

2. You are motivated to tear down others, rather than to improve yourself.

Van de Ven, Zeelenber, and Pieters studied the motivations envy versus related emotions.[12] They found that benign envy (what we often call “emulation”) is a leveling-up emotion. It feels the sting of loss but is motivated to get better—or to become more excellent oneself—to correct the comparative lack.[13] This athlete might work harder to level up. By contrast, malicious envy (“vice of envy”) is not motivated to move upward. Rather, it desires to pull superiors down.

This is a big deal. The vice of envy does not make us better athletes; it just makes us worse competitors. The envious athlete is motivated to explain away the successes of others. They might thwart another’s progress, diminish their success, or sabotage them—rather than respond productively with self-improvement.

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3. You define success in binary terms.

Envy construes another’s gain as its own loss. You win or lose. You are the best or nothing special at all. This perception is often a consequence of understanding sports in narrow, performance-focused terms.

Strictly speaking, this perception is not false. In a race, only one athlete can win. However, excellence can mean much more than crossing the finish line first. It can mean personal improvement, competing with integrity, or mastering a skill (like hill-climbing) the athlete previously did poorly.

A good way to combat envy is to think of success in broader terms—to realize we can all be excellent at once, and that good competition facilitates progress. Competing with others helps us get the most out of ourselves.[14]

Final Thoughts

Envy is common in sports, where we are regularly confronted by the excellence of others and have the opportunity to see how we measure up. But envy is not necessary. It makes us worse competitors, and it has heavy personal and community costs.

Envy can’t celebrate the victories of other people. It is insecure and insatiable, and it will always have more work to do to assert itself as superior. Envy is exhausting. We should avoid it whenever possible.