Lasana T. Harris

People have an affective response to others based on their perceived social category. This group-based affect is influenced by the target's perceived warmth and competence, and affects subsequent behavioral tendencies toward the target. One such group-based emotion is envy, an ambivalent reaction that entails both admiration and dislike to social targets. Envied targets elicit obligatory association but often also elicit active harm when social contexts allow it. This chapter discusses the mechanisms of this volatile ambivalent social emotion within the context of social psychological research and neuroscience. In addition, it addresses social psychological questions using both neuroscience and questionnaire data. First, the chapter describes envy as an ambivalent emotion, and then places it within the stereotype content model of intergroup emotions. It then examines its cognitive, neural, and behavioral concomitant.

Social neuroscience suggests medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) as necessary for social cognition. However, the mPFC activates less to members of extreme outgroups that elicit disgust, an emotion directed toward both people and objects. This study aimed to counteract that effect. Participants made either superficial categorical age estimations or individuating food-preference judgments about people, while fMRI recorded neural activity. Besides replicating the reduced mPFC activity to extreme outgroups that elicit disgust, this study demonstrates that the same type of judgment for these individuals is processed in a region anatomically distinct from social groups that elicit exclusively social emotions (pity, envy, pride). Finally, inferring individuating information (food preferences) increases mPFC activation above superficial categorical judgments. This evidence fits differentiated mPFC processing of extreme outgroups, which activate mPFC less than other groups, but suggests that individuation increases activation.

Accounts of prisoner abuse and other institutional violence often blame a few isolated individuals, but social psychology emphasizes social contexts, which can make almost anyone oppress, conform, and obey in abetting destructive social behavior. In this Policy Forum, meta-analyses demonstrate the quantitative reliability and import of social contexts. Moreover, recent data show that initial reactions to low-status, oppositional outgroups may involve disgust and contempt, consistent with abuse. Together, social pressures and social prejudices help explain the recent abuse scandals.