Envy/Jealousy Tendency

An Excerpt from: The Psychology of Human Misjudgment
by Charles T. Munger

Envy/Jealousy Tendency

A member of a species designed through evolutionary
process to want often-scarce food is going to be driven
strongly toward getting food when it first sees food.
And this is going to occur often and tend to create some
conflict when the food is seen in the possession of another
member of the same species. This is probably the
evolutionary origin of the Envy/Jealousy Tendency that
lies so deep in human nature. Sibling jealousy is clearly
very strong and usually greater in children than adults. It
is often stronger than jealousy directed at strangers.
Kantian Fairness Tendency probably contributes to this
result.

 Envy/jealousy is extreme in myth, religion, and
literature wherein, in account after account, it triggers
hatred and injury. It was regarded as so pernicious by
the Jews of the civilization that preceded Christ that it
was forbidden, by phrase after phrase, in the laws of
Moses. You were even warned by the Prophet not to
covet your neighbor’s donkey.

 And envy/jealousy is also extreme in modern life.
For instance, university communities often go bananas
when some university employee in money management,
or some professor in surgery, gets annual compensation
in multiples of the standard professorial salary. And in
modern investment banks, law firms, etc., the
envy/jealousy effects are usually more extreme than they
are in university faculties. Many big law firms, fearing
disorder from envy/jealousy, have long treated all senior
partners alike in compensation, no matter how different
their contributions to firm welfare. As I have shared the
observation of life with Warren Buffett over decades, I
have heard him wisely say on several occasions: “It is
not greed that drives the world, but envy.”

 And, because this is roughly right, one would expect
a vast coverage of envy/jealousy in psychology
textbooks. But no such vast coverage existed when I
read my three textbooks. Indeed, the very words “envy”
and “jealousy” were often absent from the index.

 Nondiscussion of envy/jealousy is not a phenomenon
confined to psychology texts. When did any of you
last engage in any large group discussion of some issue
wherein adult envy/jealousy was identified as the cause
of someone’s argument? There seems to be a general
taboo against any such claim. If so, what accounts for
the taboo?

 My guess is that people widely and generally sense
that labeling some position as driven by envy/jealousy
will be regarded as extremely insulting to the position
taker, possibly more so when the diagnosis is correct
than when it is wrong. And if calling a position “envydriven”
is perceived as the equivalent of describing its
holder as a childish mental basket case, then it is quite
understandable how a general taboo has arisen.

 But should this general taboo extend to psychology
texts when it creates such a large gap in the correct, psychological
explanation of what is widespread and important?
My answer is no.