The Theory of Balanceology designates jealousy as one of the five core emotions: the other four are anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. Jealousy is a gut reaction to others having something that we want. Jealousy overlaps with envy. However, envy is more vicious than jealousy since envy actually wants to take away from what another person has. Jealousy overlaps with the human schadenfreude response (review previous posts). Jealousy can be positive if it functions as a motivational source of competition to acquire those things we are jealous and envious about. However, jealousy can cause a lot of problems for us with our Belonging-Need, and having the ability to connect with others both at the person-to-person level and at the group level.
