Lexical Evidence for Malicious and Benign Envy: The Affective Structure of Japanese Emotion Words

Abstract Although there is debate over how envy is conceptualized, one prominent view is that envy comprises two subtypes—malicious and benign envy—that differ in their emotional and motivational natures. Previous research has shown that people can experience both types regardless of whether their language lexically distinguishes them. However, it remains unclear how, and to what extent, these subtypes are reflected in the lexical and affective structure of emotion words within a single language. We examined the affective structure of Japanese emotion words expressing envy and related emotions, such as jealousy, resentment, and admiration. In two surveys, 22,819 participants rated 3,021 words for valence (positive, negative, or mixed) and classified each word into an emotion category (e.g., anger, sadness), with at least 100 ratings per word. By visualizing the affective space of these words, we analyzed how 11 words referring to envy clustered into two distinct subgroups. Results showed that one subgroup consisted of words perceived predominantly as negative and classified as disgust or anger (e.g., netamashii ), whereas the other consisted of words characterized by more ambivalent valence and showing no single dominant emotion category (e.g., urayamashii ). These subgroups correspond to theoretical distinctions between malicious and benign envy, respectively. In addition, the word for jealousy clustered with malicious envy, while the words for resentment and admiration formed separate groups. These findings demonstrate that perceived Japanese affective-semantic structure reflects both malicious and benign envy, highlighting nuanced similarities and differences among envy-related emotions and offering a lexical perspective on envy’s dual structure.