PhronesisEnvy is an adaptive comparative emotion that can motivate self-improvement through upward social comparison. Chronic and malicious envy is a wrong attractor W_envy in which the envying person is captured in a persistent comparative diminishment configuration: the envied person's advantage is experienced as the self's deprivation, generating hostility, derogation, and sabotage that do not resolve the perceived gap.
We apply the Displacement Framework to formalize chronic envy. The self-referential comparison ground state S0_comparison is defined as calibrated, episodic upward comparison that motivates improvement without generating persistent hostility or identity threat. W_envy arises through the identity threat mechanism: envy occurs when another's advantage implies one's own inadequacy on a self-defining dimension — not mere wanting, but an attack on the moral self.
Nine formal propositions cover: S0_comparison as calibrated episodic social comparison (P1), W_envy as comparative diminishment wrong attractor (P2), the identity threat mechanism — envy arising on self-defining dimensions (P3), benign vs. malicious envy as distinct basin subtypes with different motivational structures (P4), Schadenfreude as downward-comparison relief that does not resolve W_envy (P5), social media as chronic envy engine generating curated idealized comparison landscapes (P6), the six-stage derogation loop — hostility and sabotage as W_envy maintenance (P7), cumulative Phi_envy across relational, motivational, and psychological domains (P8), and return paths including self-compassion, value clarification, gratitude, social media reduction, and narcissistic vulnerability treatment (P9).
Narcissistic envy, the Schadenfreude shadow economy, and Tesser's self-evaluation maintenance model are analyzed.