RESEARCH_FILE
Francesca Gino
Harvard Business School
Known for:Research on how successful individuals can mitigate malicious envy from others by revealing their past failures, humanizing their success and raising perceived deservingness
SEE THE PRACTICE
Turn a thought this research explains into one clear move.
THE THOUGHT
“Everyone resents my success”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“A short reply can be ordinary, not loaded.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Open your recent messages or notes and pick one instance that felt suspicious. Rewrite the interpretation in a second column as a plain possibility, such as ‘busy,’ ‘tired,’ or ‘brief style,’ then close the note without sending anything.
Key findings
- 2018
Research at Harvard Business School showed that successful individuals who reveal their past failures trigger less malicious envy from observers — because humanizing success raises perceived deservingness, shifting others' envy from the malicious toward the benign form. Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures ↗