Resource Scarcity Predicts Women’s Intrasexual Competition: The Role of Trait and State Envy

Researchers studying non-human females have highlighted the role of intrasexual resource competition. Here, we considered women’s intrasexual competitive attitudes toward rival derogation and self-promotion as a function of resource availability. Further, we tested the overarching hypothesis that both trait and state envy are complicit in the motivation to compete with intrasexual rivals in the face of resource scarcity. Using a resource availability prime, in Study 1 (N = 167), Canadian heterosexual young adult women in the resource scarcity condition held greater derogatory attitudes toward rivals when they were average or high in dispositional envy. However, contrary to our prediction for self-promotion, the interaction demonstrated that the resource scarcity prime was only effective among women low in envy. In Study 2 (N = 132), there were indirect effects for heightened state envy on the link between resource scarcity with stronger attitudes toward rival derogation. These findings highlight that resource availability exerts an important influence on women’s intrasexual rivalry, which appears to be driven, in part, by envy experienced in the face of perceived resource scarcity. At the trait level, high envy women might compete for scarcer resources by derogating rivals, whereas low envy women might do so via self-promotion.