Scientific Method / Science & Exploration  Envy stimulates the
economy—and is why you bought your iPhone  A new study that used
iPhones as objects of envy found that a certain kind of …  The
year is 2007 and your friend pulls a shiny new iPhone out of his
pocket. It's the first one you've ever seen, and you stare agape
as he lovingly taps the screen. A feeling starts to bubble up
inside—contempt? Rage? Hunger? No—it's that biblically reviled
emotion we know as envy.  While it's no secret that envy often
drives us to action, it's only recently that scientists have
realized there might be a brighter side to envy, at least for
businesses. Some assume that generating envy will boost sales,
but just as often pushing for envy seems to create resentment
and sales slump. According to a recent study that involved
perception of iPhones, this envy response can actually be tuned
based on different factors that push consumers toward or away
from a product.  To study envy, a group of researchers at
Tilburg University in th