Unravelling the Ghanaian "pull him/her down (PhD) syndrome" of malicious envy.

The "pull him/her down" or the "PhD" syndrome is the Ghanaian colloquial term for malicious envy, the arousal of primitive urges to destroy the good fortune of someone simply because one lacks what the envied other has. Behaviors motivated by malicious envy and which result in the "pulling down" of others in a country classified as collectivistic and highly religious appear contradictory, however, and this paper aims to shed light on this seeming contradiction. Conceptualizations of envy, cultural dimensions of collectivism, religiosity, and patriarchy which counterintuitively enable "pulling down" behaviors, the three different categories of PhD syndrome perpetrators, and the influence of sibling dynamics in the PhD syndrome's enactments are explored. Recommendations for mitigating expressions of the PhD syndrome are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]