When confronted with others’ fortunes and misfortunes, emotional reactions can take various courses—ranging from assimilative (happy-for-ness, sympathy) to contrastive reactions (envy, schadenfreude) and from prosocial (reward) to antisocial behavior (punish). We tested how social comparisons shape these reactions and integrated findings into a social comparison framework using a novel paradigm. In nine experiments participants played variants of a lottery in which they could win (= fortune) or lose (= misfortune) different amounts of money. We presented participants with lottery outcomes of others who either ranked lower than (i.e., downward comparison), similarly to (i.e., lateral comparison), or higher than (i.e., upward comparison) on the comparison dimension (start money or cognitive abilities) prior to their (mis)fortunes. I present an overview of the nine experiments in which (1) participants’ ranking on a comparison dimension relative to other persons and (2) others’ dynamic (mis)fortunes (changing their relative ranking) determined how much individuals experienced envy, happy-for-ness, schadenfreude, and sympathy. Emotional reactions also evoked behavioral consequences: The contrastive emotions envy and schadenfreude decreased prosocial behavior, while the assimilative emotions happy-for-ness and sympathy increased prosocial behavior. Overall, the data suggest that envy and sympathy arise when comparative concerns are threatened, and happy-for-ness and schadenfreude arise when they are satisfied (because inequality increases vs. decreases, respectively) and explain behavior aimed at dealing with these concerns. In addition, I will present new data in which we investigate whether the four emotions differ when social comparisons are elicited in gain versus loss contexts.