These types of people are in some ways the inversion of the auto-critical. Instead of standards for success coming from within, their standards for success are only set based on comparing themselves to others.

To justify this, when threatened with competition, the natural defense mechanism is to pull down or pull back their competition with discouragement rather than progressing by their own merit. The gain becomes one of relativity.

Why worry about motivating yourself when you can close the competitive gap by disparaging others?