Cognitive behavioural responses to envy: development of a new measure.

BACKGROUND

Envy is depicted as motivating destructive desires and actions intended to spoil or destroy that which is envied.

AIM: To develop a new valid and reliable measure of malicious envy (C-BRES), which included items representing the cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses empirically associated with this emotion.

METHOD: A total of 203 adults completed the new 22-item cognitive and behavioural responses to envy scale (C-BRES). Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to test for reliability and internal consistency of the C-BRES. Evidence towards the concurrent construct validity (convergent and discriminant) of the C-BRES was assessed through correlations with the Dispositional envy scale and other measures of psychosocial outcomes empirically linked to envy.

RESULTS

Factor analysis for categorical data identified five dimensions of envy, namely: injustice, hostility, malicious action tendencies, malicious feelings and behavioural responses. The reliability indices of the five factors and the total scale were satisfactory (>0.85). Evidence towards the concurrent construct validity (convergent and discriminant) of the C-BRES is reported. In particular, envy was associated with higher levels of depression, psychoticism, neuroticism, anger and lower levels of self-esteem and quality of life.

CONCLUSION

All findings support the psychometric adequacy of the C-BRES.