Romantic Jealousy and Romantic Envy

Abstract

Factor analyses and Procrustes rotations of the responses of 1194 female and 877 male university students in seven countries to a 69-item Likert-type questionnaire revealed cross-cultural commonalities and differences for romantic jealousy and romantic envy. However, when mean ratings of the questionnaire items were categorized as indicating agreement or disagreement with the items, the evidence for cross-cultural invariance of jealousy and envy was less impressive. The stronger cross-cultural invariance found with factor-analytic data was interpreted as evidence that the issues of concern in jealousy and envy situations are similar across nations. The weaker invariance found with the ratings of the items was taken as evidence that events arousing those issues of concern differ across nations.