Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy – in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.

-Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein

Jealousy

Jealousy generally refers to the thoughts or feelings of insecurity, fear, and concern over a relative lack of possessions or safety¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy.

Romantic jealousy is feeling insecure about the relationship, and fearing that the partner may leave you, or is cheating on you. Essentially jealousy is a state of fear. You are so much into your partner, that you always want your partner to be with you all the time.

Jealousy is a hallmark of low self-esteem. You are more concerned about the partner than yourself. You are not self-aware, and you are not focused on improving your social, interpersonal, and overall skills. You have not set any long-term goal for yourself, and you do not have a plan for the future. Therefore, you are living life as it comes, managing, or rather struggling every day. You are not aware of the purpose why you are born, and you have not worked on your physicality. Therefore you do not have confidence and respect for yourself. This puts you in a state of fear of losing the person, who probably is one of those “things”, that you think is yours and should remain yours.

Jealousy, like other dark psychological traits, gets developed over time with a lack of boundaries. If your partner allows you to enter his/her personal space, you bother more and more about your partner and you start losing yourself. Because of the small purpose of life, the partner becomes the purpose. Your invasion of the personal space pushes the partner away.

It is then manifested with a variety of behaviors, like resentment, doubt, questioning, anger, and rage, and you play hard to control the partner. The more you try to cling onto your partner, the far the partner goes emotionally.

It is therefore essential to understand your own jealousy level so that you can take preemptive measures to get rid of the jealousy and take the control of your life back.

Jealousy Psychological Model

There are two accepted models of Jealousy:- White model(1981), which deals with rational jealousy, and the Pfeiffer and Young Model(1989), which along with rationality, also encompasses irrationality for the reason of jealousy.

As we in the Lyfas team have come to a conclusion, that jealousy is more of deep-rooted psychology, affected by childhood experiences, we have adopted  Pfeiffer and Young Model(1989).

Example:- A person feels jealous when the ex-partner(with whom the person has broken up) is seen with a new partner. In this case, there is no sense of loss, but there is emotional jealousy.

Jealousy is often a result of paranoia and suspicion about the partner, and doubt can be brought out of the thin air.

The behavioral outcome is detective or protective, which is a coup mechanism when a real or imaginary threat to the relationship is perceived.

Normal Vs Pathological Jealousy

Normal jealousy is a normal cognitive response to a real threat and results in some protective mechanism to protect the relationship.  Pathological jealousy on the other hand pulls relationship threats out of thin air. It is deeply embedded in psychology. Pathological jealousy leads to all sorts of psychological problems, that further gets developed into pathological problems over a period of time. In pathological jealousy, one may actually start hating the partner, and the relationship itself may be put into jeopardy.

About the Instrument: Multi-Dimensional Jealousy Scale(MJS)²Pfeiffer, S. M., & Wong, P. T. P. (1989). Multidimensional jealousy. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 6, 181-196.

This instrument has a 24 item questionnaire, which is updated with two additional questions to incorporate age and gender adjustments into the result. An additional four items are added on the behavioral and cognitive jealousy scales.

The instrument has two types of answers: frequency and emotional response. The current emotional answer set is updated with three extra answers of jealousy, anger, and anxiety based on the Lyfas observations.

The actual instrument has three scales: Cognitive, Behavioural, and Emotional Jealousy, which are kept intact in the current scale.

Results and corresponding formulas are developed as Pathological Jealousy, Moderate Jealousy, and Healthy Jealousy, based on the advancement on the subject.

Reliability of the Instrument

The original instrument was tested in an age group of 19-88, with 87 males and 91 females. Reliability was tested by Conchbase’s Alpha, which was 0.92, 0.85, and 0.89 for Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioural Jealousy respectively.

In a test-retest stability test using two tests, Pearson’s correlation was found to be 0.75 and 0.82 for Cognitive and Emotional Jealousy, whereas the same for behavioral jealousy was 0.34 because behavioral jealousy gets affected by environmental factors and current stimuli.

Therefore the instrument is a stable and reliable instrument.

Clinical Relevance

Jealousy is not a clinical entity and there are no diagnostic criteria of the same in DSM-5, and ICD-10/11. However, this has been identified as one of the major underneath psychological conditions in cluster-B personality disorders, such as Narcissism and Borderline Personality Disorder.

A borderline Personality disorder is the hallmark of relationship anxiety. Hence Jealousy can be used by the psychologist for early screening of borderline. Jealousy is also an underneath root cause of anxiety. Therefore clinicians may evaluate the jealousy scale in order to find out the root cause of anxiety.

Jealousy leads to overthinking, which is leads to sympathetic dominance of the autonomic nervous system, increasing stress, and therefore cortisol in the body. Clinicians may use this scale to evaluate the root cause of the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adranaline axis abnormalities.

Jealousy can also be measured as a quantification tool for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Self-Assessment Relevance

Many relationships get strained due to jealousy, which we are often unaware of. We find it hard to discuss the issues with others. It is quite hard for the brain to accept that we are jealous. This scale gives you the ability to know your own psychology in detail and take appropriate actions.

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References

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy

[2]Pfeiffer, S. M., & Wong, P. T. P. (1989). Multidimensional jealousy. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 6, 181-196.

[4] Harris, C.R. (2002). Sexual and romantic jealousy in heterosexual and homosexual adults. Psychological Science, 13, 7-12.

[5] Buunk, B.P., Angleitner, A., Oubaid, V. and Buss, D.M. (1996). Psychological Science, 7, 359-363.

Disclaimer

This instrument is provided as-is. This is a screening and self-assessment instrument. No drugs or supplements can be prescribed based on the results of this test. Acculi Labs and Lyfas take no responsibility and liability for any harm arising from taking the test, including but not limited to Hypochondriasis and Mental Trauma. This is an anonymous test, and we do not collect any personal information of yours like your name or mobile number. Your final test result and IP address are logged by the system. We do not share your data with any third party. By taking this test, you agree to the terms and conditions.

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