What is Jealousy

Jealousy is an emotion that is typically associated with negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity. Jealousy is often a combination of anger, sadness and resentment. The experience of jealousy may include fear of loss, suspicion or anger about a perceived betrayal, uncertainty, loneliness and distrust.

Jealousy has been scientifically defined as the fear of an anticipated loss of a valued aspect in a human relationship. Jealousy is often mistakenly confused with envy. Envy is the emotion that occurs when a person desires a quality, achievement or possession that another party enjoys. Envy does not refer to the relationship connoted by jealousy.

The most often discussed and researched jealousy is romantic jealousy. In romantic jealousy, one partner becomes jealous if the second partner spends time and gives attention to an outsider. The jealous person believes that this attention detracts from the attention that he or she should be receiving from the other partner.

Jealousy is often associated with vengeance. Studies have shown that people with high levels of jealousy often have a strong desire for revenge. Aligned with this finding is the fact that people with lower forgiveness scores also have greater vengeance scores. This fact may help people identify others who are jealous of them and most likely to perpetrate acts of revenge. Through early detection, these acts of revenge may be thwarted.