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Psychometric properties of the Benign and Malicious Envy Scale: Assessment of structure, reliability, and measurement invariance across the United States, Germany, Russia, and Poland
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Description: The Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (BeMaS) is a promising self-report measure forming a counterpoint to the unidimensional approach in dispositional envy assessment. The goals of the present study were to examine the BeMaS’ reliability, structure, and measurement equivalence across four independent groups from the United States, Germany, Russia, and Poland. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the structure of the BeMaS is two-dimensional and its measurement is reliable. Moreover, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, supplemented by alignment optimisation, revealed that the scale is invariant by country across all factors regardless of whether a linguistic distinction between the two envy types in the respective language exists. The results speak to the current debate about whether envy should be conceptualised as unitary or as an emotion that occurs in two distinct forms, supporting the latter view. Additionally, country-level differences in envy point to cultural differences which merit further research.