The green-eyed monster in social media: Development and Validation of a Digital Jealousy Scale

Romantic jealousy is an emotional feeling arising when individuals suspect they are at risk of losing their romantic partner to a potential rival. Due to almost unlimited opportunities to establish social connections, the partner’s use of social media can easily trigger jealousy-related feelings. Unsurprisingly, an increasing number of studies investigate “digital jealousy”. However, a standardized instrument assessing digital jealousy is still missing. Therefore, we developed a 10-item digital jealousy scale (DJS). The postulated one-factor structure fitted the data very well. Reliability was high (McDonald’s W=.91). Strict measurement invariance across sex and partial strict invariance for relationship status was particularly interesting since women scored higher than men and singles higher than non-singles. Correlations between jealousy and personality as well as attachment dimensions were consistent with previous results on these relationships for established jealousy measures. The DJS thus provides a valuable instrument to assess jealousy in the digital world of social media.