I want to have what you have and i do not want you to have it

Abstract

Envy is the emotion felt towards another person when they have something that one wants to have or a wish that they did not have it. Some authors distinguish malicious and benign forms of envy. The main aim of the presented research was to examine whether envy is related to self-esteem, Schadenfreude, optimism, and rumination. Additionally, the aim was to verify the validity and reliability of the Polish version of the Dispositional Envy Scale (DES), measuring the tendency to feel envy that is close to malicious envy. The participants were 1,221 people aged from 14 to 69. The DES was translated into Polish using the back-translation procedure. The 8- item one-factor DES has good psychometric properties, with a Cronbach's alpha of .86. The findings show that envy is positively related to Schadenfreude and rumination and negatively to age, self-esteem, and optimism.