Psychometric properties of the Pathological Jealousy Scale (CECLA): evidence of construct validity in Mexican and Colombian adults

Abstract

Pathological jealousy is a complex emotion and has been considered a potentially violent universal experience. They bring with them negative consequences for the person, the couple, or the rival, even to death. They are associated with anger, sadness, depression, anxiety, doubt, and infidelity. However, in recent reviews, not enough pathological jealousy measurement instruments have been developed to allow the development of new cross-cultural research. This study aimed to collect evidence of the validity of the internal structure both in terms of dimensionality and concurrence, as well as invariance between Mexico (n=257, 70.4% women) and Colombia (n=244, 59.4% women), and reliability of the CECLA scale. Confirmatory Factor Analysis corroborated the internal structure of the three original factors (passionate, obsessive, and delusional jealousy), including evidence of favorable invariance between the Mexican and Colombian samples. In addition, evidence of convergent validity was obtained, and satisfactory internal consistency indices. The results obtained indicated that the CECLA is a useful and recommendable instrument to evaluate pathological jealousy in the Mexican population.