Delusions and feelings of jealousy. An empirical study

Objectives The first part of this research investigated the possibility that raving jealousy ideation could be shared by homicidal paranoid patients. In this second part I studied undergraduate students' representations of jealousy feelings and the distance that separates them from lucid raving interpretations. Methods In various moments of this survey I used direct observation of emotions aroused by looking to a movie. I used structured debate with paranoid patients and a questionnaire with forced multiple choices with undergraduate students. Results Most paranoid patients (71,42%) share morbid ideation of jealousy belonging to movie characters. On the other hand, 83% of undergraduate students experience feelings of jealousy as a comprehensible emotion; however, 74,3% of the female sample believes it represents a manifestation of madness in some instances, 97,7% believe that represented jealousy is the product of imagination, hence a delusion of jealousy (94,3%). Conclusions Jealousy feelings are diffuse among Sicilian undergraduate students, whose cultural frame is based on values such as feelings of "love" and "respect". This is different from what I found in jealousy ideation of patients with morbid paranoia, who are distant from the students as concerns the set of values.