Objective. Russia's war against Ukraine, which escalated in 2022, with related losses, injuries, and forced displacements, resulted in numerous mental health issues in Ukrainians, including a rise in the prevalence of depression. Researchers report various psychosocial factors that predict, mediate, or moderate depressive symptoms in Ukrainian adults facing war. However, among psychological factors, they focus mostly on resilience or well-being. While personality traits such as dispositional envy were not explored enough.
Methods. This study was organised as an online survey, which included a questionnaire on sociodemographic data, Dispositional Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (BeMaS), and PHQ-9 for depression assessment. 3026 Ukrainian adults (52.2% males; 76.5% married) aged from 18 to 74 (M=42.4, SD=9.72) filled in the survey in January-March 2025.
Results. Although dispositional malicious envy weakly correlated with depressive symptoms (r=.039, p<.05), both dispositional envy types did not succeed in explaining depression levels more than 0.2% of its variance. Female gender, younger age, and higher educational degree, along with malicious envy, contributed to depression altogether, explaining 4.61% of its variance. Interestingly, both dispositions of envy had a strong correlation with each other (r=.381, p.<.001).
Conclusion. Dispositional envy type does not predict depression levels in Ukrainian adults during wartime. Generally, the role of envy in the development of depressive symptoms may be overrated.