Abstract Book of the 18th International Conference on Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences
Year: 2025
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Development of a Multi-Dimensional Enemyship Scale
Dr. Joseph Adonu
ABSTRACT:
In social psychology, there are models and measures of various relationship constructs, such as love, friendship, attachment and interpersonal harmony. However, no empirically-relevant measure for the construct of enemyship seems to exist in the social psychological literature. ‘Enemyship’ has been defined as “A personal relationship of hatred and malice in which one person desires another person’s downfall or attempts to sabotage another person’s progress.” (Adams, 2000:1). This paper presents findings on the development of a psychometric instrument for the construct of enemyship that might be relevant for social and health psychology. An initial sample of over 93 participants (later increased to 200) aged 18 and above from all backgrounds was randomly recruited electronically across segments of society, including university students, to rate 70 enemyship items on a 5-point (interval) scale. Principal Axis Factoring produced three factors, labelled interpersonal, inter-group and metaphysical, based on a priori categories drawn from the literature. Cronbach’s Alphas in excess of .70 were observed for items in these 3 factor categories. A critical conceptual discussion is offered towards further refinement and validation and possible applications of such enemyship instrument in social psychology, health psychology and psychiatry.
Keywords: Relationships, conflict, enemyship, social psychology, psychometrics