Sex differences in jealousy: evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement?

@article{DeSteno2002SexDI,
  title={Sex differences in jealousy: evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement?},
  author={David DeSteno and Monica Y Bartlett and Julia Braverman and Peter Salovey},
  journal={Journal of personality and social psychology},
  year={2002},
  volume={83 5},
  pages={
          1103-16
        }
}
Two studies are presented that challenge the evidentiary basis for the existence of evolved sex differences in jealousy. In opposition to the evolutionary view, Study I demonstrated that a sex difference in jealousy resulting from sexual versus emotional infidelity is observed only when judgments are recorded using a forced-choice response format. On all other measures, no sex differences were found; both men and women reported greater jealousy in response to sexual infidelity. A second study… 
View on PubMed
courses.washington.edu
238 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
17
Background Citations
53
Methods Citations
16
Results Citations
16

Figures and Tables from this paper

238 Citations

Jealousy: Evidence of strong sex differences using both forced choice and continuous measure paradigms
Sex Differences in Jealousy
Reconsidering Evolved Sex Differences in Jealousy: Comment on Harris (2003)
  • Brad J. Sagarin
  • Psychology
    Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc
  • 2005
TLDR
An integrative model that describes how jealousy might result from the interaction of sociocultural variables and evolved sex differences and suggestions for future research directions are discussed.
Sex differences in jealousy: a meta-analytic examination
Evidence for conditional sex differences in emotional but not in sexual jealousy at the automatic level of cognitive processing
The two evolutionary psychological hypotheses that men react more jealous than women to sexual infidelity and women react more jealous than men to emotional infidelity are currently controversial…
Between-Sex Differences in Romantic Jealousy: Substance or Spin? A Qualitative Analysis
  • Nicola J Fussell, B. Stollery
  • Psychology
    Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior
  • 2012
TLDR
The results of sixteen semi-structured interviews that were conducted with heterosexual men and women are reported with the purpose of exploring the emotions, cognitions and behaviors that formed their subjective, lived experience in response to relationship threat.
Mismeasuring Jealousy
TLDR
The methodology in question— requiring participants to make a forced choice between two hypothetical infidelity scenarios—must be abandoned for significant advancement in the study of jealousy to occur and the practice of using a forced-choice measure to assess differences in jealousy must be avoided.
Psychological gender mediates sex differences in jealousy
The authors argue that, based on a biosocial model proposed by Wood and Eagly (2002), sex differences in reactions to sexual versus emotional infidelity should be mediated via gender-role related…
Romantic Jealousy: A Test of Social Cognitive and Evolutionary Models in A Population-Representative Sample of Adults
Whereas sexually dimorphic evolutionary models argue for clear sex differences in responses to jealousy-evoking scenarios, social cognitive models emphasize the importance of other factors. This…
Sex differences in jealousy: Misinterpretation of nonsignificant results as refuting the theory
Studies examining sex differences in jealousy using continuous measures have produced inconsistent findings. To explain these inconsistencies, this study critically evaluates the criterion used to…
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 62 REFERENCES
Sex Differences in Jealousy: Not Gone, Not Forgotten, and Not Explained by Alternative Hypotheses
More than a decade before there were systematic etnpirical tests of the proposition, evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men and women would differ psychologically in the weighting given to…
Evolutionary Origins of Sex Differences in Jealousy? Questioning the “Fitness” of the Model
Evolutionary psychology has become a popular framework for studying jealousy Much of this popularity can be attributed to work by Buss and his colleagues showing an apparent relation between an…
Sex Differences in Jealousy: Evolution, Physiology, and Psychology
In species with internal female fertilization, males risk both lowered paternity probability and investment in rival gametes if their mates have sexual contact with other males. Females of such…
Sex Differences in Jealousy in Evolutionary and Cultural Perspective: Tests From the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States
TLDR
The sex differences in sexual jealousy are robust across these cultures, providing support for the evolutionary psychological model and the magnitude of the sex differences varies somewhat across cultures.
Jealousy and the nature of beliefs about infidelity: Tests of competing hypotheses about sex differences in the United States, Korea, and Japan
The different adaptive problems faced by men and women over evolutionary history led evolutionary psychologists to hypothesize and discover sex differences in jealousy as a function of infidelity…
Gender, Jealousy, and Reason
Research has suggested that men are especially bothered by evidence of their partner's sexual infidelity, whereas women are troubled more by evidence of emotional infidelity One evolutionary account…
Genes, Jealousy, and the Replication Of Misspecified Models
This exchange presents divergent views on a specific difference in jealousy Everyone agrees that the sex difference in infidebty choice reported by Buss and his colleagues (Buss, Larsen, Westen, &…
Psychophysiological responses to imagined infidelity: the specific innate modular view of jealousy reconsidered.
  • C. Harris
  • Psychology
    Journal of personality and social psychology
  • 2000
TLDR
In men, sexual-inf fidelity imagery elicited greater reactivity than emotional-infidelity imagery, but, sexual imagery eliciting greater reactivities even when infidelity was not involved, suggesting that the differential reactivity may not specifically index greater jealousy.
Distinguishing the experiences of envy and jealousy.
TLDR
The nature and significance of the distinction between the emotions of envy and jealousy is described and 2 experiments that empirically investigated it are reported, revealing qualitative differences between the 2 emotions.
Father Absence and Reproductive Strategy: An Evolutionary Perspective
Explanations offered by social scientists for the effects of father absence on children are reviewed; certain aspects of these interpretations are found wanting. Another explanation using theory from…
...
...