Jealousy

Abstract

Jealousy is a type of emotion: the response to a real or perceived threat to a valued relationship from a rival, with its own motivational state aimed at preventing others from usurping that relationship. This article covers the models of romantic jealousy, its cognitive, emotional and behavioural components and its reactive and suspicious forms, the distinction between jealousy and envy, the evolutionary account of sex differences and the measurement debate that followed, jealousy in infants and in dogs, the communicative responses people make to it, its spread into social media, and the brain correlates of imagined infidelity. The central dispute is whether the sex difference in jealousy reflects evolved mechanisms or the forced-choice format that elicits it. Three demos show the three components, the format effect and the infant paradigm.

Keywords: jealousy, romantic jealousy, sex differences, envy, infidelity

Jealousy is the emotion of the third person. Where most emotions are about an object or an event, jealousy is about a relationship and a rival: romantic jealousy is a complex emotion activated by a real or perceived threat to the relationship, and an important phenomenon in public health, as it brings consequences for the subject, the couple and the rival, even to the point of death (Martínez-León et al., 2017). The modern literature has four strands that rarely meet. One models the emotion and measures its components; one argues over whether men and women are jealous about different things; one looks for jealousy where language cannot report it, in infants and dogs; and one maps what jealous people do, from surveillance to violence, lately on social behaviour platforms that show them more than they wanted to know.

What Jealousy Is

The field's first task was to say what kind of thing jealousy is. An early account offered a model of romantic jealousy (White, 1981), and the question has since been reframed in functional terms. The dynamic functional model of jealousy argues that jealousy evolved and has its own unique motivational state aimed at preventing others from usurping important relationships; it has a core form that exists in infants and nonhuman animals and an elaborated form in humans that emerges as cognitive sophistication develops, and it proposes that jealousy is an unfolding process with early and late phases that can be differentially impacted by relationship and personality factors (Chung & Harris, 2018). The model also notes the importance of looking at multiple concomitants of jealousy, including action tendencies, and suggests that theories of specific emotions need to be broadened (Chung & Harris, 2018). On this reading jealousy is neither a blend of anger and fear nor a cultural invention but an emotion with a job, the defence of a pair bond or any other bond worth defending. The rival reading has its own defenders: at the neural representation level, jealousy, like many other complex social emotions, has been argued to be not sui generis but a specific combination of basic emotions, such as anger and sadness, elicited by specific social stimuli and in specific interactive contexts (Sun et al., 2016).

Types and Components of Jealousy

Jealousy is measured in parts. The multidimensional jealousy scale provides separate assessments of cognitive, emotional and behavioural jealousy; it has high internal consistency and a clear factor structure, the three components correlate with established jealousy scales, emotional jealousy is positively related to love while cognitive jealousy is negatively related to love, all three components are negatively related to liking, and emotional and behavioural jealousy are negatively related to happiness (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989). The positive side has been drawn out. In 229 college students in premarital relationships who completed 27 measures including the multidimensional scale, with select data from 122 cases at 3-month follow-up, greater interdependence between partners created the potential for jealousy, and the results clearly distinguished emotional or reactive jealousy as mostly good and cognitive or suspicious jealousy as bad, with behavioural jealousy associated with few measures (Attridge, 2013). Personality, birth order and attachment styles have been related to various types of jealousy (Buunk, 1997). The practical implications of the scale in detecting pathological jealousy were discussed in its validation (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989).

Figure 1

Three Components of Jealousy and Their Correlates

Jealousy and Envy

Jealousy is routinely confused with envy, and the two have been separated experimentally. In one experiment participants recalled a personal experience of either envy or jealousy, and in a second they read one of a set of stories in which circumstances producing envy and jealousy were manipulated independently in a factorial design; both revealed qualitative differences between the two emotions, with envy characterized by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment and disapproval of the emotion, and jealousy characterized by fear of loss, distrust, anxiety and anger (Parrott & Smith, 1993). The practical importance of the distinction, the reasons for its confusion and general issues regarding the empirical differentiation of emotions were discussed alongside the findings (Parrott & Smith, 1993). The envy-like case was studied under the name social-comparison jealousy: 80 undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions in which they received either positive or negative feedback on a bogus personality test that was either self-definitionally relevant or irrelevant, followed by feedback of successful performance by another person (Salovey & Rodin, 1984). The two literatures agree on the structural difference: envy wants what another has; jealousy fears losing what one has to another.

Sex Differences and the Measurement Debate

The best-known claim about jealousy is also the most contested. 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, while females risk the diversion of their mates' commitment and resources to rival females; three studies tested the hypothesis that sex differences in jealousy emerged in humans as solutions to these adaptive problems, with men and women selecting which event would upset them more, a partner's sexual infidelity or emotional infidelity, physiological responses recorded while subjects imagined the two, and the effect of a committed relationship tested, and all studies showed large sex differences (Buss et al., 1992). The challenge came a decade later. Two studies challenged the evidentiary basis for evolved sex differences: a sex difference in jealousy resulting from sexual versus emotional infidelity was observed only when judgments were 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, and the forced-choice difference disappeared under conditions of cognitive constraint, which suggested a measurement artifact resulting from a format-induced effortful decision strategy (DeSteno et al., 2002). A review of the five lines of evidence offered for the specific innate modular theory, self-report responses, psychophysiological data, domestic violence and morbid jealousy cases, found only one hypothetical measure consistent with the hypothesis, contradicted by a variety of other measures including reported reactions to real infidelity, and a meta-analysis of jealousy-inspired homicides taking account of base rates for murder found no evidence that jealousy disproportionately motivates men to kill (Harris, 2003).

The debate then went quantitative. The sex differences have been meta-analysed (Sagarin et al., 2012), tested with both forced-choice and continuous measure paradigms (Bendixen et al., 2015), and reviewed after 25 years (Edlund & Sagarin, 2017). The systematic review summarises the meta-analysis as finding that sex differences in jealousy are not a forced-choice item and emerge using continuous measurements as well (Martínez-León et al., 2017). The same review reports a second meta-analysis, of 54 articles, as finding the data not consistent with the evolutionary hypothesis, the male tendency appearing only in samples of American students (Martínez-León et al., 2017). A third account entered the exchange early: in two studies, DeSteno and Salovey took issue with the Buss findings and argued that the relation between sex and jealousy is more properly explained by considering individuals' beliefs concerning the covariation between sexual and emotional infidelity (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996), a theory of dual perspective that the systematic review places within this divergence (Martínez-León et al., 2017). The largest single test asked 63,894 gay, lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual participants which would upset them more, their partner having sex with someone else or falling in love with someone else: heterosexual men were more likely than heterosexual women to be upset by sexual infidelity (54 versus 35%) and less likely to be upset by emotional infidelity (46 versus 65%), the difference emerged across age groups, income levels, history of being cheated on, history of being unfaithful, relationship type and length, but it was limited to heterosexual participants, with bisexual men and women (30 versus 27%) and gay men and lesbian women (32 versus 34%) not differing (Frederick & Fales, 2016). Whether that pattern reflects evolved modules, a decision strategy the forced-choice format invites, beliefs about how the two infidelities travel together, or some combination, is the question the demo below lets the reader pose.

Table 1. The sex-difference studies, as their abstracts report them.

Note. Each row lists only what the cited abstract reports (Buss et al., 1992; DeSteno et al., 2002; Harris, 2003; Frederick & Fales, 2016). The designs differ, so the rows are not a single comparison.

Jealousy in Infants and Animals

If jealousy has a core form, it should appear before language. Twelve-month-old infants (76 of them) experienced four situations of unresponsiveness in which their mothers and a stranger directed positive attention toward a doll or a picture book while they ignored the infant; infants demonstrated more protest, negative vocalizations and inhibited play during the doll condition, particularly if the doll was held by the mother, and their distress during the mother and doll condition was interpreted as jealousy (Hart et al., 1998). The age was then pushed back: 32 six-month-old infants were exposed to their mothers attending, in turn, to a lifelike baby doll and a book, and infant negativity was greater when maternal attention was directed toward the social object, suggesting the presence of an early form of jealousy by 6 months of age (Hart & Carrington, 2002). The same paradigm crossed species. Adapting the infant paradigm, dogs exhibited significantly more jealous behaviours, snapping, getting between the owner and the object, and pushing or touching the object or owner, when their owners displayed affectionate behaviours towards what appeared to be another dog as compared with nonsocial objects, which lends support to the hypothesis that jealousy has some primordial form that exists in human infants and in at least one other social species (Harris & Prouvost, 2014). The attachment to caregivers that these paradigms exploit is the raw material from which the elaborated human form is built.

Responses to Jealousy

What jealous people do has been catalogued. Communicative responses to jealousy can reduce uncertainty, help maintain or repair relationships, and aid the jealous person in saving face and restoring self-esteem; a qualitative analysis found twelve superordinate categories and 67 tactics, and measures were developed for six types of interactive responses, integrative communication, distributive communication, active distancing, general avoidance or denial, expression of negative affect, and violent communication or threats, and five types of general responses, surveillance or restriction, compensatory restoration, manipulation attempts, rival contact, and violent behaviour (Guerrero et al., 1995). Social media changed the information supply. In 308 undergraduates, a hierarchical multiple regression controlling for individual, personality and relationship factors revealed that increased Facebook use significantly predicts Facebook-related jealousy, an effect the authors suggest may be the result of a feedback loop whereby using Facebook exposes people to often ambiguous information about their partner that they may not otherwise have access to and that this new information incites further Facebook use (Muise et al., 2009). An eight-item Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire with a single-factor structure was then developed from the features of technological addictions, and Facebook intrusion was linked to relationship dissatisfaction via jealous cognitions and surveillance behaviours (Elphinston & Noller, 2011). The systematic review of 230 studies classified the variables associated with jealousy as personal, including differences in sex, sexual orientation, self-esteem, attachment style and use of alcohol, interpersonal, including romantic love, satisfaction and violence, and sociocultural, including transcultural comparisons, features of the rival and social networks (Martínez-León et al., 2017).

The Brain

Two imaging studies have looked at jealousy directly. Although there was no sex difference in the self-rating score of jealousy for sexual and emotional infidelity, men and women showed different brain activation patterns in response to sentences depicting the two types of infidelity: during jealous conditions men demonstrated greater activation than women in regions involved in sexual and aggressive behaviours such as the amygdala and hypothalamus, whereas women demonstrated greater activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (Takahashi et al., 2006). Combining scenario-based imagination with functional MRI, romantic jealousy scenarios elicited activations primarily in the basal ganglia across stages and were significantly higher after a formal relationship was established in both the behavioural rating and basal ganglia activation, the intensity of romantic jealousy was related to the intensity of romantic happiness, which mainly correlated with ventral medial prefrontal cortex activation, and the increase in jealousy across stages was associated with the tendency for interpersonal aggression (Sun et al., 2016). Two studies with different paradigms are a beginning, and they do not agree on what jealousy is in the brain: one read its sex-specific activations as favouring different neuropsychological modules, the other located jealousy in the basal ganglia and treated it as a combination of basic emotions rather than a unique process.

Worked Example

The percentages in the large infidelity study repay translation. Among heterosexual participants, 54% of men and 35% of women chose sexual infidelity as the more upsetting (Frederick & Fales, 2016), a gap of 19 percentage points (54 - 35 = 19); among bisexual participants the gap was 3 points (30 - 27 = 3) and among gay men and lesbian women it ran the other way by 2 points (32 - 34 = -2). The heterosexual gap is therefore about six times the bisexual one (19 / 3 = 6.3). Because the two options were exclusive, the emotional-infidelity figures are the complements: 46% of heterosexual men (100 - 54 = 46) and 65% of heterosexual women (100 - 35 = 65), exactly as the abstract reports. The sample of 63,894 is about 207 times the 308 undergraduates of the Facebook study (Muise et al., 2009) (63,894 / 308 = 207.4, or about 200) and about 2,000 times the 32 infants of the six-month study (Hart & Carrington, 2002) (63,894 / 32 = 1,996.7). Large samples settle the size of a self-report difference; they do not by themselves settle what produces it, which is why the format debate continued after them.

Discussion

First, the components matter more than the total. Emotional jealousy is positively related to love and cognitive jealousy negatively related to it (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989), and emotional or reactive jealousy came out as mostly good and cognitive or suspicious jealousy as bad (Attridge, 2013). A single jealousy score averages a sign of commitment with a sign of trouble.

Second, the sex-difference debate is a debate about method as much as about evolution. All three original studies showed large sex differences (Buss et al., 1992); the difference was then observed only on the forced-choice format and disappeared under cognitive constraint (DeSteno et al., 2002); the five lines of evidence were reviewed and found to rest on one hypothetical measure (Harris, 2003); and the largest sample found the forced-choice difference robust among heterosexuals and absent among gay, lesbian and bisexual participants (Frederick & Fales, 2016). Each side has a result the other must explain: the evolutionary account must explain why the difference appeared only on the forced-choice format in one set of studies and was absent among gay, lesbian and bisexual participants, and the measurement account must explain why the forced-choice difference is so stable across age, income and relationship history.

Third, the developmental and comparative evidence changes what a theory of jealousy must cover. Six-month-olds show greater negativity when their mothers attend to a lifelike doll (Hart & Carrington, 2002), and in one study dogs showed jealous behaviours toward an apparent rival dog (Harris & Prouvost, 2014); the dynamic functional model's core form, present in infants and nonhuman animals, with an elaborated form emerging as cognitive sophistication develops (Chung & Harris, 2018), is one account built to cover both; the rival view treats jealousy as a specific combination of basic emotions rather than a unique process (Sun et al., 2016). The brain evidence, two studies with different paradigms (Takahashi et al., 2006; Sun et al., 2016), is too thin to decide between them.

Current Directions

The field's open questions are the model's own. The dynamic functional model proposes early and late phases of jealousy that can be differentially impacted by relationship and personality factors and calls for attention to multiple concomitants, including action tendencies, and for theories of specific emotions to be broadened (Chung & Harris, 2018). The systematic review of 230 studies asks for future studies, with sufficient statistical robustness, that achieve a clinical formulation indicating the relevance and predictive power of each variable (Martínez-León et al., 2017). The large-sample finding that the gender difference exists in a broad sample of adults but only among heterosexuals (Frederick & Fales, 2016) hands both sides of the format debate a new constraint, and the 25-year retrospective on sex differences in jealousy (Edlund & Sagarin, 2017) marks how long the debate has run. In the brain, the finding that the increase in jealousy across relationship stages was associated with the tendency for interpersonal aggression (Sun et al., 2016) links the imaging work back to the violence that made jealousy a public-health question.

Common Misconceptions

“Jealousy and envy are the same emotion.”

Two experiments revealed qualitative differences: envy was characterized by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment and disapproval of the emotion, jealousy by fear of loss, distrust, anxiety and anger (Parrott & Smith, 1993).

“Jealousy is always a sign of a bad relationship.”

Emotional jealousy is positively related to love (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989), greater interdependence between partners creates the potential for jealousy, and emotional or reactive jealousy was distinguished as mostly good from cognitive or suspicious jealousy as bad (Attridge, 2013).

“Men are jealous about sex and women about love, full stop.”

The sex difference was observed only on the forced-choice format, with none on other measures and both sexes reporting greater jealousy over sexual infidelity (DeSteno et al., 2002), and in 63,894 adults it held among heterosexuals but not among bisexual, gay or lesbian participants (Frederick & Fales, 2016). A systematic review, however, summarises a 2012 meta-analysis as finding that the differences emerge using continuous measurements as well, and a second as finding the data not consistent with the evolutionary hypothesis (Martínez-León et al., 2017).

“Jealousy requires adult cognition.”

Infant negativity was greater when maternal attention was directed toward a lifelike doll at 6 months (Hart & Carrington, 2002), and dogs exhibited significantly more jealous behaviours when their owners showed affection to what appeared to be another dog (Harris & Prouvost, 2014).

Glossary

Behavioural jealousy.

The checking and guarding component of the multidimensional jealousy scale; negatively related to happiness and associated with few measures in the closeness study.

Cognitive jealousy.

The suspicious-thought component of jealousy; negatively related to love and distinguished as the bad side of romantic jealousy.

Communicative responses to jealousy.

The six interactive and five general types of response, from integrative communication to surveillance and violence, catalogued in the green-eyed monster studies.

Dynamic functional model of jealousy.

The account on which jealousy evolved with its own motivational state aimed at preventing others from usurping important relationships, with a core form in infants and animals and an elaborated human form.

Emotional infidelity.

A partner falling in love with someone else without having sex with them; the alternative set against sexual infidelity in the forced-choice question used to test the evolutionary account.

Emotional jealousy.

The felt, reactive component of jealousy; positively related to love and distinguished as the good side of romantic jealousy.

Envy.

The emotion characterized by inferiority, longing, resentment and disapproval of the emotion itself; distinct from jealousy in two experiments.

Facebook intrusion.

Excessive involvement with the platform, measured by an eight-item questionnaire modelled on technological addictions; linked to relationship dissatisfaction via jealous cognitions and surveillance.

Forced-choice format.

The question asking which of sexual or emotional infidelity would upset the respondent more; the format on which the sex difference in jealousy appears.

Multidimensional jealousy scale.

The instrument providing separate assessments of cognitive, emotional and behavioural jealousy.

Reactive and suspicious jealousy.

The emotional response to a real threat and the cognitive preoccupation with an imagined one; the first distinguished as mostly good, the second as bad.

Romantic jealousy.

The complex emotion activated by a real or perceived threat to a romantic relationship from a rival; the form of jealousy that most of the research reviewed here concerns.

Social-comparison jealousy.

The envy-like response to another's success in a self-relevant domain studied with bogus personality feedback.

Specific innate modular theory.

The hypothesis that natural selection shaped sexual jealousy to prevent cuckoldry and emotional jealousy to prevent resource loss, so that men and women are jealous over different infidelities.

Key Researchers

David M. Buss

. Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin; proposed the evolutionary account of sex differences in jealousy and ran the forced-choice infidelity studies that launched the debate. ORCID - Faculty Page - Wikipedia

Abraham P. Buunk

. Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Groningen from 1990 to 2012 and Academy Professor of Evolutionary Social Psychology; distinguished reactive, anxious and preventive jealousy and related them to personality, birth order and attachment style. ORCID - Faculty Page

David DeSteno

. Dean's Professor of Psychology and Moral Development at Northeastern University; reported that the sex difference in jealousy appeared only on the forced-choice format and not on other measures. Faculty Page

Christine R. Harris

. Professor of Psychology at the University of California San Diego; reviewed the sex-difference evidence, co-authored the dynamic functional model of jealousy and tested jealousy in dogs. Faculty Page

Sybil L. Hart

. Professor Emeritus of Human Development and Family Sciences at Texas Tech University; showed that infants protest when their mothers attend to a rival doll and that six-month-olds already show jealousy. Faculty Page

W. Gerrod Parrott

. Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University; distinguished the experiences of envy and jealousy empirically and edited the field's reader on emotions in social psychology. Faculty Page

Brad J. Sagarin

. Professor of Psychology at Northern Illinois University; led the meta-analysis of sex differences in jealousy and co-authored its 25-year retrospective. Faculty Page

Peter Salovey

. Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology at Yale University; studied the antecedents and consequences of social-comparison jealousy and co-authored the measurement critique of the sex difference. ORCID - Faculty Page - Wikipedia - Google Scholar

Frequently Asked Questions

What is jealousy in psychology?

Romantic jealousy is a complex emotion activated by a real or perceived threat to the relationship (Martínez-León et al., 2017); on the dynamic functional model it evolved with its own unique motivational state aimed at preventing others from usurping important relationships (Chung & Harris, 2018).

How is jealousy different from envy?

Envy was characterized by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment and disapproval of the emotion, and jealousy by fear of loss, distrust, anxiety and anger, in two experiments, one of recalled experiences and one of stories in which the circumstances producing each were manipulated (Parrott & Smith, 1993).

What are the components of jealousy?

The multidimensional jealousy scale separately assesses cognitive, emotional and behavioural jealousy; emotional jealousy is positively related to love, cognitive jealousy negatively, and all three are negatively related to liking (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989).

Are men and women jealous about different things?

On forced-choice questions heterosexual men more often choose sexual infidelity as the more upsetting and women emotional infidelity, 54 versus 35% and 46 versus 65% in 63,894 adults, but the difference was limited to heterosexual participants (Frederick & Fales, 2016); on other measures no sex difference was found and both sexes reported greater jealousy over sexual infidelity (DeSteno et al., 2002). A systematic review, however, summarises a 2012 meta-analysis as finding that the differences emerge using continuous measurements as well, and a second as finding the data not consistent with the evolutionary hypothesis (Martínez-León et al., 2017).

Can babies feel jealousy?

Twelve-month-olds showed more protest, negative vocalizations and inhibited play when their mothers attended to a doll (Hart et al., 1998), and six-month-olds showed greater negativity when maternal attention went to a lifelike doll rather than a book (Hart & Carrington, 2002).

Do animals get jealous?

Dogs exhibited significantly more jealous behaviours, such as snapping and getting between the owner and the object, when their owners displayed affection towards what appeared to be another dog than towards nonsocial objects (Harris & Prouvost, 2014).

Does social media make people more jealous?

In 308 undergraduates, increased Facebook use significantly predicted Facebook-related jealousy after controlling for individual, personality and relationship factors (Muise et al., 2009), and Facebook intrusion was linked to relationship dissatisfaction via jealous cognitions and surveillance behaviours (Elphinston & Noller, 2011).

What happens in the brain during jealousy?

Men showed greater activation than women in the amygdala and hypothalamus and women greater activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus during imagined infidelity (Takahashi et al., 2006); romantic jealousy scenarios activated the basal ganglia, more so once a relationship was established (Sun et al., 2016).

References