Sexual jealousy

An unhappy couple.

Sexual jealousy is a special form of jealousy in sexual relationships, present in animals that reproduce through internal fertilization, and is based on suspected or imminent sexual infidelity. It is founded on the instinct of keeping genes in the gene pool and expecting sexual partners to care for the offspring. The concept is studied in human and non-human primates in the field of evolutionary psychology.

Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that there is a gender difference in sexual jealousy driven by men and women’s different reproductive biology.^[1] For men it is felt as a threat to his relationship's future because he could be cuckolded into raising children that are not his own. For women they can lose their relationship and all the benefits that entails to another. Research has shown that men are impacted more by sexual infidelity, while women are more impacted by emotional infidelity.^[2]

An alternative explanation is from a social-cognitive perspective. Typically men will place a lot of importance on their masculinity and sexual dominance. When the male's partner commits infidelity, these two components of his ego become severely threatened which is why men are more upset when a partner has sex with someone else. In contrast, women invest a lot of emotion into a relationship and will experience a threat to their self-perception when a partner commits infidelity, hence why women are more concerned with emotional infidelity rather than the sexual kind.^[3]

More recently, research has suggested that there are no sex differences in sexual jealousy, such that males and females both equally experience distress over emotional and sexual infidelity.^[3]

Sexual jealousy is cross-culturally universal but how it manifests itself may differ across cultures.^[4]

Female sexual jealousy

Psychologists have found that males react very strongly to sexual infidelity, whereas females are more likely to forgive a one-time sexual adventure if it does not threaten the male parental investment.^[5] Therefore, jealousy is likely to be evoked in females if they feel that their partner may leave them for another woman; this has been shown to be more likely to occur if the male commits emotional infidelity.^[6] Emotional infidelity occurs when one partner develops a meaningful, emotional attachment with someone outside of their primary romantic relationship.^[7]

Emotional jealousy

Many studies have shown that females tend to place a stronger emphasis on the emotional aspect of infidelity, over the sexual aspect; it is this emotional infidelity that becomes the focus of female sexual jealousy.^[8] The most direct evidence for female's focus on emotional jealousy comes from Buss et al. (1992)^[2] who presented participants with scenarios in which they were asked to choose between a partner's sexual unfaithfulness and a partner's emotional unfaithfulness as the most distressing event. They found that more females than males reported a partner's emotional infidelity as the most distressing event. As well as using self-report measures, the researchers measured the participants' physiological responses (heart rate and electrodermal activity) to the scenarios; women were also found to be more physiologically upset to the idea of their partners committing emotional infidelity.^[9]

Male sexual jealousy

A painting depicting sexual infidelity. Here, a male has caught his female partner with another male.

Male sexual jealousy functions to defend paternity confidence,^[10] and is likely to have evolved through natural selection^[11] to prevent cuckoldry - a threat to males since they could be investing in offspring that are not biologically related to. This would also be costly, since their resources would be used on females' offspring that is not theirs.^[8] Male sexual jealousy manifests itself in the emotion of jealousy, using or threatening with violence to ensure sexual exclusivity and the inclination to control women.^[10] This idea of males ensuring sexual exclusivity has also lead to laws on adultery.

From an evolutionary perspective, the jealousy arises from this threat of investing in non-biologically related offspring and thus is most strongly felt over their mate's sexual infidelity than their emotional infidelity.^[6]

It can take several forms in behaviour: aggression and violence,^[12] and possessiveness or controlling behaviour towards their mate.^[13] In some cases, sexual jealousy can lead to uxoricide. Threats to a relationship can arise from other sources too, such as the presence of rivals, cues to infidelity and partner dissatisfaction with the relationship.^[14] Morbid jealousy is also concurrent with male sexual jealousy^[6] - an obsession with thoughts of a partner's suspected sexual infidelity. A recent meta-analysis reviewed the literature and found that sexual jealousy in males can also lead to emotions such as distress, hurt and disgust being experienced.^[15]

Expression of sexual jealousy

Expression in females

Aggression

While most empirical research suggests that males are more likely to act aggressively in response to sexual jealousy, some studies have shown that females may also display aggression and violence.^[16]

Women have been found to report that their hypothetical sexual jealousy would manifest itself as anger and physical aggression towards the man. It has been suggested that this is because women are more empathetic towards the "victim", triggering strong aggression towards the unfaithful man.^[17] However, it is not known if these hypothetical reports would become actions in real life situations. Furthermore, statistics on domestic violence continue to show that in relationships it is primarily men who are the abusers, rather than the women.^[17]

On the other hand, it has been suggested that because it is the woman that ultimately chooses the mate, aggression caused by infidelity is directed at the rival female. As a result, when a woman is around a suspected rival female, she is more likely than a male counterpart to announce that her companion is “taken,” and go out of her way to enhance her appearance to her spouse.^[8]

Self-blame

Following infidelity, women are more likely to focus their sexual jealousy on their own relationship and self-blame. Women are also more likely to experience symptoms of depression following the infidelity.^[6] Evidence for the interpretation that in jealousy situations women focus more on their own functioning as a partner comes from research by Dijkstra and Buunk (2002).^[7] This research suggests that unlike men’s jealousy, women’s jealousy stems more from comparing their own qualities with those of the rival. That is, the higher the level of social comparison, a personality characteristic referring to the tendency to compare one’s characteristics with those of others, the more jealousy various rival characteristics evoked.^[18]

Expression in males

Mate guarding behaviour

One behaviour arising from male's sexual jealousy towards their partner's sexual infidelity is mate guarding.^[19] These tactics are used to prevent partner infidelity and so might be used when there are perceived threats in the environment.^[20] It results in several behaviours, researchers have documented up to 19 different tactics used.^[21] This includes (but is not exclusive to):

• Violence directed towards competitors,
• Taking up all of the mate's time so that they have no time to meet other potential mates,
• Emotionally manipulate their mate,
• Increase their possession signals with jewellery,
• Enhancing their appearance.

Vigilance is also a tactic used by the male towards their mate by controlling their movements either directly or indirectly.^[19] For example, they may check up on where their partner is (indirectly) or stop them from going out with friends (directly).

Predictors of sexual jealousy

It is important to consider the wider context and individual differences of sexual jealousy, beyond gender, as research has suggested there are many factors that mediate whether or not it is experienced, and the degree to which it is felt by the individual.^[19]

Attachment style

According to attachment theory, the quality of an child's interactions with caregivers during times of need shape their future interactions; this includes later relationships.^[22] Research has shown that insecure-avoidant individuals tend to report more sexual jealousy than those who are securely attached. This may be due to the fact that, in comparison to securely attached individuals, those who are insecurely attached tend to experience lower levels of trust, intimacy and stability in their romantic relationships.^[23] Insecurely attached individuals are also more likely to experience sexual jealousy because they tend to hold negative self-views, have lower self-esteem and be more suspicious.^[19] Evidence suggests that people who experience low self-esteem are much more afraid that their partner is dissatisfied and being unfaithful, which again increases the likelihood that they will experience sexual jealousy.^[24]

Sex drive

Sex drive, also known as libido, is the physiological need for sexual activity.^[25] Sex drive has been found to be a significant predictor of higher sexual jealousy in both men and women; those who had a higher sex drive showed greater distress at the idea of their partner committing sexual infidelity.^[26] This is consistent with other empirical research that has shown that individuals who value sexual gratification highly were more likely to be distressed by sexual infidelity.^[1] To explain this finding, researchers have suggested the key threat that sexual infidelity poses for individuals with a high sex drive is loss of access to sexual gratification, as their partner is granting sexual access to a third person.^[7]

Relationship quality

Research has shown that individuals who reported high jealousy scores had more stable and successful relationships than individuals who reported comparatively low jealousy scores.^[26] Furthermore, individuals in committed relationships tend to experience higher levels of jealousy than individuals in less committed relationships.^[26] To explain this, researchers have proposed that those in better quality, more committed relationships would have more to lose if their partner were to leave them for someone else, and therefore worry more about infidelity.^[27] Therefore, such individuals experience greater sexual jealousy if they feel the relationship is threatened.^[28]

Explanations

Researchers have proposed a number of theories to explain sexual jealousy in both males and females. In addition, some of these explanations can be used to explain the sex differences in sexual jealousy and why there may be differences in the degree to which people experience jealousy.^[6]

Evolutionary psychology perspective

Evolutionary psychologists propose that the core function of sexual jealousy is to retain access to a valuable mate.^[27] This explanation is known as jealousy as a specific innate module, "JSIM".^[29] According to this perspective, sexual jealousy should be activated by threats to the relationship; in particular, threats of sexual infidelity by the female and threats that the male may share his resources (money, protection, time) with another woman. For males, their biggest concern when they commit to a relationship is ensuring that any offspring produced is biologically theirs, therefore, sexual infidelity is a huge threat them as there is then a chance that they are not the genetic parent.^[30] If a male raises a child that is not genetically his own, he has effectively wasted his resources raising another man's child, that will not pass on any of his genes.^[27]

As women have genetic certainty when they bear a child this is not a concern to them, however, women do face a different evolutionary problem. If her partner becomes emotionally attached to another woman, there is a real chance that the male may share his resources with the other woman, or leave their current relationship all together. Either way, the female loses some of the male parental investment; the loss of her mate’s resources may significantly reduce the survival of herself and her offspring.^[31]

The evolutionary psychology perspective has been supported by a study conducted by David Buss.^[32] He observed that male sexual jealousy is triggered by sexual infidelity, whereas female sexual jealousy was triggered by emotional infidelity. The study concluded that sexual jealousy may be an adaptive function in which is triggered in order to retain access to a valuable mate.^[27]

Researchers David Buss and Todd Shackleford propose and test several hypotheses about sexual jealousy:^[33]

1. Men will devote more resources to mate retention when their partner is younger than them, than men who's partner is older than them. This hypothesis rests on the evolutionary principle of mate value. Younger women are likely to have more mate value because they are more fertile. Therefore, it is predicted that men are likely to engage in mate retention behaviours more often when their partner is younger rather than older than them.
2. Resting on the principle of mate value again, is the prediction that men will devote more resources to mate retention when their partner is perceived to be physically attractive, than when their partner is perceived to be less physically attractive. Females who are physically attractive have a higher mate value than those who are less physically attractive.
3. Women will allocate more resources to mate retention when their partner has a wealth of resources than women whose partners have few resources. This hypothesis also rests on the mate value principle. Men who have more resources and wealth have a higher mate value than those who do not.
4. If a man perceives his partner as having a higher mate value than him, then he is more likely to engage in efforts towards mate retention than men who perceive their partners as having a lower than or equal to mate value than them. This hypothesis rests on perceived mate value. If a male's partner has a higher mate value than him, she is more likely to be able to attract other men who may be of a similar mate value to her. As such, the male is at a greater risk of losing her to another man with a higher mate value.
5. Individuals who suspect their partners are being unfaithful are more likely to devote effort towards mate retention than those who do not suspect their partners are being unfaithful. This hypothesis relies on the perceived probability of infidelity. Men risk being cuckolded into raising children that are not genetically his, and women risk losing their mate's resources and time.

Their research provided evidence to support all above hypotheses except for hypothesis 5; this effect was unique to men only.

The double-shot hypothesis

The hypothesis contradicts the evolutionary perspective.^[34] It proposes that these sex differences in feelings of sexual jealousy are due to beliefs and have not evolved.^[34]

The double-shot hypothesis (also known as the two-for-one hypothesis^[35]) suggests that women have a belief that men can have sexual relations without emotionally committing themselves. Women also believe that for men, to have emotional commitment, sex is a prerequisite.^[36] Therefore, if men and women place importance on different aspects of relationship, this explains why they may also be upset by different types of sexual jealousy differently.^[37]

Social-cognitive perspective

As both forms of jealousy are threatening to both men and women, the social-cognitive perspective suggests that there are no inherent, evolutionarily induced gender differences. Instead, both emotional and sexual jealousy are believed to occur when an individual believes that a rival is posing a threat to what one perceives to be a valuable interpersonal relationship. When the relationship or one's self-esteem is threatened, jealousy is evoked.^[3]

The perspective also provides explanations as to why men would be more upset by sexual infidelity than women. Men are socialized to be masculine, which includes having great sexual prowess. If a man’s partner commits sexual infidelity, this brings into question his sexual prowess and therefore threatens his masculinity. This results a strong, negative reaction in response to the sexual infidelity, which does not tend to occur in response to emotional infidelity. In contrast, women are taught to be emotional nurturers in a relationship, therefore, if their partner commits emotional infidelity, this may threaten her sense of self more than if her partner commits sexual infidelity.^[38]

The social-cognitive perspective also proposes the transactional model of jealousy, which can be used to explain why there may be differences in the degree to which individuals experience sexual jealousy within genders, as well as between genders. This model examines how three variables - (1) arousability, (2) commitment and, (3) insecurity - moderate jealousy.^[39]

1. Individual differences in sexual jealousy are determined by the difference in levels of physiological arousal: individuals who are easily aroused have more intense jealous reactions, than those with lower physiological arousal
2. Commitment refers to the degree of dedication a person has in the relationship: the more committed a person is to a relationship, the greater the threat of loss, which leads to greater feelings of jealousy
3. Insecurity refers to the perceived level of commitment of the partner: if we perceive our partner to be uninvolved or disinterested in the relationship, we feel more insecure.^[40]

The degree to which these factors are experienced together determine the intensity of sexual jealousy felt by an individual.^[3]

Sexual jealousy and culture

Sexual jealousy is cross-culturally universal and affects both men and women.^[4] However, the extent of sexual jealousy varies across cultures. Sexual jealousy is strongly mediated by culture in both heterosexual and homosexual couples^[41] and in males, is said to be prevalent in cultures in which heritability runs through the male side.^[42]

Evocation of sexual jealousy

There are cross-cultural differences in behaviours that evoke sexual jealousy.^[4] Specifically, one study focused on seven different countries: Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Yugoslavia. Different behaviours were found to elicit different extents of sexual jealousy. For instance, flirting, kissing and sexual involvement elicit sexual jealousy across all of the nations. However, dancing, hugging and kissing evoke very different reactions across cultures. In the Soviet Union, the most sexual jealousy is seen across dancing, hugging, flirting and kissing behaviours. Yugoslavian participants display the most intense sexual jealousy to flirting behaviour but the least to kissing. Dutch participants show the least sexual jealousy to kissing, dancing and hugging behaviours.

Sexual jealousy in Western cultures

Societies that permit extra-marital sexual relations, often discourage sexual jealousy.^[43] For example, in Denmark very low sexual jealousy rates are determined by the very low 10% disapproval of extra-marital sex. On the other hand, individuals in the American Midwest show high feelings of sexual jealousy which corresponds to the 90% disapproval of extra-marital sex^[44]

American men also feel more sexual jealousy compared to German men^[45] when asked which would cause them more distress: i) a partner having formed a strong emotional attachment with another person or ii) a partner having passionate sexual intercourse with another person. Scenario i) measured sexual jealousy and scenario ii) measured emotional jealousy. The American men reported 33% greater sexual and emotional jealousy compared to German men.

Greater sexual jealousy seen in American men may be because in American culture, love, sex, family relationships and marriage are strongly connected.^[46] So, when partner's therefore entangle with others, loss of love and relationship, and therefore sexual jealousy, is likely to be felt.^[47]

Additionally, in Western culture, inducement of sexual jealousy is more likely by females in their partners compared to men. Inducing sexual jealousy is to increase their partner's attention towards them and counteract sexual and emotional jealousy.^[48]

However, Western culture now is mainly monogamous which is very different to the environment in which the majority of evolution thus far has occurred.^[47] Therefore, evolutionarily it is likely that different past cultures also showed differences in sexual jealousy.^[47]

A man catches his partner with a love letter from another.

Sexual jealousy in Eastern cultures

Cross-cultural comparisons between China and United States reveal that, regardless of nation, men show greater sexual jealousy than women. Females show significantly higher levels of emotional jealousy. In contrast, between the nations, both men and women from the United States show greater sexual jealousy than Chinese individuals.^[49]

In contemporary India, sexual jealousy is a primary cause of violence towards women compared to other causes. Approximately fifty-one per cent of the violence towards women in an Indian sample was due to sexual jealousy.^[50]

In history, between 1880 and 1925, there were a large number of suicides amongst Indian immigrants on plantations in Fiji that reports attributed to sexual jealousy.^[51] Sexual Jealousy was high amongst these immigrants due to the disproportionate number of sexes: high numbers of men to few women. In suicide reports, sexual jealousy was described as a "racial trait" in Indian men and that it was evoked when European men slept with their women.^[52]

Explanations for cross cultural differences

Evolutionary psychology model

The differences feelings of the jealousy across cultures provides support for the evolutionary psychological model. Different weightings are given to triggers of sexual jealousy cross-culturally. In liberal cultures, male mating effort is based on the number of women. These men therefore invest less time in each woman and, therefore, exhibit less sexual jealousy.^[45]

Paternity certainty

Paternity certainty is the extent to which a male knows or believes that a woman's child is his.^[53]

In polygamous societies, men feel greater sexual jealousy when there is low paternity certainty.^[47] This is because they don't want to risk losing time, energy and resources to a child that is not theirs.^[45]

Socio-economic differences between cultures also affects paternity certainty.^[42] In "natural fertility" countries, such as Namibia, 96% of males show sexual jealousy compared to industrialised countries.^[54]

Additionally, there is greater likelihood of paternity loss and uncertainty due to lack of contraceptives.^[54] This provides another explanation for why industrialised countries tend to show lower sexual jealousy compared to pre-industrialised.

External links

• Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: an evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological review, 100(2), 204.
• Pines, A., & Aronson, E. (1983). Antecedents, correlates, and consequences of sexual jealousy. Journal of Personality, 51(1), 108-136.
• Wiederman, M. W., & Allgeier, E. R. (1993). Gender differences in sexual jealousy: Adaptionist or social learning explanation?. Ethology and Sociobiology, 14(2), 115-140.
• Further information on jealousy and mate-guarding in males and females
• Daly, M., Wilson, M., & Weghorst, S. J. (1982). Male sexual jealousy.Ethology and Sociobiology, 3(1), 11-27.
• Harris, C. R. (2002). Sexual and romantic jealousy in heterosexual and homosexual adults. Psychological Science, 13(1), 7-12.

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