A Review of Sex Differences in Sexual Jealousy, Including Self-Report Data, Psychophysiological Responses, Interpersonal Violence, and Morbid Jealousy

“That does not mean that the mechanisms responsible for the computations performed under normal conditions are not modular in the sense of being function and input specific (see Harris, 2003, pp. 106 –107, for a similar confusion).”

“Without such empirical validation, how is one to know whether the responses of subjects on such paper-and-pencil tests really reflect how people actually behave in real-world situations? Indeed, in cases in which evolutionary psychologists predict differences in how men and women respond to sexual infidelity, no diffe…”

“An earlier meta-analysis (Harris, 2003) found the sex difference (a medium effect in the male direction) to be restricted to studies using forced choices rather than continuous measures of the degree of upset to each possible scenario.”

“We also do not review here the literature on jealousy (see Buunk & Dijkstra, 2000, and Harris, 2003 for reviews) because much of this literature does not assess the presence of actual EMI, assesses hypothetical responses, uses undergraduate populations, or focuses only on responses to perceived…”

“…to reproductive threats (see Buss et al., 1992) has encountered formidable theoretical and empirical difficulties that limit its viability (DeSteno, Barlett, & Salovey, in press; DeSteno et al., 2002; DeSteno & Salovey, 1996a; Harris, 2003; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996; Sabini & Green, 2004).”

“Harris, C.R. (2003). A review of sex differences in sexual jealousy, including self-report data, psychophysiological responses, inter-”

“When jealousy related to sexual and emotional infidelity is assessed using various non-forced-choice response formats, no sex differences emerge; men and women both report greater jealousy in response to sexual infidelity (DeSteno et al., 2002; Harris, 2003a).”

“Indeed, it has been proposed that a female’s jealousy varies with the threat that she perceives in a male partner’s infidelity (Harris, 2003), and this jealousy would not be so if male extrapair mating had no deleterious effect on his partner.”

“…research has suggested that the ultimate sources of jealousy differ between the sexes (e.g., importance of sexual versus emotional infidelities; Harris, 2003), it is nevertheless clear that both men and women experience jealousy when threatened with a partner’s infidelity (ARNOCKY et al. 2012;…”

“In many Western cultures that stress romantic ideals of love, jealousy can play a big role in conflict, and jealousy has been shown to be an important motive in intimate partner violence (Buss, 2000; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Dutton, 1998; Harris, 2003).”

“…present in both countries, an evolutionary explanation for mating-duration dependent, sex-differentiated mate preferences would be further bolstered (though sex-differentiated mate preferences are also generally compatible with social structural accounts; e.g., Harris, 2003; Wood & Eagly, 2002).”

“This research has been primarily devoted to testing the hypothesis that the female JM responds with stronger emotions to a mate’s emotional infidelity, whereas the male JM generates stronger emotions in response to a mate’s sexual infidelity (see Harris, 2003, for a critical review).”

“…can be used to examine a number of relationship topics, such as gender differences and similarities in sexual jealousy and infidelity (e.g., Harris, 2003), which focuses largely on heterosexual relationships, and studies of domestic violence, where much of the focus has been on…”

“Although the evidence is somewhat mixed (e.g., Harris, 2003), there may be a dedicated psychology in men that leads them to be sexually jealous and to engage in mate guarding (see, e.g., Buss & Haselton, 2005).”

“Typically, studies find that a small majority of men find sexual infidelity more distressing than emotional infidelity, whereas a large majority of women find emotional infidelity more distressing than sexual infidelity (see Harris, 2000, 2003, for reviews).”

“Other researchers working from a social–cognitive perspective have argued that such sex differences do not exist (Harris, 2003a) or that they can be explained by prevailing stereotypes about the co-occurrence of the two types of infidelity at once (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996).”

“Research on jealousy from an evolutionary perspective has in the past decades mainly focused on gender differences in the importance of emotional versus sexual jealousy (i.e., on the different responses to an emotional attachment between a third person and one’s partner and a “pure” sexual affair between a third perso…”

“(p. 122) Harris (2003) also outlines two weaker forms of the JSIM hypothesis.”

“Research has noted strong associations between jealousy and relationship conflict, aggression, and violence (Buss, 2000; Hansen, 1991; Harris, 2003; Langhinrichsen-Rohling, McCullars, & Misra, 2012; Stets & Pirog-Good, 1987).”

“…domain specific mechanisms is only one of a number of possible ways in which natural selection might have shaped human psychology (Caporael 2000; Harris 2003; Miller and Fishkin 1997; Wood and Eagly 2002) According to alternative perspectives, natural selection may instead have created…”

“Jealousy and suspicion of infidelity Research suggests that individuals may be more prone to violent behavior in the presence of jealousy or suspicion of infidelity, especially during pregnancy (Gangestad et al. 2002; Gelles 2001; Goetz and Shackelford 2009; Harris 2003).”

“…stronger emotions to a mate s emotional infidelity whereas the male EJM generates stronger emotions in response to a mate s sexual infidelity (see Harris, 2003, for a critical review; and Hofhansl, Vitouch, & Voracek, 2004, for a more recent and complete meta-analysis that supports the…”

“, 1996; Harris, 2003), sexual orientation (Harris, 2003), age (Harris, 2003; Sabini & Green, 2004), histo ry of past infidelity experiences (Harris, 2002; Harris, 2003), and use of continuous meas ures (DeSteno et al., 2002; Green & Sabini, 2006; Harris, 2003).”

“Although studies using this forced-choice methodology generally find that a higher proportion of men than women choose the sexual infidelity as more distressing (Harris, 2003), reliance on this methodology has led to a number of serious”

“There is a well-known literature from evolutionary psychology (e.g., Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992) that argues men are more upset by their partners’ sexual infidelity, whereas women are more upset by their partner’s emotional infidelity (for an insightful critique of this literature, see Harris, 2003 ).”

“, & Harris, C. R. (2015). Envy across adulthood: The what”

“Anger was identified as a major component of the response to infidelity [25,26].”

“…stronger emotions to a mate’s emotional infidelity, whereas the male JM generates stronger emotions in response to a mate’s sexual infidelity (see Harris, 2003, for a critical review; and Hofhansl, Vitouch, & Voracek, 2004, for a more recent and complete meta-analysis that supports the…”

“Many researchers, in fact, have begun to develop evolutionary psychological theories that suggest that men and women should respond similarly to threats and actual instances of infidelity by their partners for a variety of reasons (Harris, 2003b; Miller & Fishkin, 1997).”

“The evolutionary explanation for sex differences in jealousy has received strong support (Buss et al., 1992, 1999; Buunk et al., 1996) and equally strong criticism (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996; see Harris, 2003, for a review).”

“Gender differences in response to the hypothetical scenarios are inconsistent; where such differences do occur, they are only modest (see Harris, 2003; Nannini & Myers, 2000; Sheppard et al., 1995; Yarab et al., 1999).”

“The sex difference appears to be robust and replicable using the forced-choice response format (Harris, 2003), but is more elusive using continuous measures (Harris, 2003, 2005; Sagarin, 2005).”

“…in women’s responses across the two studies also may reflect greater complexity in the forces affecting women’s responses to infidelity (see Harris, 2003; Hupka & Ryan, 1990) and also the inconsistent findings in assessments of women’s physiological reactions to infidelity reviewed in…”

“As suggested by both DeSteno and Salovey (1996) and Harris (2003) , in a forced-choice situation, choosing one option inappropriately indicates decreased interest in another option when more complex relationships may exist.”

“…cultures and time periods, legal systems have granted special dispensation to acts committed out of jealousy due to the belief that one had little power to resist the impulses brought on by circumstances such as finding a spouse in the arms of a lover (Daly, Wilson, & Weghorst, 1982; Harris, 2003).”

“Also unclear are the criteria by which the focus should be placed on desired vs. actual behavior (see also Harris 2003 ).”

“…female college students did not differ in their reports of the degree to which a mate’s actual sexual betrayal had damaged the primary relationship (Hansen, 1987); and (c) men and women did not differ in their reactions to the different aspects of a mate’s actual infidelity (Harris, 2002; 2003a).”

“…sexual than emotional infidelity, whereas women should be more upset by emotional than sexual infidelity (e.g., DeSteno et al., 2002, p. 1114; C. R. Harris, 2003, 2005, p. 77, Table 1), but these predictions do not follow from the evolutionary logic described above nor were they advanced by Buss…”

“Jealousy may have given a fitness advantage to humans in our ancestral environment; current evidence shows that culture also plays a role (Harris, 2003).”

“…jealousy One possible model of jealousy is that it has a primitive or ‘‘core’’ form that can be elicited by a primary appraisal of threat that arises from input as simple as the perception that a loved one has turned their attention to a potential rival and away from the self (Harris, 2003a).”

“Empirical studies have been conducted that have both confirmed and called into question the validity of the evolutionary psychological perspective’s ability to explain gender differences in interpreting infidelity (see Buss et al.; Harris, 2003).”

“Researchers have pointed out that the two perspectives can be compatible when gender-role conformity is viewed as a mechanism of evolution proposed by evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Eagly and Wood 1999; Harris 2003; Miller and Fishkin 1997).”

“Some critics have argued that the sex difference in jealousy is an artifact of the forcedchoice method and that the results do not replicate with continuous measures (DeSteno, Bartlett, Braverman, & Salovey, 2002; Harris, 2003).”

“This belief may lead men to be more distressed by sexual infidelity (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris, 2003; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996).”

“At least one meta-analysis casts doubt on sex-specific predictions regarding jealousy experiences (Harris, 2003).”

“However, reactions to an imagined infidelity may not perfectly parallel responses to real infidelities (Harris, 2003).”

“Such a view would be consistent with a number of theories of distinct emotions (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Frijda & Parrott, 2011; Roseman, 2011; see also Harris, 2003, for similar analysis of jealousy).”

“A partner’s pregnancy may also induce suspicion of infidelity in abusive males (Goetz, Shackelford, Romero, Kaighobadi, & Miner, 2008; Harris, 2003; Hellmuth, Gordon, Stuart, & Moore, 2013).”

“…an impressive body of research that has been primarily devoted to testing the hypothesis that the female JM responds with stronger negative emotions to a mate’s emotional infidelity whereas the male JM generates stronger negative emotions in response to a mate’s sexual infidelity (Harris, 2003).”

“Sociosexuality, for instance, was not at all associated with differences in reactions to infidelity situations (contrary to the predictions made by Harris, 2003a).”

“…self-enhancement; Berman & Frazier, 2005; Gagné & Lydon, 2003; Lydon, 1999), although it is debated whether men and women differ in emotional responses to different types of threats (e.g., distress over sexual vs. emotional infidelity; see Harris, 2003, 2005; Sagarin, 2005, for reviews).”

“Without such empirical validation, how is one to know whether the responses of subjects on such paper-and-pencil tests really reflect how people actually behave in real-world situations? Indeed, in cases in which evolutionary psychologists predict differences in how men and women respond to sexual infidelity, no diffe…”

“3 Furthermore, jealousy has particular importance to our sample of college-age individuals, as young adults tend to experience more romantic jealousy (Harris, 2003).”

“We also know from previous work that there is significant variation in the magnitude of the sex difference that is seen, as well as variation in how upset men and women are to different types of jealousy when it is measured continuously (Harris, 2003).”

“One limitation concerns the validity of responses to the imagined infidelity scenarios, given that this methodology does not directly measure participants’ actual behavior (Harris, 2003).”

“However, when reactions to sexual and emotional infidelity were assessed separately on continuous measures, the hypothesized sex difference often failed to appear (Harris, 2002, 2003) including within a large random sample (Green & Sabini, 2006).”

“It has been suggested that because they have relatively little experience in long-term committed relationships, their responses to hypothetical infidelity is largely based on societal expectations and hypothetical cognitive reasoning (Harris, 2003; Sabini & Green, 2004).”

“On the other hand, other researchers have argued that there are no differences between males and females (Harris, 2003) or that any differences can be explained by prevailing stereotypes about the co-occurrence of the two types of infidelity for men and women.”

“Harris (2003, 2005), for instance, observed that results obtained by the forced-choice method hardly correlated with results obtained by other self-report measures (e.g. Likert scales and psychophysiological measures; see also Sagarin, 2005).”

“Additionally, individuals in homosexual relationships tend to be more focused on the emotional aspects of the infidelity than the sexual aspects (Harris, 2002, 2003), regardless of the gender of the same-sex relationship (men with men or women with women).”

“Hence, jealousy is a usually unpleasant but often adaptive phenomenon, with the underlying desire to maintain the relationship with the partner (Harris, 2003).”

“In contrast, studies that have examined women’s and men’s jealousy using continuous measures have often produced nonsignificant results, leading some critics to argue that the sex difference is an artifact of the forced-choice method (DeSteno, Bartlett, Braverman, and Salovey, 2002; Harris, 2003).”

“However, there is a debate regarding the cause and interpretation of this difference (Harris, 2000, 2003).”