Jealousy and the nature of beliefs about infidelity: Tests of competing hypotheses about sex differences in the United States, Korea, and Japan

Abstract

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 type. An alternative hypothesis proposes that beliefs about the conditional probabilities of sexual and emotional infidelity account for these sex differences. Four studies tested these hypotheses. Study 1 tested the hypotheses in an American sample (N = 1,122) by rendering the types of infidelity mutually exclusive. Study 2 tested the hypotheses in an American sample (N = 234) by asking participants to identify which aspect of infidelity was more upsetting when both forms occurred, and by using regression to identify the unique contributions of sex and beliefs. Study 3 replicated Study 2 in a Korean sample ( N = 190). Study 4 replicated Study 2 in a Japanese sample (N = 316). Across the studies, the evolutionary hypothesis, but not the belief hypothesis, accounted for sex differences in jealousy when the types of infidelity are rendered mutually exclusive; sex differences in which aspect of infidelity is more upsetting when both occur; significant variance attributable to sex, after controlling for beliefs; sex-differentiated patterns of beliefs; and the cross-cultural prevalence of all these sex differences.

Jealousy in a small-scale, natural fertility population: the roles of paternity, investment and love in jealous response

“…These hypotheses suppose that emotional jealousy and sexual jealousy are not perceived as independent by participants, and that because men are more likely to believe sexual infidelity implies emotional infidelity and women the opposite, a sex difference could result because emotional infidelity signifies two indiscretions for women and sexual infidelity two indiscretions for men (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996;Harris & Christenfeld, 1996). To solve this dilemma, Buss and colleagues designed a study explicitly stating that both kinds of infidelity had occurred and asked participants to choose which of the two was most distressing (Buss et al, 1999). That statement was used here, and reads:…”

“…Specifically, the present study was designed as a replication of Buss et al (1999). This particular iteration of the forced choice model was chosen because it was designed to address concerns about the possibility of a "double-shot" or "logical beliefs" effect .…”

“…Those studies that do look at cross-cultural differences (e.g. Buunk et al, 1996;Buss et al, 1999;Fernandez et al, 2006) point to some trends in variation, but they do not offer a priori predictions grounded in evolutionary theory about jealous behavior. As we move forward with cross-cultural work on this topic it would be helpful to use existing theory about life history trade-offs to generate predictions about the expected intensity of jealous response and the magnitude of any sex difference.…”

“…Studies conducted in non-western settings are also almost exclusively conducted with undergraduates (e.g. Buss et al, 1999in Korea and Japan, Geary, Rumsey, Bow-Thomas, & Hoard, 1995in China, Fernandez, Sierra, Zubeidat, & Vera-Villarroel, 2006in Chile, and Brase, Caprar, & Voracek, 2004. To date, there are no studies that have been published using data from respondents from a small-scale society or natural fertility (noncontracepting) population.…”

Quantifying Common Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology

“…Doing so has proven fruitful in advancing and integrating our understanding of numerous aspects of social psychology (Schaller et al 2006), memory research (Nairne et al 2008), personality and individual differences (Buss 2009), and evolved navigation (Jackson and Cormack 2008). For instance, in the case of social psychology, evolutionary psychological approaches have provided major advances in our understanding of romantic and sexual jealousy (Buss et al 1996(Buss et al , 1999Sagarin et al 2012); long-term and short-term mate preferences (Buss and Schmitt 1993;Li and Kenrick 2006); sexual attitudes and behaviors (Schmitt 2005); racism and prejudice (McDonald et al 2011;Navarrete et al 2012); kinship recognition, and incest avoidance (Lieberman et al 2007;Park et al 2008); and the evolved functions of religiosity (Gladden et al 2009;Kirkpatrick 1999;Wilson 2010). Knowing the adaptive functions behind the design of, for instance, human sociality is akin to knowing that the human heart is designed to pump blood; it is central to an advanced and complete scientific understanding of human psychology.…”