Abstract
Two infidelity scenarios and the Distress about Mating Rivals Questionnaire were administered to 506 undergraduate students, 202 men and 304 women. The results from the infidelity scenarios strongly suggest that men become more upset by sexual aspects of infidelity compared to women. Women were more upset than men by their partner’s emotional commitment to another woman. Data from the Distress about Mating Rivals Questionnaire showed that men relatively more than women will be more distressed by a rival that has higher status and prestige, better financial prospects and more physical strength compared to themselves. In contrast, women would be relatively more distressed than men by a rival that is more kind and understanding, has a more attractive face and a more attractive body than themselves. The results lend support to evolutionary based explanations for the observed sex differences.
References
1948). Intra-sexual selection in Drosophila. Heredity, 2, 349–368.
(1991). Childhood experience, interpersonal development, and reproductive strategy: An evolutionary theory of socialization. Child Development, 62, 647–670.
(1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: evolutionary hypothesis tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 1–49.
(1995). Evolutionary psychology: A paradigm for psychological science. Psychological Inquiry, 6, 1–30.
(2000). The dangerous passion. Why jealousy is as necessary as love or sex. London: Bloomsbury.
(2005). The evolution of jealousy: A response to Buller. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 506–507.
(2011). The Evolution of Personality and Individual Differences. New York: Oxford University Press.
(1993). Sexual strategies theory – an evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204–232.
(2000). Distress about mating rivals. Personal Relationship, 7, 235–243.
(1999). Jealousy and the nature of beliefs about infidelity: Tests of competing hypothesis about sex differences in the United States, Korea, and Japan. Personal Relationships, 6, 125–150.
(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioural science (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1982). Male sexual jealousy. Ethology and Sociobiology, 3, 11–27.
(1859). On the origin of species. London: Murray.
(1871). The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. London: Murray.
(1996). Evolutionary origins of sex differences in jealousy: Questioning the “fitness” of the model. Psychological Science, 7, 367–372.
(2002). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1103–1116.
(1998). Jealousy as function of rival characteristics: An evolutionary perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1158–1166.
(1999). The origin of sex differences in human behaviour: Evolved dispositions versus social roles. American Psychologist, 54, 408–423.
(2003). Does father absence place daughthers at special risk for early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy? Child Development, 74, 801–821.
(1992). The evolution of sexual attraction: evaluative mechanisms in women. In , The Adapted Mind (pp. 267–288). New York: Oxford University Press.
(2006). Sex differences in response to sexual and emotional infidelity among Spanish and Chilean students. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 37, 359–365.
(2005). Male and female jealousy, still more similar than different: Reply to Sagarin (2005). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 76–86.
(1987). Social or evolutionary theories? Some observations on preferences in human mate selection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 194–200.
(2009). Sex differences in sexual desires and attitudes in Norwegian samples. Interpersona, 3, 1–32.
(2005). Men’s desire for children carrying their genes and sexual jealousy: A test of paternity uncertainty as an explanation of male sexual jealousy. Psychological Reports, 96, 791–798.
(2006). Family Structure and Age at Menarche: A Children-of-Twins Approach. Developmental Psychology, 42, 533–542.
(2008). Evidence for conditional sex differences in emotional but not sexual jealousy at the automatic level of cognitive processing. European Journal of Personality, 22, 3–30.
(2002). Sex differences in human jealousy. A coordinated study of forced- choice continuous rating- scale, and physiological responses on the same subjects. Evolution and Human Behavior, 23, 83–94.
(2005). Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A 48-nation study of sex, culture, and strategies of human mating. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 247–311.
(2008). Relief over the disconfirmation of the prospect of sexual and emotional infidelity. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 668–678.
(2006). A theory of cultural value orientation: Explication and applications. Comparative Sociology, 5, 136–182.
(1991). Individual differences in sociosexuality: Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 870–883.
(1979). The evolution of human sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
(1987). If we’re all Darwinians, what’s all the fuss about? In , Sociobiology and psychology: Ideas, issues and applications (pp. 121–146). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
(1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In , Sexual selection and the descent of man (pp. 136–176). Chicago: Aldine.
(1997). Human Development Report. New York: Oxford University Press.
. (2004). Evolutionary and social cognitive explanations of sex differences in romantic jealousy. Australian Journal of Psychology, 56, 165–171.
(1999). Evolution, sex, and jealousy: Investigation with a sample from Sweden. Evolution and Human Behaviour, 20, 121–128.
(2007). Social structural origins of sex differences in human mating. In , Evolution of the mind: Fundamental questions and controversies (pp. 383–390). New York: Guilford.
(