We have all experienced different emotions many times: happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust or surprise.
But there is one very strong emotion that deserves special attention – jealousy.
What are the causes of jealousy? Are they different in men and women? Is it a good emotion or not?
Jealousy and Human Evolution
When we feel jealousy, we go through a state of activation. Activation occurs when the existence of a valuable relationship is threatened.
If we think about human evolution, we can understand the role that jealousy plays much more clearly. According to the theory of evolution, the purpose of humans is reproduction.
When we are jealous, we fear the loss of the relationship and, therefore, the loss of potential offspring. Thus, during jealousy, we activate behavior aimed at restoring and maintaining safety from the point of view of the evolutionary theory of reproduction.
But do women and men experience jealousy in the same way? What exactly signals danger for each gender? To understand how jealousy arises, we need to look a little at the differences between the sexes in terms of the reproductive cycle.
If you think about women, a mother never questions whether the newborn is hers or not, since she is the one who carries the child for nine months.
Conversely, paternity can be questioned. After all, there is no guarantee that the child belongs to the alleged father. And yet he takes care of the children without being 100% sure that they are his.
Thus, men risk investing resources and time in the child of a potential rival.
Taking these facts into account, we can assume that jealousy in men developed in order to protect them from their partner’s sexual infidelity.
Female jealousy is associated with the fear of a lack of warmth and emotional closeness. A man who stops being faithful to his chosen one directs emotional closeness to another female and her offspring.
Increased levels of closeness and affection for another woman may signal the danger of losing existing feelings. Thus, when jealousy occurs in women, it is more emotionally oriented and signals a loss of affection.
Scientific research
The idea that men are more affected by sexual infidelity and women by emotional infidelity has been tested several times.
Participants were asked to imagine that their partner was interested in someone else. They were then asked whether they would be more upset if their partner formed a strong emotional attachment to that person or if their partner had sex with that person.
The responses show that most men are concerned about sexual infidelity, while women are concerned about emotional infidelity.
There have also been other scientific studies that have measured three physiological markers of jealousy: heart rate, skin conductivity, and facial frown.
The results show that men showed changes in these parameters when exposed to the sexual infidelity scenario. Women, on the other hand, showed the strongest response to emotional infidelity.
There have also been studies that have compared the perspectives of people in relationships with those of single people.
For women, relationship experience did not influence jealousy. They showed higher levels of distress in the case of emotional infidelity, regardless of whether they were in a relationship or not.
In contrast, men who had experience in relationships had the strongest reactions to sexual infidelity.
Existing research clearly identifies differences between men and women: both sexes experience jealousy, which signals the risk of losing an important relationship. But the factors that trigger jealousy are different.
While in men the feeling of jealousy is driven by the sexual component, in women the betrayal on an emotional level is more significant.
Author: Valeria Kisternaya
