Evolution of Jealousy

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Evolution of Jealousy
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What is Jealousy?

• Weve all experienced it
• Powerful and painful
• An emotional state that is aroused by a perceived
  threat to a relationship or position
• It motivates behaviors that counter the threat

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Green eyed monster
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Scenario

• What would upset or distress you more
• (a) discovering that your partner is forming a
  deep emotional attachment and confiding and
  sharing confidences with another? Or
• (b) discovering that your partner is enjoying
  passionate sex with the other person, trying out
  different sexual positions you had only dreamed
  about?

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The Specific Innate Module Theory

• Provided payoff in EEA
• Fitness advantage
• Innate module, wired-in brain ciruit
• Specific sets of brain circuits guides our
  emotional reaction to threats

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Sex Differences in Jealousy

• Threats to ancestral man
• Cuckoldry
• Uncertainty in paternity
• Expending scare resources on another mans
  offspring

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Sex Differences in Jealousy

• Threats to ancestral woman
• Lost resources because of cheating mate
• Loss of emotional involvement

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Evolutionary Perspective

• Jealousy is
• An adaptation
• An important passion that helped our ancestors
• Emotional wisdom

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Self-Report Studies

• Buss colleagues, 1992
• Forced-choice method
• 70 of women indicate emotional infidelity to be
  more disturbing
• 40-60 of men report sexual infidelity would be
  worse

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Imposition of Cognitive Load
To help determine whether the sex differences in
Figure 2 reflected "wired-in," innate modules of
male and female jealousy, David DeSteno and his
colleagues imposed a cognitive load. Subjects
were asked to retain in memory a string of seven
digits while answering questions. The load had no
effect on males' responses, but females'
responses shifted toward picking sexual
infidelity as the more powerful jealousy trigger.
This shift suggests that women's responses to
forced-choice scenarios may reflect inferences or
self-presentation strategies.
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Physiological Measures of Jealousy

• Buss colleagues
• Autonomic nervous system activity
• Males heart rates and EDA higher when imagining
  sexual infidelity
• Females showed opposite pattern.

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Alternate explanation for development of jealousy

• Sibling rivalry
• Familiar phenomenon
• Avian species
• Jealousy in infancy can
• be elicited by a parent
• directing attention to
• Another (Sybil Hart)

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Conclusion

• Exploring evolutionary roots can be a productive
  approach to studying jealousy
• A large body of evidence supports evolutionary
  theory of jealousy
• It seems likely that different green eyed
  monsters dwell within men and women, however a
  monster might first arise in the minds of babies,
  long before sex and romance emerge