A new study, in the January Psychological Science journal report, shows that the difference between the jealousy of men and women may not be inherent.
The study, which was complied by professors Kenneth Levy and Kristen Kelly of Pennsylvania State University, debunked the evolutionary psychology approach to jealousy.
Dr. David Buss first brought up the evolutionary assumption that there was a biological reason behind the jealousy of males in 1992, in the Psychological Science journal as well.
In Buss’ study, students were asked to report which of the following distressed them more, “their partner having passionate sexual intercourse with another person or their partner forming a deep emotional attachment to another person.”
His study showed that men were more than twice as likely to report that sexual infidelity was more distressing than emotional infidelity.
“Because fertilization occurs inside women, women enjoy 100 percent certainty that their genes are present in their offspring; men have no such guarantee,” Levy and Kelly said in their report of Buss’s work. “Consequently, men, but not women, risk unwittingly investing valuable parenting resources in children to whom they are not genetically related.”
Levy sees Buss interpretation as an evolved tendency in men.
“David Buss is essentially saying that when men are jealous about sexual infidelity, they are just men, being men and there’s not really much you can do about it,” Levy said.
But while Levy and Kelly also found that men were more likely than women to find sexual infidelity more distressing, they also found that jealousy was more closely related to something called a dismissive attachment style than it was to gender.
What surprised Levy was that those people, who appeared to care the least about relationships, actually cared the most about infidelity. Although these people were mostly men, dismissive women were just as likely as dismissive men to be jealous.
Levy said his study shows jealousy is more closely related to relationship history than genetics. “We’re essentially saying that men aren’t destined to be jealous.”
Dr. David Shim, a Boston University professor of psychology and a practicing clinical physician, said he believes there is a practical element that was missing from Buss’ evolutionary study.
“Human beings who come in for treatment, they don’t sit there and go “well it’s 40 percent this and 60 percent that,’ ” Shim said.
“Maybe men and women act differently, but I don’t know,” he said. “If you have a boyfriend and he cheated on you, are you only going to react to the emotional part? Or the fact that he physically shared intimacy with somebody else?”
But some BU students said they believe the biological difference in jealousy confirms their own experiences.
“I think men tend to get a lot more angry and I think they act more possessive over their girlfriends,” said College of Engineering junior Brian Meyers. “They get more jealous about their partners talking to other guys they might have a physical relationship with.”
Meyers said he has witnessed this type of jealousy before.
“I’ve seen a friend get jealous because his girlfriend was hugging another guy and maybe being a little bit flirty and he started yelling,” he said.
College of Arts and Sciences senior Marianna Breytman also said she believes there is a difference between the way in which men and women perceive relationships.
“I think it makes a lot of sense that women are more emotionally attached than men,” Breytman said.
However, while CAS senior Madison Mellish said she believes women are more attached, she claims biology is not solely responsible for this difference.
“I think it is part of the way we socialize, and then biology,” she said.
CAS senior Lin Ouyang said the environment is an important factor in the reaction of a jealous partner.
“I think to use an evolutionary argument about how people are jealous [is] a little bit oversimplified,” Ouyang said. “With just a quick recall of my experiences with friends and my own personal experiences I have to say that there isn’t one way that girls or guys get jealous.”
Metropolitan College freshman Robert Crowder said the study played down the emotional jealousy of men.
“If the girl I like or the girl I’m with is liking another guy, that’s going to be a problem for me,” Crowder said.
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