Project: Gender Differences on the Emotional and Sexual Jealousy

Project Content:
Men and women face different risks associated with investments in their reproduction. Unlike women, men cannot be absolutely certain that they are the biological parents of their children. They have a higher risk of investing all of their resources to other men’s offspring (Buss et al., 1992). Thus, men have a stronger pressure to defend against cuckoldry (Buss et al., 1992). It is reasonable to speculate, according to the evolutionary point of view, that men evolved a stronger sexual jealousy than women to adapt to this problem. That is, men will be especially upset if their partners are sexually involved with others. On the other hand, women invest more time and resources in reproduction than men. The biggest risk for women is losing men’s investment. According to the evolutionary view, it is adaptive for women to be more upset when men have emotional attachments to other women (Buss et al., 1992).

Project Purpose:
Researchers tested if priming the participants of relevant romantic experience would have any effect on their emotional and sexual jealousy, accounting for differences in sex. Further, the researchers wanted to test if priming would interact with gender to produce differences on emotional and sexual jealousy. The experimenters hypothesized that (1) men would report stronger sexual jealousy and women would report stronger emotional jealousy; (2) participants who were primed of relevant romantic experiences would report both stronger sexual and emotional jealousy.

Major:
Psychology, Statistics