la cultura y las diferencias de genero en celos romanticos

7/23/2019 La Cultura y Las Diferencias de Genero en Celos Romanticos

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Culture and gender differences in romantic jealousy

Danielle L. Zandbergen, Susan G. Brown

University of Hawaii at Hilo, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 19 June 2014

Received in revised form 25 August 2014

Accepted 26 August 2014

Available online 19 September 2014

Keywords:

Jealousy

Cultural differences

Gender differences

Infidelity

Social media

Relationships

Personality

Self-esteem

a b s t r a c t

Jealousy is an intense emotion that is experienced in the context of romantic relationships. Previous

research reported gender differences in ratings of jealousy over a sexual versus emotional infidelity. This

study explored culture and gender differences in jealousy using a mixed methods survey design. Onehundred and forty-five undergraduates from the University of Hawaii at Hilo participated. The

Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism Scale, Self-Report Jealousy Scale, and a modified

Emotional and Sexual Jealousy Scale were used for analyses. Two hierarchical multiple regression anal-

yses revealed that gender was a better predictor than culture in jealousy ratings involving an emotional

infidelity; but culture was a better predictor for jealousy ratings involving a sexual infidelity.t-Tests also

revealed that those who experienced an infidelity in the past reported significantly higher jealousy

ratings and that women reported significantly higher jealousy ratings in emotional but not in sexual infi-

delity than men. The qualitative results revealed four dominant themes related to participants causal

attributions of jealousy: Infidelity, Expectations of Time and Commitment, Social Media and Self-Esteem.

The authors suggest that future research focus on intersexual and intrasexual differences in jealousy, as

well the role social media may play in relationship expectations.

2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The expression of jealousy is related to feelings of depression,

anxiety and anger, and a significant loss of self-esteem. Jealousy

results in a wide variety of behaviors including destruction of

romantic relationships, violence, suicide, murder, marital

problems, and depression (Pines & Aronson, 1983). Explanations

of jealousy have focused on evolutionary theory, personality traits,

and relationship history. Cross-cultural studies exploring gender

differences in emotional and sexual infidelities have been consis-

tent with the evolutionary explanation of jealousy; however, the

extent to which individuals feel distress when made aware of sex-

ual and emotional infidelities varies across cultures. Moreover,

because gender equality and same-sex marriage is becoming moreubiquitous within modern day society, the question remains

whether gender differences in reactivity toward emotional versus

sexual infidelity are still reliable.

While research emphasized cultural differences in attribution of

human emotions, there has not been an exploration of potential

differences in how a culturally diverse set of individuals attribute

their feelings of jealousy. The purpose of the current study is to

explore the attributions of jealousy in a multi-cultural population

where there is potential to develop a more representative

paradigm through the interaction between gender and culture.

1.1. Jealousy coping strategies and evolutionary theory

According toParrot and Smith (1993), jealousy occurs specifi-

cally in the context of personal relationships, where the individual

fears losing a relationship due to a potential rival. Similarly,

Spielman (1971)defined jealousy as an attitude of vigilant guard-

ing against the threatened loss and an effort to preserve the status

quo, to maintain possession (p. 62). In this particular definition, itis assumed that jealousy is used as a protective mechanism, where

the individual is vigilant in guarding her or his threatened loss of

relationship.

The way in which an individual experiences jealousy is assumed

to be fairly stable throughout an individuals lifetime and can be

identified as a specific personality trait (Pines & Aronson, 1983).

One study found that people whose partners were unfaithful in

the past reported being more jealous than their counterparts, while

at the same time individuals who reported being unfaithful to their

partner also reported being more jealous (Pines & Aronson, 1983).

This suggests that unfaithful individuals may express jealousy just

as often as their partners. While jealousy may manifest in many

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.08.035

0191-8869/2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Address: P.O. Box 11512, Hilo, HI, United States. Tel.: +1 (808) 329 6418

(D.L. Zandbergen).

E-mail addresses:[email protected] (D.L. Zandbergen),[email protected]

(S.G. Brown).

Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 122127

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Personality and Individual Differences

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different forms across an individuals lifetime, the feeling of jeal-

ousy in a romantic relationship can be viewed as a complex mech-

anism. To encompass the many manifestations of jealousy, the

present study usedWhite and Mullens (1989) definition of jeal-

ousy as a complex of behaviors, thoughts and emotions resulting

from the perception of harm or threat to the self and/or the roman-

tic relationship by a real or potential rival relationship (p. 56).

Different jealousy mechanisms are activated in men andwomen determined by the types of cues associated with abandon-

ment or cuckoldry (Buss, 2008; Confer & Cloud, 2011). Sexual jeal-

ousy in men is a possible psychological adaptation selected to

contend with the latent costs of being cuckolded (Buss, 2008)

whereas women typically report more distress when confronted

with an emotional infidelity. Therefore, womens expressions of

jealousy tend to focus specifically on cues about the males long-

term investment (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992).

These gender differences are described as adapted patterns of pro-

tective behavior within romantic relationships.

Initial research validated the inference of evolved mechanisms

that are specific to the sex linked adaptive patterns in jealousy.

Subsequent studies found that the sexual dimorphism in

emotional reactivity to jealousy was not confounded by cultural

differences (Buunk, Angleitner, Oubaid, & Buss, 1996). In addition

to psychological distress, past research has also provided evidence

for gender differences by examining sexual versus emotional

determinants of jealousy (Buss et al., 1999; Buunk et al., 1996;

Strout, Laird, Shafer, & Thompson, 2005), through the likelihood

of terminating relationships after an infidelity (Shackelford, Buss,

& Bennett, 2002), memory recall (Schutzwohl & Koch, 2004), cog-

nitive preoccupations in response to sexual and emotional cues

(Schutzwohl, 2006), and different patterns of brain activation dur-

ing fMRI imagery of either a sexual or emotional infidelity

(Takahashi et al., 2006). However, there are many studies that have

found conflicting results regarding specific gender differences in

ratings of distress when approached with a sexual versus emo-

tional infidelity scenario (Sagarin et al., 2012). For instance,

Zengel, Edlund, and Sagarin (2013) found that significant genderdifferences only emerged when a forced choice measure was used,

and that continuous measures did not produce significant gender

differences.

The majority of studies exploring differences in romantic jeal-

ousy and differences in the expression of jealousy have tested

mostly European and Asian respondents (Buunk et al., 1996). There

have also been inconsistent findings when using continuous mea-

sures for the gender difference in emotional versus sexual jealousy

(Edlund & Sagarin, 2009; Zengel et al., 2013). Taking the past

literature into consideration, the current study explored causal

attributions of romantic jealousy and hypothesized that gender

would be a better predictor than culture in ratings of jealousy

toward an emotional or sexual infidelity. The present study also

goes beyond previous research in that it utilized a qualitative mea-sure exploring causal attributions and perceptions of jealousy in

romantic relationships through a cross-cultural sample.

2. Methods

2.1. Participants

The current study used a mixed methods survey design with

undergraduate students (N= 145) attending the University of

Hawaii at Hilo. The research project was approved by the Univer-

sity of Hawaii Committee on Human Studies. A total of 101

females and 44 males participated and the average age of

participants was 21 with a range of 1849 years old. Due to the

overwhelming amount of female participants, the current studymay have produced a ceiling effect related to gender. The partici-

pants varied in ethnicity, with most self-identifying as multi-eth-

nic which is congruent with the overall population residing in

Hawaii. Mixed ethnicities and cultures included Pacific Islanders,

Filipinos, Hawaiians, Japanese, Koreans, African Americans, Chi-

nese, Native Alaskans, Americans and Europeans. The relationship

status of the participants varied with 46.2% reporting being single,

25.5% dating, 22.8% in long-term relationships, 4.8% married, and

.7% separated. Ninety percent identified as heterosexual, 7.6%reported as bisexual, 1.4% lesbian, and .7% gay. Eighty-eight per-

cent of women identified as heterosexual, 10% reported bisexual

and 2% lesbian. Ninety-six percent of men identified as heterosex-

ual, 2% reported bisexual and 2% gay. Participants were also asked

whether or not they, or their partners, had engaged in a sexual

activity with someone other than their partner, in a current or past

relationship. Twenty-one percent reported having engaged in sex-

ual activity with someone other than their partner, 24.8% reported

that their partner engaged in a sexual activity with someone other

than them, and 17.2% did not know if their partner engaged in sex-

ual relations with others.

2.2. Procedure

Participants were notified about the research study by the

Human Subjects Pool website provided by the University of

Hawaii at Hilo psychology department. Each participant scheduled

individual appointments to complete the survey in private. After

discussing and obtaining the signed informed consent, the partici-

pants typically finished the survey in less than 30 minutes.

2.3. Measures

The survey asked participants about their gender, ethnicity, age,

relationship status, and sexual orientation. The participants were

also asked two questions related to their involvement in a roman-

tic relationship: whether or not they had ever been sexually

involved with someone other than their partner, and whether or

not their partner had ever been sexually involved with someone

other than them. The participants were then asked to provide a

brief description of a jealousy-evoking event and what they

thought caused their feeling of jealousy. These descriptions are dis-

cussed in the qualitative results section. Table 1 displays the

descriptive statistics. A modified version of Busss original Emo-

tional and Sexual Jealousy Scale (Buss et al., 1992) was used for

analysis. Busss original scale only analyzes the difference in dis-

tress toward a sexual and emotional infidelity, as opposed to the

feeling ofjealousy.Due to the methodological issues involved with

a forced-choice formatted question (Zengel et al., 2013), two ques-

tions asked the participants to respond on a Likert scale with 1

for Not at all Jealous, up to 9 for Extremely Jealous, for imag-

ining their partner forming a deep emotional attachment to

another individual. The second question asked the participant toimagine their partner engaging in sexual relations with another,

and was displayed on a reversed scale for 1 as Extremely Jeal-

ous and 9 as Not at all Jealous. The measures included in

the survey were the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Col-

lectivism (HVIC) Scale (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand,

Table 1

Descriptive statistics.

Variables Mean SD

Age 20.81 6.04

Emotional infidelity 7.49 1.58

Sexual infidelity 2.42 2.53

Collectivism 36.63 5.68

Individualism 25.44 8.64

D.L. Zandbergen, S.G. Brown / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 122127 123
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1995), the Self-Report Jealousy Scale (Bringle, Roach, Andler, &

Evenbeck, 1979), and a modified version of Busss Emotional and

Sexual Jealousy scale (Buss et al., 1992). The HVIC scale (Singelis

et al., 1995) was modified due to weak internal consistency. Previ-

ous research also found inconsistent reliability and lack of vigorous

structure in the original scale across many different cultural sam-

ples (Zhang, Mandl, & Wang, 2011). After a modification of these

items, acceptable reliability was obtained for the overall scale(a= .659).

3. Quantitative results

3.1. Hierarchical regression

Two hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted

to determine which of three predictor variables (gender, individu-

alism (IND), collectivism (COLL)) were most influential in predict-

ing emotional versus sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy. The first

regression analysis used emotional infidelity ratings of jealousy as

the dependent variable and the second regression analysis used

sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy as the dependent variable.

There were no significant interactions for emotional or sexual infi-delity ratings between gender or IND or COLL, so only the signifi-

cant main effects are discussed. The model summary and the

ANOVA analysis indicate an overall model of three predictors

(gender, IND, COLL) that significantly predicted emotional infidel-

ity ratings of jealousy, R2 = .083, R2adj = .063, F(2,141) = 4.253,

p< .05. In addition, bivariate and partial correlation coefficients

between each predictor and the dependent variable are presented

in Fig. 1. Gender was a stronger predictor (b= .231) than IND

(b= .193) or COLL (b= .084) for emotional infidelity ratings of

jealousy. However, there were no statistical differences between

the beta-weights for emotional infidelity ratings of gender and

IND (Z= 0.067) or for gender and COLL (Z= 0.551). In sum, gen-

der seems to be a more accurate predictor for emotional infidelity

ratings of jealousy than individualism or collectivism.The second regression analysis used the sexual infidelity ratings

of jealousy as the dependent variable, with gender, IND, and COLL

as the independent variables. Sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy

were reverse scored for the following analysis. The model

summary and the ANOVA table indicate an overall model of three

predictors (gender, IND, COLL) that significantly predicted sexual

infidelity ratings of jealousy, R2 = .084, R2adj = .065,

F(2,141) = 4.311,p< .05. As shown in the model summary, gender,

IND, and COLL (R2 = .084) had a significant impact on the outcome

of sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy. Additionally, bivariate and

partial correlation coefficients between each predictor and the

dependent variable are presented in Fig. 2. Collectivism was a

stronger predictor (b= .257) than IND (b= .183) or gender

(b=

.063) for sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy. However, therewere no significant differences in beta-weights for sexual infidelity

ratings of jealousy for gender and IND (Z= 0.168) or for gender and

COLL (Z= 0.268). The current hypothesis was partially correct, in

that gender seemed to be a better predictor for emotional infidelity

ratings of jealousy, but both collectivism and individualism

seemed to be more accurate predictors for sexual infidelity ratings

of jealousy.

An independent samplet-test was conducted for overall ratings

of jealousy and gender, as well. The results indicated that women

(M= 161.7, SD = 29.50) were significantly more jealous than men

(M= 148.64, SD = 29.60), t(142) = 2.45, p= .016, based on their

ratings on the Self-Report Jealousy Scale. An independent sample

t-test was also conducted for differences between emotional and

sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy and gender. The results indi-cated that women (M= 7.69, SD = 1.52) were significantly more

jealous in the emotional infidelity scenario than men (M= 7.02,

SD = 1.62), t(143) = 2.39, p= .018. The sexual infidelity variable

was not significant for gender, t(143) =.748, p = .456. Thus,

women reported to be more jealous than males for the emotional

infidelity scenario, but the genders did not differ in ratings of

jealousy for the sexual infidelity.

An independent samples t-test was used to determine the rela-

tionship between participants who had a previous experience of

infidelity and overall jealousy. Individuals who had a partner that

cheated previously (M= 161.99, SD = 30.30) reported significantly

higher jealousy ratings than those who did not (M= 148.03,

SD = 26.09), t(1,117) = 2.403, p < .05.

4. Qualitative results

The participants were asked to provide a description of a jeal-

ousy-evoking event that they experienced and what they thought

caused their jealousy. The open-ended responses were coded using

a grounded theory approach to analyze central themes related to

causal attributions of jealousy. There were no pre-defined

dimensions before the analysis; however the quantitative section

introduced infidelity events that emerged in many of the partici-

pants responses. The first phase in coding involved analyzing the

data and developing a set of preliminary categories. The broadest

categories were analyzed and then parsed through more detailed

analysis of the language used by the participants. Fig. 3 shows

the main themes found through the participants qualitative

Gender = -.196*

Gender = -.231*

Individualism= -.193*

Collectivism=.084

Emotional

Infidelity

Model 1

Model 2

Fig. 1. Emotional infidelity. Significant at the .05 level.

Gender= -.062

Gender= -.063

Individualism= -.183*

Collectivism= -.257**

Sexual

Infidelity

Model 1

Model 2

Fig. 2. Sexual infidelity model. Significant at the .05 level. Significant at the .01

level.

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

IInfidfidelity Time

Commmitme

and

tment

SoSocialial Meedia SSelf-Estesteem

Ma

Fe

Males

Female

es

ales

Fig. 3. Casual jealousy themes. The following represents the percentages of the fourdominant themes given by participants qualitative responses.

124 D.L. Zandbergen, S.G. Brown / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 122127


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responses broken down by gender. These preliminary categories

were then coded to more theoretically oriented concepts, where

four dominant themes emerged: Infidelity, Expectations of Time

and Commitment, Social Media, andSelf-Esteem.

4.1. Infidelity

The events that occur in past relationships can affect the wayindividuals engage in their current relationships. Many individuals

reported instances of what happened within their or their partners

past relationships. Social cues, like communicating with an ex-

partner, can invoke jealousy, and those who have dealt with an

unfaithful partner in the past reported feeling considerable

jealousy within their current relationships.

Many responses assumed an infidelity but it was unclear

whether or not an infidelity actually occurred. Previous studies

found that relational uncertainty or doubt in a partners involve-

ment produces a considerable amount of jealousy (Afifi &

Reichert, 1996; Muise, Christofides, & Desmarais, 2009; Theiss &

Solomon, 2006). About 17% of participants in the present study

responded that they did not know whether their partner had sex-

ual relations with another individual outside of the relationship. A

female described how her ex-boyfriend did not come home after

going out to the bar. She claimed that she had to repeatedly ask

him what had happened before he finally told her that he slept

on a friends couch with another woman. Some participants

reported that they had dealt with an infidelity in the past, which

may have been related to reactions of jealousy toward their current

partners. Participants also identified jealousy evocation within

their relationship when they believed their partners had intention-

ally invoked jealousy. Some suggest that jealousy evocation may

provide a feeling of commitment and confirmation for relationship

stability, but may provoke more frequent fighting between

partners (Sheets, Fredendall, & Claypool, 1997). A male participant

suggested potentially positive effects of jealousy, when he stated

that feeling jealous made it clear that he still cared about his part-

ner.White (1980)suggested that jealousy evocation may be usedfor equalizing power in the relationship. Similarly, Sheets and

colleagues (1997) found that individuals may evoke jealousy in

order to achieve a favorable relationship outcome.

The most common response described a potential rival or threat

to the relationship. In one case, a female talked about how her

partner knew she was a jealous person and that they had discussed

how she felt disrespected when her partner talked to other girls

extensively. That is, although she and her partner had discussed

the matter previously, her partner continued to disrespect her by

doing something he knew made her feel jealous. Infidelity was

one of the most common replies in response to the jealousy

evoking events and had a significant effect on how individuals

related to their partners. Similarly, participants related many of

their jealousy events to perceptions of infidelity referring to timeallocation and differing expectations of commitment.

4.2. Expectations of Time and Commitment

Time allocation came up most frequently in participants

responses, with many individuals complaining about how their

partners did not spend enough time with them. Enough time is

idiosyncratic and individuals expectations of time allocation differ.

One example of expectations in time allocation was provided by a

female who stated that her partner was spending a significant

amount of time with his female friends, thus contributing to her

overall jealousy.

In many of the responses, jealousy was perceived to be evoked

by the partner in search of some tangible reward, like attention or aneed to feel attractive. Many participants described events where

there was potential for an infidelity situation or a potential threat

to the relationship. One female described her partner avoiding her

because they had gotten into a fight. She proclaimed that instead of

trying to resolve the problem, her partner was hanging out with

other friends, including another girl that made her extremely jeal-

ous. It is evident that if ones expectation in time commitment is

not met by the partner, especially if there is a potential threat to

the relationship, one may experience intense feelings of jealousy.Many people also expressed concern about their partner doing,

or not doing, what they expected of them while in a relationship.

Many of these experiences were subjective in terms of what each

individual expected from their partner. Expectations of time and

commitment were prevalent throughout participants responses

to jealousy events and attributions. In many cases, there was an

interaction between time commitment and time spent engaging

in social media networking.

4.3. Social Media

The role of social media was found to be noteworthy in partic-

ipants responses of jealousy evocation. The new communication

tools involved in social media change relationship expectations,

as well as produce change in ones self-esteem. One femaledescribed a situation in which her partner spent the entire night

on Facebook, ignoring her, which she attributed to her size and

negatively affected her body image. Some responses addressed

the issue of infidelity and the pain caused by a partner talking to

someone else over the internet. Many responses attributed

jealousy to social media communication and how ultimately, it

damaged their overall self-esteem.

4.4. Self-Esteem

Another overlapping theme across jealousy events and causes

was self-esteem. Mathes, Adams, and Davies (1985) found that

men tended to report higher loss of self-esteem after discovering

their partner cheated, whereas women tended to report higherrates of loneliness. In the current study, self-esteem seemed to

be a prevalent theme, specifically with women. Some participants

responded that their jealousy was related to another individual

being perceived as more attractive or of higher status. A male

claimed that when he found out that his girlfriend was hanging

out with another man, he immediately was interested in his poten-

tial rivals attractiveness. Other participants talked about how their

self-esteem got in the way of their relationship, which in turn

made them aware of their partners seeking attention from other

attractive individuals.

In sum, the four most dominant themes that emerged in partic-

ipants responses to their jealousy evoking events and causes were

Infidelity, Expectations of Time and Commitment, Social Media, and

Self-Esteem. Relationship expectations in time and commitmentwere endorsed in many of the participants responses. Self-esteem,

including ones identification of a relationship threat as well as

ones sense of worth, was found to be related to many participants

overall jealousy. Social media may exacerbate feelings of infidelity,

too little time commitment and self-esteem.

5. Discussion

Gender was found to be an accurate predictor for the emotional

infidelity, but collectivism and individualism were better

predictors for the sexual infidelity ratings of jealousy. This result

is divergent from previous studies and suggests that cultural val-

ues may have a substantial effect on the way individuals express

jealousy in romantic relationships. Although women were foundto be significantly more jealous to the emotional infidelity scenario

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than men, the genders reported similar levels of jealousy to the

sexual infidelity scenario. Research suggests that women are more

likely than men to expect that an emotional infidelity may imply a

sexual infidelity (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris & Christenfeld,

1996), however Buss and colleagues (1999) found that the dou-

ble-shot hypothesis was not significant and the evolutionary

model was a better predictor in jealousy ratings. Zengel and

colleagues (2013) found theory-supportive gender differences forthe forced choice measures, but were unable to find significant

gender differences for continuous measures. Furthermore, the

present study used an extended scale (e.g. 9 point) and only found

significant gender differences in the emotional infidelity, which

contrasts from previous studies (Sagarin, Becker, Guadagno,

Nicastle, & Millevoi, 2003) which found significant gender differ-

ences in both scenarios.

The present study provided substantial evidence for more

intense jealousy ratings when infidelity occurred in a past relation-

ship. Zengel and colleagues (2013) found that the gender

difference was stronger when the participants had experienced

an actual infidelity as opposed to the hypothetical scenario, where

the nature of the infidelity can be considered a moderator variable

in jealousy ratings.Murphy, Vallacher, Shackelford, Bjorklund, and

Yunger (2006)found that past relationship experience is a signifi-

cant predictor for distress over infidelity, but primarily for men. It

would be important to explore more within-sex differences in

overall jealousy, emphasizing the importance of previous relation-

ships and attachments in relation to existing behavior and

emotional expressions.

Many individuals attributed their jealousy toward information

provided on the social networking site, Facebook. Chen and

Marcus (2012)found that individuals self-construals and level of

extraversion have a strong impact on how people present

themselves online.McAndrew and Shah (2013)used The Facebook

Jealousy questionnaire (Muise et al., 2009) and found sex differ-

ences in overall jealousy, where females were found to be more

prone to Facebook-evoked feelings of jealousy than males.Muise

and colleagues (2009)suggest that increased Facebook use resultsin higher jealousy ratings. It is evident that social networking sites,

like Facebook may have a significant impact on how people inter-

act with and view relationships. Future research should emphasize

social networking use and perceived attributions of jealousy, since

these websites seem to have a noteworthy effect on expectations

within romantic partnerships.

The qualitative results provide another appealing concept that

may be related to jealousy evocation, namely Expectations of Time

and Commitment. Research has explored expectations of commit-

ment, mostly identifying between-gender differences in attach-

ment. Wongpakaran, Wongpakaran, and Wedding (2012) found

that individuals who were currently in a romantic relationship

reported more insecurities in their attachment than those who

reported being single. Future relationship research should exploretime allocation and commitment expectations in order to better

understand the role these expectations may have on relationship

outcomes.

5.1. Limitations to the study

The current study tested undergraduate students at a small uni-

versity and had significantly more women participate, producing a

ceiling effect. These results may not be an accurate representation

of the overall population. The change in the HVIC scale may have

affected the results in the current study. However, since the HVIC

scale needed to be significantly modified, this begs the question

of whether or not ratings on this scale best represent a multi-ethnic culture. Perhaps this is an indication to change the way in

which we view these dichotomous cultural value systems, and

create a more accurate cultural value measure.

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