Penke, L. & Asendorpf, J.B. (2008). Evidence for Conditional
Sex Differences in Emotional but Not in Sexual Jealousy at
the Automatic Level of Cognitive Processing. European
Journal of Personality, 22:3-30.
By: Haley Andrews, Elizabeth Haralambos, Andrea
Hollingshead
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLfetNvF9
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Introduction: Debate over sex
differences in romantic jealousy
• Classic evolutionary hypothesis: men and women
react differently to sexual and emotional infidelity
because these two types of infidelity posed
different adaptive problems
– Men: excepted more jealous of sexual infidelity than
women to minimize investment in genetically
unrelated offspring
– Women: expected more jealous of emotional infidelity
than men to minimize loss of parental investment in
their offspring
– “Jealousy as a specific ‘innate’ module hypothesis”:
two independently derived hypotheses, one for sexual
and one for emotional infidelity, where one, none, or
both may be true
Introduction: Debate over sex
differences in romantic jealousy
• “Social cognitive theory of jealousy”: jealousy is
the result of an evolved, but domain general
appraisal mechanism; this mechanism is sensitive
to all kinds of threats posed by rivals
– jealousy is aroused when a rival outdoes someone in
domains that are particularly important to the self
– this theory does not expect universal sex differences
in sexual and emotional jealousy
– they may or may not exist, depending on culturally
determined gender roles
Introduction: Closer look at the two
evolutionary hypotheses
• Both are weak tests of evolutionary hypotheses because they
confound sex differences in sexual jealousy and emotional
jealousy
• Four cases of a sex by type of infidelity
– men react more jealous to sexual infidelity than women
– women react more jealous to emotional infidelity than men
– men react more jealous to sexual infidelity than to emotional
infidelity
– women react more jealous to emotional infidelity than to sexual
infidelity
• Forced-choice only tests whether one of the two evolutionary
hypotheses or both are supported; it does not test whether
both hypotheses are confirmed
• Social-cognitive theory does not predict any specific betweensex or within-sex differences in emotional or sexual jealousy
Introduction: The necessity to study
cognitive processes
• Evolutionary psychology aim: to study the design of
cognitive modules as the mediating mechanisms
between evolution and adaptive behavior
• This requires an integration of the study of ultimate
evolved functions and proximate cognitive processes
• Spontaneity versus deliberation in making a decision.
Cues of emotional and sexual infidelity is important, as
well as the extent to which emotional versus sexual
infidelity violate gender roles within a specific culture
Introduction: Empirical evidence
• Forced-choice paradigm
• Separate ratings of sexual and emotional
infidelity
• Cognitive processing of infidelity cues
The Present Study
• Aim was to test the two evolutionary hypotheses using a
combination of
– Forced-choice method
– Continuous emotion ratings
• Cognitive processes
– Automaticity of responses in the forced-choice task
– Decision rating
• Hypotheses
– The classic sex difference in the forced-choice paradigm under both
conditions, particularly under cognitive constraint
– Women rate emotional infidelity situations more negatively than men,
but that men do not rate sexual infidelity situations more negatively
than women
– Women do not rate emotional infidelity cues faster than men, but that
men do not process sexual infidelity cues faster than women
The Present Study: Method
• Sample
– 284 German native speakers between 20-30 years
of age who had been in a committed a
relationship.
– Recruited in a large city by flyers and postings in
various public places
The Present Study: Design
• Forced choice with cognitive constraint and the instruction
to respond spontaneously
– Participants are given a string of 6 digits, in which they have to
recall at the end of their spontaneous decision of which option
is more upsetting than the other
• Continuous emotion ratings with the instruction to vividly
imagine each situation
– Rather than comparing one situation to another, they rate each
scenario based on anger, anxiety, and humiliation on a scale
• Deliberate forced-choice dilemmas with the instruction to
vividly imagine each alternative and take enough time for
the decision
– They are again forced to choose which option is more stressful
when compared to another, except without the constraint of the
digit recall.
Results
• Forced-choice under cognitive constraint
– For all choices of all participants, a significant,
moderately large effect confirmed that more women
(77%) than men (63%) judged emotional infidelity as
more distressing than sexual infidelity.
– Sex and education interactions
• The less educated participants showed a stronger sex
difference where as the better educated participants
showed only a small significant sex difference.
– Sex differences in the reaction times
• Decisions for sexual infidelity were as fast as decisions for
emtional jealousy and men and women did not differ in their
overall decision times
Results
• Emotion Ratings
– There was a significant, moderately large main effect of sex,
with women rating the infidelity situations overall more
negatively than men.
– Post hoc t tests showed a significant effect of sex for ratings of
jealousy, anxiety, and humiliation but not for anger.
– Women reported overall more negative emotions for both
sexual and emotional infidelity, with a slightly larger effect size
for emotional jealousy.
– Post hoc t tests showed that for the less educated participants,
the sex difference for sexual infidelity was small and not
significant, but the sex difference for emotional infidelity was
significant and fairly large.
• The education effect was mainly driven by stronger emotional
jealousy of less educated women.
Results
• Forced-choice with deliberation
– A significant, moderately large effect confirmed
that more women than men judged emotional
infidelity as more distressing than sexual infidelity.
• Forced- choice task summary
– The sex difference for the classic forced-choice
task is due to fast, spontaneous decisions, rather
than due to long deliberation and that it is more
pronounced in less educated participants.
Results
• Relationship Effects
– All participants had at least once experienced a
committed, sexual relationship that lasted at least
1 month.
– Neither the total number of committed sexual
relationships the participants had so far, nor the
duration of the current relationships of the paired
participants were significantly correlated with any
of the jealousy measures.
Discussion
• Three main findings; two confirmed the hypotheses
derived from previous literature
– Women are more likely than men to choose emotional
infidelity over sexual jealousy as the more distressing
alternative when they are forced to make a choice
– The sex difference in the forced-choice paradigm is almost
exclusively driven by sex differences in emotional jealousy.
Women reported more negative emotions than men for
both sexual and emotional infidelity.
– Attained education level turned out to be a strong
moderator of the sex difference in sexual versus emotional
jealousy.
Discussion
• Sexual Jealousy
– Early evolutionary discussions of jealousy focused
on male sexual jealousy as an evolved adaptation
to minimize cuckoldry. The evidence that human
males react more jealous to a mate’s sexual
infidelity than human females is mixed.
– Men have evolved a high sensitivity for sexual
infidelity, this tendency seems to interact with so
many other factors that the resulting sex
differences is minimal.
Discussion
• Emotional Jealousy
– The results for emotional jealousy consistently
suggested that women react more jealous to
emotional infidelity than men.
– These findings suggest that the robust sex difference
in the classic forced-choice paradigm is mainly driven
by a sex difference in emotional jealousy.
• Environmental Influences
– Concerning cognitive processing, the effect of
educational level on sex differences in emotional
jealousy was found in all three conditions.
Critical Review Items:
Interesting Points
• Education played an important role: stronger
emotional jealousy of less educated women
• Fixed order of conditions important: asking
participants for spontaneous decisions after
deliberative decisions would skew results
• The study aims to benefit evolutionary
psychology: hopes to inspire detailed studies
of proximate cognitive mechanisms
Critical Review Items: Weaknesses
• Only included young adults, who might weigh
emotional vs. sexual infidelity more strongly
according to early developmental environments,
than older adults, who might weigh them
according to experience
• Limited to the German culture
• Dilemmas were hypothetical: higher level
cognitive processes might be necessary to
anticipate the threat of infidelity. However,
memory rather than description would cause
bias.
Test Questions
• The aim of the present study was to
– A) disprove previous findings
– B) to test the two evolutionary hypotheses using
the forced choice method
– C) to test the two evolutionary hypotheses using
continuous emotion ratings
– D) a combination of b and c
Test Questions
• To test the two evolutionary hypotheses,
researchers have used a forced-choice paradigm.
What is the purpose of the forced-choice
paradigm?
– A) participants rate how they feel about dilemmas
– B) participants take their time to reflect on whether
they are more jealous of emotional or sexual jealousy
– C) participants are confronted with dilemmas that
contrast hypothetical situations of emotional and
sexual infidelity, and they choose the more
distressing.
Test Questions
• What was one of the differences between the forcedchoice with cognitive constraint condition and the
forced-choice with deliberation condition?
– A) the hypothetical situations were different in each
condition
– B) the forced-choice with cognitive constraint condition
included a six digit series that participants were instructed
to recall once they finished reading through the dilemmas
– C) the forced-choice with deliberation condition asked
participants to rate their emotions of anger, anxiety,
jealousy, and humiliation on a 5-point scale in addition to
reading the dilemmas
Test Questions
• The classic evolutionary hypothesis assumes that
men and women react differently to sexual and
emotional infidelity because these two types of
infidelity posed different adaptive problems. (T/F)
• All participants in the study were not in a serious
committed relationship. (T/F)
• Participants in the forced-choice with
deliberation condition were presented with
hypothetical situations of emotional and sexual
infidelity for the first time. (T/F)