Evolution of
Jealousy
What is Jealousy?
 We’ve 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
“Green eyed monster”
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?
The Specific Innate
Module Theory
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Provided payoff in EEA
Fitness advantage
Innate module, wired-in brain ciruit
Specific sets of brain circuits guides our
emotional reaction to threats
Sex Differences in
Jealousy
 Threats to ancestral man:
 Cuckoldry
 Uncertainty in paternity
 Expending scare resources on another
man’s offspring
Sex Differences in
Jealousy
 Threats to ancestral woman:
 Lost resources because of cheating mate
 Loss of emotional involvement
Evolutionary Perspective
 Jealousy is:
 An adaptation
 An important passion that helped our
ancestors
 Emotional wisdom
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
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.
Physiological Measures of
Jealousy
 Buss & colleagues
 Autonomic nervous system activity
 Males heart rates and EDA higher when
imagining sexual infidelity
 Females showed opposite pattern.
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)
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