Поиск по сайту




Пишите нам: info@ethology.ru

Follow etholog on Twitter

Система Orphus

Новости
Библиотека
Видео
Разное
Кросс-культурный метод
Старые форумы
Рекомендуем
Не в тему

список статей


Sex differences in jealousy: The recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity in personally more and less threatening context conditions

Achim Schützwohl, Stephanie Koch

1. Introduction

2. Method

2.1. Apparatus

2.2. Materials

2.3. Procedure

2.4. Design

2.5. Participants

3. Results

4. Discussion

Acknowledgment

Appendix A. 

References

Copyright

1. Introduction

A central assumption of evolutionary psychological research is that the fundamental building blocks of the mind are domain- and content-specific information-processing mechanisms (e.g., Buss, 1999, Cosmides & Tooby, 1994). These specialized mechanisms have evolved because they solved specific recurrent problems of individual survival or reproduction. Domain specificity means that the mechanisms are activated and employed only in those contexts or situations (domains) signaling the presence of the adaptive problem they evolved to solve. Moreover, a content-specific mechanism is assumed to preferentially (i.e., rapidly, reliably, and efficiently) process only those classes of information that are relevant for the solution of the specific problem.

Infidelity in sexual relationships is an essential problem of individual reproduction (Cosmides & Tooby, 1994) and the jealousy mechanism (JM) is a plausible psychological adaptation to it. Thus, the domain of the JM is a sexual relationship in which a mate's infidelity might threaten one's own reproductive success. To solve this adaptive problem, the JM is assumed to preferentially process (e.g., attend, encode, store, and retrieve) information indicating a mate's (potential) infidelity.

Men and women's JMs may differ in the nature of information they preferentially process because men and women's reproductive success has been recurrently threatened by different types of infidelity Buss et al., 1992, Daly et al., 1982, Symons, 1979. Specifically, a woman's sexual infidelity deprives her mate of a reproductive opportunity and may burden him with years of investment in a genetically unrelated child. In contrast, a man's infidelity does not burden his mate with unrelated children, but it may divert resources away from his mate's progeny. This resource threat may be signaled by his level of emotional attachment to the other female. As a consequence, men's JM is hypothesized to preferentially process information about a mate's sexual infidelity, whereas women's JM is hypothesized to preferentially process information about a mate's emotional infidelity.

The evolutionary view of a sex-specific JM spawned an impressive body of research during the past decade (e.g., Buss et al., 1992, Buss et al., 1999, Buunk et al., 1996, DeSteno et al., 2002, DeSteno & Salovey, 1996, Geary et al., 1995, Grice & Seely, 2000, Harris, 2000, Harris, 2002, Harris & Christenfeld, 1996, Pietrzak et al., 2002, Sagarin et al., 2003, Wiederman & Allgeier, 1993, Wiederman & Kendall, 1999). This research has been primarily devoted to testing the hypothesis that the female JM responds with stronger emotions to a mate's emotional infidelity, whereas the male JM generates stronger emotions in response to a mate's sexual infidelity (see Harris, 2003, for a critical review). The most widespread measure used in this research consists of a forced-choice method: The participants are asked to indicate which form of a mate's imagined infidelity would distress or upset them more. In her meta-analysis on the results from the forced-choice measure, Harris (2003) concluded that “there does appear to be a sex difference … with heterosexual samples. This effect, however, is greatly reduced in samples that are older than the typical college age” (p. 105; but see Hofhansl, Vitouch, & Voracek, 2004, for a more recent and complete meta-analysis that supports the evolutionary view). In contrast, other self-report measures failed to clearly demonstrate a sex difference in the content specificity of the JM. In addition, physiological measures as indicators of the strength of the emotional responses to a partner's imagined sexual versus emotional infidelity yielded mixed results. Whereas Buss et al. (1992, Study 2) as well as Pietrzak et al. (2002) found results consistent with the evolutionary view, Grice and Seely (2000) and Harris (2000) failed to replicate these findings.

The present research focuses on the processing of input to the JM. More precisely, our aim is to test the assumption derived from the evolutionary view of jealousy, that the JM is a domain-, content-, and sex-specific information-processing device. The main prediction was that both men and women preferentially process cues to the adaptively primary infidelity type (female sexual and male emotional infidelity, respectively). This sex difference should be especially prominent in the context of one's own, but not in a third person's romantic relationship, because the former context is personally more threatening than the latter and thus more likely to fully activate the JM. Schützwohl, 2004a, Schützwohl, 2004b reported sex-specific differences in the processing of information about a mate's sexual and emotional infidelity. Men and women preferentially actively searched for information and were preoccupied with thoughts about the adaptively primary infidelity type (Schützwohl, 2004a). Moreover, given ambiguous cues to infidelity, women and men tended to differentially infer the adaptively primary infidelity type (Schützwohl, 2004b). Finally, women and men more rapidly processed cues to the adaptively primary than the adaptively secondary infidelity type (Schützwohl, 2004b). The present study extends this research in two respects. First, the recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity is a new indicator of the sex-specific preferential processing of cues to the adaptively primary infidelity type. A second new element of the present study is the comparison of the processing of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity in personally more and less threatening contexts.

To test the prediction that the JM is a domain-, content-, and sex-specific information-processing device with respect to the recall of cues to infidelity, participants listened to a single story that included five cues more diagnostic of sexual and five cues more diagnostic of emotional infidelity as identified by Shackelford and Buss (1997) (see also Schützwohl, 2004b). The personal threat value of the story was varied by presenting the story under one of two context conditions. In the more threatening context condition, the story dealt with the participants' own romantic relationship. Thus, the 10 cues referred to the infidelity of one's own mate. In contrast, in the personally less threatening context condition, the same story referred to an anonymous couple and the same cues to infidelity were thus evidenced by an anonymous member of the opposite sex. One week later, the participants were unexpectedly asked to recall the story.

2. Method

2.1. Apparatus

The presentation of the stories was controlled by an IBM-compatible microcomputer. The stories were recorded on audio CDs and presented via headphones.

2.2. Materials

Initial written instructions informed the participants that the experiment consisted of two related sessions separated by 1 week. They were told that they would first have to listen to a story about a couple, which would be followed by a questionnaire. The imaginary story was about a couple spending an evening together. The frame of the story was constituted by 19 neutral sentences (e.g., “You and your girlfriend are going out for dinner tonight”). In this story, five ambiguous cues to sexual and five ambiguous cues to emotional infidelity were integrated, which were selected on the basis of men and women's ratings of their diagnosticity values reported by Schützwohl (2004b). The cues were selected such that they made infidelity appear neither very likely nor very unlikely and were considered approximately equally diagnostic by both men and women. The cues along with their mean diagnosticity values are provided in Appendix A.

A speaker of the same sex as the participant narrated the story. In the personally less threatening context condition, a male and a female first name referred to the characters of the story. In the personally more threatening context condition, in contrast, the characters were introduced as you and your partner. In the personally more threatening context condition, the narrator additionally requested the participants to initially vividly imagine a committed heterosexual relationship that they had had in the past, that they were currently having, or that they would like to have. There were two versions of the story in each of the personally more and the personally less threatening context condition. The two versions differed only in that the order of presentation of the cues to sexual and emotional infidelity was reversed (stories are available from the first author upon request).

The duration of the spoken text varied between 2 min 41 s and 2 min 53 s in the personally more threatening context condition and between 2 min 34 s and 2 min 47 s in the personally less threatening context condition. The stories in the personally more threatening context condition were slightly longer due to the additional introductory sentence presented only in this condition that was followed by a short interval without text, which allowed the participants to imagine the requested heterosexual relationship. A questionnaire following the story contained eight items asking for general attitudes with respect to heterosexual relationships (e.g., “What is most important for a good relationship?”). The answering of these items required no further elaboration of the story. A week after the first part of the experiment, the participants were unexpectedly asked to note everything they remembered about the story on a sheet of paper.

2.3. Procedure

The participants were tested individually in one of two adjacent, dimly lit laboratory rooms. After the female experimenter had ascertained that the participants had understood the instructions, she started the presentation of the audio CD and left the room. The participants then listened to the story and subsequently completed the short questionnaire. When the participant had completed these tasks, the experimenter arranged a second appointment exactly 1 week later.

2.4. Design

The experiment consisted of a 2 (sex)×2 (context condition: personally more vs. less threatening)×2 (sequence of the cues)×2 (cue type: sexual vs. emotional infidelity) mixed factorial design with sex, context condition, and sequence of the cues as the between-subjects factors and cue type as the within-subjects factor. Equal numbers of men and women were initially randomly assigned to each of the eight groups resulting from the combination of the three between-subjects factors.

2.5. Participants

The experimenter recruited 121 student participants in the university hall at Bielefeld. Twenty-seven participants failed to report for the second session, leaving 49 females and 45 males. The loss of participants was equally distributed across conditions, leaving 21 men and 22 women in the personally more threatening and 24 men and 27 women in the personally less threatening context condition. Their mean age was 23.2 years (S.D.=4.9). The participants were informed at the outset that only after the completion of the second part of the study would three of them win 50€ (about $44)—each drawn by lot.

3. Results

Recall protocols were scored for the recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity and the 19 neutral sentences. A cue to infidelity or a neutral sentence was classified as having been recalled if its semantic content was unambiguously reproduced. One rater who was naı̈ve with respect to the experiment and the hypotheses and the second author classified all recall protocols. The two raters agreed in 97% of their classifications. The following analyses are based on the classifications of the naı̈ve rater.

An analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the percentage of recalled neutral sentences with sex and context condition (personally more vs. less threatening) as the between-subjects factors yielded a significant main effect for sex, F(1, 89)=4.22, p<.05; women recalled more neutral sentences than men (34% vs. 28%). The other main effect and the interaction were not significant, Fs< 1.6.

In a preliminary analysis step of the recall of the cues to infidelity, three-way ANOVAs were computed separately for each of the five cues to sexual and emotional infidelity with sex, context condition, and sequence of presentation of the cues as the between subjects factors. There was no significant main effect of the sequence factor, Fs<1.3. There was one marginally significant two-way interaction between sex and the sequence factor for one cue to emotional infidelity, F(1, 85)=3.36, p<.10. A three-way interaction was also marginally significant for one cue to sexual infidelity, F(1, 85)=3.03, p<.10. Because the interactions were only marginally significant and unsystematic, the sequence factor was ignored in subsequent analyses.

Men and women's percentage recall performance for cues to sexual and emotional infidelity in the personally more and less threatening context conditions are shown in Fig. 1. A mixed three-way analysis of variance (MANOVA) with participants' sex and context condition as the between-subjects factors and cue type (sexual vs. emotional infidelity) as the within-subjects factor yielded a highly significant sex by cue type interaction, F(1, 89)=12.95, p=.001. Also, as predicted, grouping over more and less threatening conditions women recalled more cues to emotional than cues to sexual infidelity (36% vs. 27% of cues recalled), t(48)=2.64, S.E.=3.6, p=.01, whereas men recalled significantly more cues to sexual than to emotional infidelity (38% vs. 30%), t(43)=2.30, S.E.=3.8, p<.05.


View full-size image.

Fig. 1. Men and women's mean percentage recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity in the personally less and the personally more threatening context condition.


Also as predicted, sex-biased recall of the evolutionarily primary infidelity type was more pronounced in the personally more threatening than in the personally less threatening context as confirmed by the significant three-way interaction between sex, context condition and cue type, F(1, 89)=2.74, p=.05 (one-tailed). The remaining main effects and interactions were not significant, Fs< 1. As can be seen in Fig. 1, the significant three-way interaction is due to the fact that in the personally more threatening context condition, women recalled significantly more cues to emotional than to sexual infidelity (36% vs. 25%), t(21)=2.14, S.E.=5.5, p<.05, whereas men recalled significantly more cues to sexual than to emotional infidelity (44% vs. 29%), t(20)=3.20, S.E.=4.8, p=.004. In the personally less threatening context condition, however, men's recall for cues to sexual and emotional infidelity did not significantly differ (33% vs. 30%), t< 1. Similarly, although women in the personally less threatening context condition recalled somewhat more cues to emotional than to sexual infidelity (36% vs. 28%), this preference was not significant t(26)=1.59, S.E.=4.7, p>.10.

4. Discussion

The present results support the view that the JM is a domain-, content-, and sex-specific information-processing device. Men and women preferentially recalled the cues to the adaptively primary infidelity type and this preference appeared as a trend in the personally less threatening condition and was statistically significant in the personally more threatening condition.

Men's preferential recall of cues to sexual infidelity in the personally more threatening context condition is obviously attributable to the fact that men's recall of cues to sexual infidelity is considerably increased in the personally more threatening as compared to the personally less threatening condition. In contrast, men's recall of cues to emotional infidelity is unaffected by the manipulation of the context condition. These findings suggest that cues to sexual infidelity (or more generally the sexual content) per se are insufficient to produce a differential recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity. These findings also contradict Harris' (2000) assumption that “men are more reactive to any form of sexual stimuli than they are to emotional stimuli or are more interested in, or better able to imagine, such stimuli” (p. 1084).

Unexpectedly, women recalled significantly more neutral items than men. An inspection of the recall performance for each of the 19 neutral items revealed that a single neutral item was responsible for this result. Irrespective of personal threat condition, this item was recalled by 82% of the women but only by 23% of the men. Interestingly, this item appeared between two cues to emotional infidelity and concerns the partner talking about news from a friend of the same sex. The friend's name makes the partner nervous and avoids mentioning it (Cues 4 and 5 to emotional infidelity in Appendix A). Women's excellent recall of this neutral item suggests that women preferentially processed this part of the story dealing with two cues to emotional infidelity.

The present study does not specify the nature of the cognitive processes responsible for the preferential recall of cues to the adaptively primary infidelity type in the personally more threatening context condition. This preferential recall might be due to selective attentive processes, preferential processing, or storage of cues to the adaptively primary infidelity type or a combination of any of these processes. Thus, an important task of subsequent studies would be to detail the relevant cognitive processes underlying sex-biased recall of cues to different types of infidelity.

Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Schu 1559/1-1). We thank Kirsten Borgstedt for her insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the manuscript. Lily-Maria Silny considerably improved the language of the manuscript.

Appendix A.

Cues to emotional infidelity that were integrated in the story, along with women and men's mean diagnosticity ratings in parentheses (Schützwohl, 2004b).

(1) He doesn't want to go out on dates with you as often. (4.62 vs. 4.81)
(2) He starts looking for reasons to start arguments with you. (5.35 vs. 5.97)
(3) He doesn't respond anymore when you tell him that you love him. (6.65 vs. 6.63)
(4) He begins avoiding talking about a certain other woman in conversations with you. (6.94 vs. 6.16)
(5) He acts nervous when a certain woman's name comes up in conversations with you. (7.06 vs. 6.09)

Cues to sexual infidelity that were integrated in the story along with women and men's mean diagnosticity ratings in parentheses (Schützwohl, 2004b).

(1) He starts acting overly affectionate toward you. (3.53 vs. 3.63)
(2) His clothing style suddenly changes. (4.09 vs. 3.78)
(3) He suddenly has difficulty becoming sexually aroused when he and you want to have sex. (4.26 vs. 4.97)
(4) You notice that he seems bored when you have sex. (5.15 vs. 5.03)
(5) He suddenly refuses to have sex with you. (5.76 vs. 6.03)

References

Buss, 1999 1.Buss DM. Evolutionary psychology: the new science of the mind. Boston: Allyn and Bacon; 1999;.

Buss et al., 1992 2.Buss DM, Larsen RJ, Westen D, Semmelroth J. Sex differences in jealousy: evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science. 1992;3:251–255. CrossRef

Buss et al., 1999 3.Buss DM, Shackelford TK, Kirkpatrick LA, Choe JC, Lim HK, Hasegawa M, et al. Jealousy and the nature of beliefs about infidelity: tests of competing hypotheses about sex differences in the United States, Korea, and Japan. Personal Relationships. 1999;6:121–150.

Buunk et al., 1996 4.Buunk BP, Angleitner A, Oubaid V, Buss DM. Sex differences in jealousy in evolutionary and cultural perspective. Tests from the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. Psychological Science. 1996;7:359–363. CrossRef

Cosmides & Tooby, 1994 5.Cosmides L, Tooby J. Origins of domain specificity: the evolution of functional organization. In:  Hirschfeld LA,  Gelman SA editor. Mapping the mind: domain specificity in cognition and culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1994;p. 85–116.

Daly et al., 1982 6.Daly M, Wilson M, Weghorst SJ. Male sexual jealousy. Ethology and Sociobiology. 1982;3:11–27.

DeSteno et al., 2002 7.DeSteno DA, Bartlett MY, Salovey P, Braverman J. Sex differences in jealousy: evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2002;83:1103–1116. MEDLINE | CrossRef

DeSteno & Salovey, 1996 8.DeSteno DA, Salovey P. Evolutionary origins of sex differences in jealousy? Questioning the “fitness” of the model. Psychological Science. 1996;7:367–372. CrossRef

Geary et al., 1995 9.Geary DC, Rumsey M, Bow-Thomas CC, Hoard MK. Sexual jealousy as a facultative trait: evidence from the pattern of sex differences in adults from China and the United States. Ethology and Sociobiology. 1995;16:355–383.

Grice & Seely, 2000 10.Grice JW, Seely E. The evolution of sex differences in jealousy: failure to replicate previous results. Journal of Research in Personality. 2000;34:348–356.

Harris, 2000 11.Harris CR. Psychophysiological responses to imagined infidelity: the specific innate modular view of jealousy reconsidered. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2000;78:1082–1091. MEDLINE | CrossRef

Harris, 2002 12.Harris CR. Sexual and romantic jealousy in heterosexual and homosexual adults. Psychological Science. 2002;13:7–12. MEDLINE

Harris, 2003 13.Harris CR. A review of sex differences in jealousy, including self-report data, psychophysiological responses, interpersonal violence, and morbid jealousy. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2003;7:102–128. MEDLINE

Harris & Christenfeld, 1996 14.Harris CR, Christenfeld N. Sex, jealousy, and reason. Psychological Science. 1996;7:364–366. CrossRef

Hofhansl et al., 2004 15.Hofhansl, A., Vitouch, O., & Voracek, M. (2004, February). Eifersucht und Geschlecht: eine Meta-Analyse evolutionspsychologischer Befunde (Jealousy and sex: a meta-analysis of evolutionary psychological data). Paper presented at the 6th scientific conference of the Austrian Psychological Society. Innsbruck: Tirol.

Pietrzak et al., 2002 16.Pietrzak RH, Laird JD, Stevens DA, Thompson NS. Sex differences in human jealousy: a coordinated study of forced-choice, continuous rating-scale, and physiological responses on the same subjects. Evolution and Human Behavior. 2002;23:83–94.

Sagarin et al., 2003 17.Sagarin BJ, Becker DV, Guadagno RE, Nicastle LD, Millevoi A. Sex differences (and similarities) in jealousy: the moderating effect of infidelity experience and sexual orientation of the infidelity. Evolution and Human Behavior. 2003;24:17–23.

Schützwohl, 2004a 18.Schützwohl, A. (2004a). Sex differences in jealousy: information search and cognitive preoccupation. Unpublished manuscript.

Schützwohl, 2004b 19.Schützwohl A. Sex differences in jealousy: the processing of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity. Evolution and Human Behavior. 2004;Submitted for publication.

Shackelford & Buss, 1997 20.Shackelford TK, Buss DM. Cues to infidelity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 1997;23:1034–1045.

Symons, 1979 21.Symons D. The evolution of human sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press; 1979;.

Wiederman & Allgeier, 1993 22.Wiederman MW, Allgeier ER. Sex differences in sexual jealousy: adaptionist or social learning explanation. Ethology and Sociobiology. 1993;14:115–140.

Wiederman & Kendall, 1999 23.Wiederman MW, Kendall E. Evolution, sex, and jealousy: investigation with a sample from Sweden. Evolution and Human Behavior. 1999;20:121–128.

Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Postfach 100 131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany

Corresponding author.

PII: S1090-5138(04)00022-4

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2004.03.006



2007:11:13