Citation

Harris CR. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 2003; 7(2): 102-128.

Affiliation

Center for Brain & Cognition, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA. charris@psy.ucsd.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

12676643

Abstract

The specific innate modular theory of jealousy hypothesizes that natural selection shaped sexual jealousy as a mechanism to prevent cuckoldry, and emotional jealousy as a mechanism to prevent resource loss. Therefore, men should be primarily jealous over a mate's sexual infidelity and women over a mate's emotional infidelity. Five lines of evidence have been offered as support: self-report responses, psychophysiological data, domestic violence (including spousal abuse and homicide), and morbid jealousy cases. This article reviews each line of evidence and finds only one hypothetical measure consistent with the hypothesis. This, however, is contradicted by a variety of other measures (including reported reactions to real infidelity). A meta-analysis of jealousy-inspired homicides, taking into account base rates for murder, found no evidence that jealousy disproportionately motivates men to kill. The findings are discussed from a social-cognitive theoretical perspective.

Language: en