Jealousy: Evidence of strong sex differences using both forced choice and continuous measure paradigms

Forgiving the unforgivable: Couples’ forgiveness and expected forgiveness of emotional and sexual infidelity from an error management theory perspective.

“…As predicted, relative to women, men found it harder to express forgiveness and internally forgive sexual infidelity compared to emotional infidelity. Bendixen, Kennair, and Buss (2015) suggested, in line with previous predictions by Buss et al (1992), that this may be due to greater expectancy and variability in father investment in more gender egalitarian nations and cultures.…”

“…While level of threat to the relationship for sexual infidelity did not differ for women and men, women reported emotional infidelity to be more threatening than men did. In support of Hypothesis 2b and 2c, expressed and internal (keeping distance) forgiveness of partner's infidelity mirrors findings of sex differences in jealousy responses for continuous measures (Bendixen, Kennair, & Buss, 2015) and forced choice (Bendixen, Kennair, & Buss, 2015;Confer & Cloud, 2011;Shackelford et al, 2002). As predicted, relative to women, men found it harder to express forgiveness and internally forgive sexual infidelity compared to emotional infidelity.…”

“…These large sex differences were predicted by Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992), who suggested that in cultures where fathers invest more, one might expect larger sex differences in jealousy. Norway has for several years been ranked among the top nations of the Global Gender Gap Report (World Economic Forum, 2016) with explicit expectations of paternal involvement in children (Bendixen, 2014;Bendixen, Kennair, & Buss, 2015;Grøntvedt & Kennair, 2013). Bendixen, Kennair, and Buss (2015) analyses of continuous measures suggest that while men and women did not differ much in their level of distress/jealousy to sexual infidelity, relative to men, women found emotional infidelity far more distressing.…”

A systematic review of romantic jealousy in relationships

“…However, it was not until the mid-90s that there began to emerge a large number of scientific studies analyzing jealousy and its relationship with different variables (Hart & legerstee, 2013). For example, the existence of sex differences based on the evolutionary hypothesis, depending on the situation of infidelity (emotional or sexual) that activates it (Bendixen, Kennair, & Buss, 2015); the influence of sexual orientation (Alves, Pereira, tieme, & otta, 2006;Dijkstra, Barelds, & groothof, 2013); the specific characteristics of the rival that causes jealousy (Buunk & Dijkstra, 2015;Massar & Buunk, 2016);transcultural comparisons (croucher et al, 2012;Fernández, sierra, Zubeidat, & Vera-Villarroel, 2006;Zandbergen & Brown, 2015); and even the relationship of jealousy with hormonal changes in estrogen in women (cobey et al, 2012). similarly, studies have been conducted on the way social networks (Facebook and snapchat) may continuously incite this emotion (Halpem, Katz, & carril, 2017).…”

Tie-Up Cycles in Long-Term Mating. Part I: Theory

“…The well-known gender differences as to the sensitivity to sexual vs. emotional forms of infidelity may thus also be read, in terms of M vs. F rewards, as gender-specific sensitivity toward the kind of infidelity that directly threatens the partner's TU, that is, that attacks the betrayed subject's monopoly of the partner's indirect reward: M's emotional infidelity for F, and F's sexual infidelity for M. It is interesting to remark that such differences are still distinctively found in societies with very high levels of gender egalitarianism like Norway [119].…”