Lecture 8 Flashcards
What is infidelity and is it universal?
- aka mate poaching
- found in 53 diverse cultures
- both cause and result of relationship conflict
What are the cultural influences on fidelity?
- “Honor cultures” (american south and west) –> wife’s fidelity is important to husband’s reputation, thus, men are expected to ract to perceived threats with jealousy
- “Swinging” –> attempt to manage jealousy through communication and negotation, insists only on emotional fidelity
What are some predictors of male infidelity?
- hostile and benevolent sexism
- ambivalent sexism: both subtypes of sexism in het power relationships, and both used by men to gain gender power:
1. hostile: blatantly negative attitudes towards women (women who challenge the norm are punished)- positively associated with men’s approval of uncommited relationships
- men have more cynical views on relationships, avoid emotional intimacy in all forms
- benevolent: treat women as if needed to be protected and provided for by men (women who conform to the norm are rewarded)
- also moticated to reinforce privilage and imbalanced power dynamic
What is jealousy?
an emotional state aroused by perceived threat to a valued relationship
evolved to protect love from threat of loss
What is the paradox of jealousy and what is it associated with?
closely associated with being in love but shatters the harmony
- jealousy in eagerness, devotion, and zealousness of love
- in 21st century, become uniquely individual expression of rage, and a sign of irrationality, immaturity, and even pathology
What does research show about the primary emotions?
- most theorists say there’s only six (+/- four) emotions that are common and universally recognizable
- usually: love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, fear
What are secondary emotions?
- emotions not recognized or manifested universally across cultures
- may require social experience for construction
- e.g.: engy, frustration, jealousy, pride = combines joy with public reaction
What does jealousy stem from emotionally?
- anger (closely related to envy as well)
- blend of anger, sadness, and fear
- universal? even infants as young as 6 months are capable of experiencing it and survey shows prevalence across class, gender, and race
What’s the difference between envy and jealousy?
- envy = person wishes to possess a material or immaterial possession that belongs to someone else
- jealousy = person is threatened by the intentions of a rival for the attention of a desired person
- difference of the presence of a rival
What has the Multidimensional Jealousy Scale revealed in studies?
- height: shorter men more likely to be jealous of tallet men, both shorter and taller women more likely to be jealous of average height women
- highly jealous individuals have lower self-esteem, experience lower life satisfaction, and feel more negativity towards the world
What is the role of the Partner in jealousy?
Love is a prerequisite, must love a person to experience jealousy
- love may not be reciprocated
- or partner may love the person deeply but flirt with others
What is the role of the Rival in jealousy?
- Presence may lead to jealousy by self-evaluation maintenance processes
- Self-evaluation suffers whenever we realize we have been outperformed by a close other in an important way to us
- in romance, jealousy comes when a person makes a relevant comparison to a rival
What do studies on infidelity across cultures reveal about what traits makes individuals more likely to commit it?
- high extraversion
- low agreeableness
- low conscientiousness
- admit to loving sex
What is successful mate poaching?
when one partner knowingly attract the mater of another with the intention of starting a sexual or romantic relationship with this person
these relationships as a result of poaching tend to be of lower quality than non-poached
What is the transactional model of jealousy?
Examines how three variables moderate jealousy
Focuses mostly on individual’s chronic tendency towards jealousy
What are the three variables involved in the transactional model of jealousy?
- arousability: indiviual differences in jealousy determined by individual differences in levels of psychological arousal
- commitment - TRUE degree of involvement a person has in a relationship
- insecurity - perceived level of commitment on part of the beloved
What do cognitive motical theorists emphasize about jealousy?
- the importance of cognitive processes by which the person experiencing jealousy views it and interprets jealousy-provoking situations
interplay between disposition and interpretation –> predicts jealousy reactions
What is the role of relationship goals in jealousy?
- primary purpose of the relationship will change reaction to jealousy-provoking situation (e.g. fling vs longterm relation)
- jealousy comes from threat to person’s self-esteem or relationship (higher the threat = greater the jealousy)
What are some gender differences in perceptions of threat?
- men: protect their egos
- women: protect the relationships
- thus, the threat will relate either to themselves directly (for men) or to the relation and its dynamic (for women)
How is jealousy perceived under the specific innate module (JSIM) theory?
Harris, 2000, 2002, 2003, indicated that:
- in men: sexual infidelity is the trigger (more concern)
- paternity probability is lower, risk of not passing on genes
- in women: emotional infidelity is the trigger (more concern
- maternity probability not affected, risk of diversion of commitment and resources
HOWEVER, THESE RESULTS HAVE DIFFICULTY BEING REPLICATED
- in reality: no gender differences in participants who experience infidelity (imagined betrayal =/ actual experience)
What is the double-shot hypothesis?
DeSteno & Salovey, 1996
sociosexual orientation: tendency to engage in sex either in a commited relationship (restricted orientation) or without it (unrestricted orientation)
- men: unrestricted
- mostly because its more beneficial to men reproductively
- women: restricted
- mostly because women want parental investment
How is the double-shot hypothesis applied to infidelity?
- men and women have different sociosexual orientations
- those difference translate into differences in how infidelity is perceived and interpreted (sexual vs emotional infidelity)
- aka men who are cheating EMOTIONALLY must have cheated SEXUALLY and women who’ve cheated SEXUALLY must have cheated EMOTIONALLY
- men and women perceive that one type of infidelity implies another
How do men and women react differently as a result of jealousy?
videotaped scenarios of someone trying to steal one’s partner showed:
- men: more likely to express anger
- women: more likely to express depression
What are the two different types of jealousy?
Parrott (1991) proposed two different types:
- suspicious: anxiety and insecurity (focusing on betrayal)
- fait accompli: focusing on loss (sad), being alone (ancious), and betrayal (angry)
