3073: Infidelity and Jealousy From an Evolutionary Perspective by Dr. Marisa Cohen of Luvze on Jealousy and Trust

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[00:00:29] Hey, it's Justin from Optimal Living Daily. Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:55] This is Optimal Relationships Daily, Infidelity and Jealousy From an Evolutionary Perspective by Dr. Marisa Cohen of Loves.com. When you feel as if someone poses a threat to your relationship, whether they do or not, jealousy likely creeps in. Researchers note that jealousy is characterized by fear of loss, distrust, or anger, as one is worried about losing a relationship due to a rival.

[00:01:23] Essentially, jealousy serves as a mechanism by which the person remains hyper-vigilant to protect his or her relationship from potential intruders. One common scenario which can elicit jealousy is when your partner is in the presence of available and dateable others, resulting in the sense that a partner may be unfaithful. In a previous article, I discussed theories of infidelity, focusing on the different perspectives offered by evolutionary psychologists and social role theorists.

[00:01:52] The dispute between these two perspectives focuses on the difference in how distress is measured. One approach is to use forced-choice alternatives, which include answer choices in which a participant is to pick which is more upsetting from two pre-selected responses. Your partner forming an emotional attachment with another individual, emotional infidelity, or your partner having relations with this other individual, physical infidelity.

[00:02:19] Evolutionary psychologists have used this forced-choice paradigm to show that men are more upset by physical infidelity, while women are more distressed by emotional infidelity. From an evolutionary psychological perspective, the gender differences in outcomes resulting from an unfaithful partner leads to different reactions to infidelity.

[00:02:40] Women fear that when a man has become emotionally involved with another, they, the women who have been cheated on, may lose some of the resources they have secured from their male partners. Men, however, fear that if their female partners are having relations outside of their relationship, the men are expending their resources on kin that potentially are not theirs. Basically, both are weary of a circumstance in which their genetic offspring are not getting the resources needed.

[00:03:07] Not everyone agrees with the evolutionary perspective and instead feel that gender differences are merely a result of the way in which the cheating scenarios are presented. Researchers in opposition to the evolutionary perspective note that gender differences disappear when participants can rate their views on a continuous scale. When forced to select an answer, people will choose the type, physical or emotional, that co-occurs with the other. In relating this to the choice women make, emotional infidelity is more distressing,

[00:03:37] it is thought that a woman will assume that if her husband has fallen in love, he has already had relations with the other woman. Therefore, the selection encompasses both types of infidelity. Infidelity and Jealousy Extending the evolutionary perspective further, jealousy may have evolved as a result of the reproductive challenges, i.e. not having enough resources to provide for the child that our ancestors faced, and the issues that would arise if a partner is unfaithful.

[00:04:07] Men, in particular, have to struggle with paternity certainty, or the fact that they can't be completely sure that the child a pregnant woman is carrying is his or another guy's. Men would need to respond with jealousy if they suspected that their mate was about to stray, as this would decrease the likelihood that the woman would have relations with another man. Women, on the other hand, respond with jealousy when they suspect that the resources provided by their male partners and reserved for their offspring are being diverted elsewhere.

[00:04:37] Therefore, they would worry most when their mates develop emotional connections with others, as this signals the potential to reallocate the resources to new women. What does the research say? One researcher conducted an experiment to examine the evolutionary perspective's accuracy. In this study, the researcher manipulated the scenario, imagining your partner is having relations, or imagining your partner is falling in love with someone else, and the race of the individuals,

[00:05:06] someone of the same or of a different race. If jealousy really arises from the need for the men to be certain of his paternity, physical infidelity should be more threatening. Similarly, from the same perspective, women should find emotional infidelity more displeasing as it signals the reallocation of necessary resources. The race of the person with whom the infidelity is committed should not influence the participants' responses. However, if jealousy is a general emotional reaction

[00:05:35] to a potential threat to a relationship, then the race of the person with whom the partner is cheating may play a role. The researchers chose race as a variable to manipulate, as it is unrelated to the threat of infidelity. For this study, 286 students, 214 females and 72 males, from South Louisiana University, were presented with scenarios regarding their imagined partner's infidelity. Each participant was presented with four scenarios

[00:06:04] in which their partner was unfaithful, based upon the manipulations dealing with type of infidelity and race. Participants also rated, on six seven-point scales, how angry, jealous, calm, threatened, relieved, and hurt they felt in response to each scenario. Results demonstrated little effect of the influence of race of the partner with whom the infidelity occurred on reactions to imagined infidelity. The results partially supported the perspective

[00:06:33] that jealousy evolved for mate retention because men were more angry and hurt than women in response to physical rather than emotional fidelity. However, results were inconsistent with this in that they failed to show that women were more upset and hurt by emotional infidelity compared to men. Overall, quote, women reported more anger over physical than over emotional infidelity and were equally hurt by physical and emotional infidelity. End quote. Therefore,

[00:07:02] the idea that jealousy evolved specifically for mate retention is compelling, but does not account for all of the data. Infidelity shakes the ground upon which the relationship is built, as it creates a violation of trust and breaks the commitment each partner made to one another. While this is clear, the theory best suited to explain our reactions to it is not. You just listened to the post titled

[00:07:29] Infidelity and Jealousy from an Evolutionary Perspective by Dr. Marisa Cohen of Luvze Okay, and thanks a lot to Dr. Marissa and Co for the great research in this article. They really summed it up so well, leaving me a bit barren for supplementary comments, honestly. Though I will say that these types of reads, while they are right up my alley, despite maybe not being, I don't know, lively enough for other people's tastes,

[00:07:59] they're so great for helping us make sense of our feelings. This is why it's so important to learn about why we react the way we do to things. All of a sudden, we can provide structure to our urges that can otherwise be so hard to control and understand. And it's always crucial that we decide to be patient with ourselves and communicative with our partners, as opposed to simply justifying behavior that's less than desirable just because we know where it comes from

[00:08:29] and maybe fail to think that we can contain it in any way. I hope that makes sense. Ideally, we want to understand where our emotions come from and manage them appropriately. And articles like this provide the first step to that. And thus is one of the reasons I feel they're so important to share. So, thank you for sticking with me through this extremely enlightening post, everyone. Hopefully we've all learned a bit about ourselves and perhaps how we can better tend to the feelings our partners might face, too.

[00:08:59] Time to wrap it up, but have no fear, I will be back again for more tomorrow and really hope you'll join me again. I'll see you all there, where your optimal life awaits.