Rezümékötet 2008. - vmtdk

P L E N Á R I S T U D O M Á N Y O S Ü L É S S Z A K
AN EMPIRICAL EXPERIMENT OF A COMPLEX EMOTION,
OR JEALOUSY AS THE
„GREEN-EYED MONSTER” BY WHOM EVERYBODY IS BEWITCHED
Author: Edit LÉVAI 3 rd year student, Edit MAGYAR 5 th year student
Supervisor: Dr. Beatrix LÁBADI reader
Institution: University of Pécs, Faculty of Humanities, Institute of Psychology, General and Evolutionary Psychology, Pécs
In the past decades an increasing attention was paid to the recognition of complex emotions such as jealousy.
The focus of the paper is two competitive theories, an evolutionary and a social psychology approaches. Both theories
agree that jealousy is an adaptive emotion fostering our survival. But the evolutional approach stresses on the differences
between the genders while the social theory of the emotions regards the appearance of the jealousy as the result
of the social appraisal.
In the first experiment, based on DeSteno et al. (2006) 24 subjects participated (singles or in partnerships). We
created a situation inducing jealousy and, contrary to the usual methodology, introduced two new variables: men and
couples as participants. In the second experiment: subjects (N= 55) were asked to read a jealousy story about first experiment
and evaluate it by a structured questionnaire. The third experiment consisted of two types of the same story,
one about sexual and the other about emotional unfaithfulness. After reading the participants (N=67) had to project
themselves into the role of the one being cheated. They were questioned about theirs emotions in two ways: (a) by
forced questioning and (b) by open-ended questioning. Theirs actual emotional states was recorded on a Likert-scale
of 19 emotions.
According to the results both the gender and the existence of a relationship affected the experienced emotions.
Both male and female participants reacted with different intensities to situations inducing jealousy, but the two types
of unfaithfulness did not lead to notably different reactions between the genders. It was found that women were more
sensitive (emotionally in particular) to the signs of unfaithfulness. Subjects who participated in the experiments with
their mates also found the situations more threatening possibly because of the activation of their attachment systems.
The hypothesis of DeSteno was not supported by the evidence because we have not found relationship between
the self-esteem as the transmitting process, and gender in jealousy. Whereas the experiments proved that both gender
and quality of the relationship had a notable effect on reactions to a jealousy inducing situation.
Keywords: DeSteno, Buss, jealousy, evolutional appraisal, social theory of emotions, partnership, gender, unfaithfulness
N Y O S D I Á K K Ö R I K O N F E R E N C I A
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