Christine Harris: UC San Diego Dept. of Psychology

The specific innate modular theory of jealousy (JSIM) hypothesizes that men are innately prone to upset over a mate’s sexual infidelity and women, over a mate’s emotional infidelity. This view claims that natural selection has shaped sexual jealousy as a mechanism to prevent cuckoldry and emotional jealousy as a mechanism to prevent resource loss. Three lines of evidence have been offered as support: 1) psychophysiological reactions when imagining the two forms of infidelity, 2) responses to hypothetical scenarios, and 3) rates of domestic violence and morbid jealousy. This talk will re-examine each line of work and present evidence that questions the extent to which there are robust sex differences. An alternative theory of jealousy will be discussed which proposes a more domain general mechanism that may show little sexual dimorphism.
http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/Harris_4-26-04.pdf