Why Do Men and Women Experience Jealousy Differently?
Adult heterosexual women and men are often jealous of completely different threats to their relationship. These differences seem to establish themselves much sooner than people need them to be. The result surprised researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who studied the topic. "You only really need this jealousy when you have to protect yourself from deception," says Professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair of the NTNU's Institute of Psychology. Romantic jealousy can, at worst, be felt to be terrible. But jealousy associated with a partner's infidelity was clearly an evolutionary benefit. "Jealousy is activated when a relationship that is important to us is threatened. The function is probably to minimize threats to this relationship. In the past, these threats were somewhat different for men and women," says Per Helge H. Larsen , a Masters student in the Department of Psychology at NTNU. Evolution