Jealousy and requitted love

• Jealousy is a common response to partner infidelity, and many

people feel jealous over even fairly minor signs that the partner
might be interested in someone else, such as a flirtatious
conversation at a party.
• Researchers distinguish jealousy from envy on the basis that jealousy
is a fear of losing something that you have, whereas envy is a desire
for something you do not have
• Jealousy is essentially a response to a threat to your romantic
attachment
Cultural Perspective.
• Some experts believe that jealousy is a product of social roles and
expectations.
• In particular, some argue that Western societies have made men
believe that women are their property, so men are jealous and
sexually possessive of women.
• If only the culture taught people differently, the emotion of jealousy
might disappear, according to this view.
• Support for the cultural theory of jealousy came most famously from the
anthropologist Margaret Mead’s (1928) work Coming of Age in Samoa,
though subsequent researchers have questioned her methods and
conclusions and even suggested that the handful of Samoans she
interviewed were joking.
• Mead claimed that the Samoans did not have sexual jealousy or
possessiveness.
• They allow their partners to share intimate interactions with others.
• Similar observations have been made about Native American (Eskimo)
cultures, in which male houseguests sometimes have sex with the
hostess, with her husband’s permission.
Evolutionary Perspective.
• The apparent universality of jealousy suggests that we should look to
biological and evolutionary patterns to help explain it.
• Buss (1994) and his colleagues have argued that there are strong
evolutionary reasons for jealousy, but these reasons differ somewhat
for men as opposed to women.
• These differences can be traced to the differences in male versus
female reproductive systems.
• Both men and women supposedly want to pass on their genes, but
the possibilities and dangers differ.
• Men know that their wives can only have a few children, and normally just one at a
time.
• Hence a major threat to the man’s reproductive goal is the possibility that another
man might make his wife pregnant.
• Throughout most of history, it was impossible for men to know whether the children
borne by their female partners were in fact the men’s own offspring, so there was a
constant danger of ending up having to raise another man’s child.
• The only solution was to keep strict control over the wife’s sexual behavior. In various
cultures, some men have kept their wives locked up and guarded, such as in a harem.
• Other men insisted that their wives wear iron chastity belts, which were originally
designed as protection against rape but soon were adapted to help men retain
confidence in their wives’ fidelity.
• Such practices are largely absent in the modern Western world,
though some men (and a few women) use threatened or actual
physical violence to pressure their partners into remaining faithful.
Because suspicions of jealousy can be unfounded, this violence
sometimes hurts innocent victims.
• Even if the partner has been unfaithful (DNA tests suggest that
paternity uncertainty is still an important issue; Abraham, 2002),
perpetrating or threatening physical violence against a romantic
partner is immoral and illegal.
• For women, the threat is different. If a woman’s husband has sex with
another woman, he has only expended a small quantity of sperm, and there
is plenty more where that came from! The sperm itself is thus no great loss,
and a single sex act does not therefore constitute much of a threat.
• On the other hand, the woman may depend on the man to provide her with
food and other resources, as well as provide for her children. If he becomes
involved with another woman, he may bestow some of his resources on her,
which would leave the wife and her children in a poorer position.
• Hence the greatest threat to the woman is the possibility that the man will
become emotionally involved with someone else and therefore withhold
these crucial resources.
• This theory about gender differences in sexual possessiveness was put
to a test by Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992).
• They asked students a difficult question: Would it be worse for the
person you love to have a one-time sexual encounter with another
person without any emotional involvement, or for the person you
love to have a lasting, emotionally intimate relationship with a
member of your gender— but one that did not include sexual
intercourse?
• To be sure, neither men nor women were very happy with either
possible episode. But when forced to choose, they could do so—and
their choices differed by gender. The majority of men (60%) objected
more strongly to the sexual infidelity. In contrast, the women
objected more to the emotional infidelity (only 17% objected more to
the sexual infidelity).
• These findings fit the evolutionary view: Male possessiveness focuses
heavily on the sex act and is less concerned with intimate
conversations, whereas female possessiveness emphasizes the
emotional relationship and is less concerned with the sex act itself.
• As is often the case, subsequent work has made the picture more
complicated. In particular, men are often upset over both sexual and
emotional relationships that involve their wives or girlfriends with
another man
• Also, some subjects assume that one form of infidelity will lead to the
other, so the difference between sexual and emotional infidelity may
not be as simple as the hypothetical dilemma posed by the
experimenters makes it seem
• Nonetheless, there is reason to think that men and women do
experience jealousy somewhat differently on average and may worry
about different aspects of what their partners do with other lovers.
REJECTION
• Children are rejected by their peers for three main reasons (Juvonen
& Gross, 2005).
• First, aggressive children are rejected, possibly because children do
not like violence and will avoid bullies and others whom they regard
as dangerous.
• Second, some children withdraw from contact with others, and they
in turn are rejected by others. The avoidance of withdrawn, isolated
children escalates into adolescence, thereby creating a particular
problem for people who move toward adulthood becoming more and
more disconnected from social groups.
• Third, and related to the other two, deviance leads to rejection.
Children who are different in any obvious fashion are more likely to be
rejected.
• Children reject others who look different, act differently, or otherwise
seem different. Being handicapped, belonging to a racial minority,
speaking differently, not knowing the locally favored style of music or
clothing, not watching the same television shows or listening to the
same music, having an unusual family arrangement (e.g., living with
grandmother rather than parents, or having two daddies or two
mommies), or speaking with an accent—any of these can cause a
child to be rejected by others.
• Even being clearly less intelligent or more intelligent than most of the
other kids in the class can elicit rejection.
• This does not mean that the children make a deliberate or conscious
decision that they do not approve of someone’s personality or
lifestyle.
• In terms of the duplex mind, the reaction against those who are
different is probably automatic, and the reaction that leads children
to reject others is probably rooted in automatic processes.
• Among adults, the simplest and most general explanation for rejection is deviance (Wright et al.,
1986).
• Groups reject others who are different in important or meaningful ways from the rest of the group.
• Indeed, groups seem to find deviants threatening, and they are more bothered by a nonconformist
or poor performer who is in the group than by one who is outside the group (Hogg, 2005).
• This is important evidence of the importance of group solidarity.
• Someone who is different from your group, but is not part of your group, doesn’t threaten the unity
of your group.
• In contrast, someone who is different to the same degree but still belongs to your group undermines
group unity.
• Groups reject insiders more than outsiders for the same degree of deviance
• Bad performance by a member of your own group is rated more negatively than an identically bad
performance by someone who is not in the ingroup
• Conversely, good performance by a member of the ingroup is rated more positively than identically
good performance by someone outside the ingroup.
SOCIAL REJECTION
• Most people experience romantic rejection at some point. They
wanted someone for a romantic partner, but that person failed to
match those feelings and declined any offers of a relationship. These
failed romances can occasionally develop into serious problems,
ranging from suicidal despair to violent stalking.
• One impressive early paper on romantic rejection used attribution
theory to understand the reasons women gave for refusing an offer of
a date (Folkes, 1982).
• Attributions can be sorted along three dimensions: internal/ external,
stable/unstable, and global/specific.
• The reasons the women privately held for refusing dates tended to be
internal to the man, stable, and global:
• There was something seriously wrong with him, as she saw it
(internal).
• Also, his deficit was viewed as relatively permanent (stable) and was
viewed as extending to many areas of his life (global).
• But the reasons women told the men were external, unstable, and
specific.
Unrequited love
• Unrequited love is defined as a situation in which one person loves another
but the other does not return that love.
• It is a common experience among adolescents and young adults, and most
single people have at least one experience a year in which they have a crush
on someone who does not have similar feelings toward them, or
(conversely) in which they do not reciprocate someone else’s feelings of
romantic attraction toward them.
• The two roles are quite different and go with very different types of feelings.
• Most men and women have experience in both roles, though men have
more experiences of being the rejected lovers, and women are more often
in the rejecting role
• The rejected lovers experience a kind of emotional roller-coaster, in which they
alternate between hopeful, exciting, passionate feelings and insecure despair.
• They suffer intensely, but they are also drawn to the good parts, and they tend
to look back on a failed love with some bittersweet affection.
• In contrast, the rejecters tend to think there was nothing good about the
episode, and they are more likely to wish the whole thing had never happened
• Rejection is felt as a blow to one’s self-esteem.
• Broken-hearted lovers often wonder if something is wrong with them, or if they
somehow did something wrong that prevented the other from becoming
romantically attracted to them.
• They try to find some way to bolster their self-esteem, and nothing seems to
work quite so well as finding a new lover.
• Broken-hearted lovers may engage in stalking behaviors toward the
rejecter. Stalking refers to persisting in romantic or courtship behavior
(e.g., repeated phone calls) or other behaviors that frighten and
harass the rejecter in the relationship
• Male and female victims of stalking reported feeling that their safety
was being threatened and carried weapons to protect themselves far
more than nonvictims (45% vs. 29%)
• Thus, the sting of unrequited love may lead rejected people to stalk
their rejecters, and this tendency is particularly strong among
rejected men.
• For the rejecters, the problem is not self-esteem but guilt. As the concept of a
need to belong implies, people are designed to form and maintain relationships,
not to reject them, and most people find that refusing someone’s offer of love is
difficult.
• They feel guilty for hurting the other person, and to minimize feelings of guilt
they strive to convince themselves that they never led the other person on, so
that the other person’s love and resultant suffering were not their fault.
• Guilt is a central part of the difficulty of rejecting someone, and this difficulty is
probably linked to a basic fact about human nature: Humans are programmed to
form and maintain social bonds, and breaking them goes against the grain.
• Even if you don’t want someone’s love, it is difficult and sometimes painful to
refuse it.
• The message of rejection is difficult for both persons. The rejecter
feels guilty and wants to avoid hurting the other person’s feelings. The
person who is about to be rejected is often eager to grasp at straws
and seize on any sign of possible encourage- ment.
LONLINESS
• Loneliness is the painful feeling of wanting more human contact or
connection than you have.
• The stereotype of the lonely person is a socially inept loser who
doesn’t know how to get along with others, who perhaps has little to
offer other people, who has few or no friends, and who spends much
of the time alone, perhaps envying other people who have friends
and lovers—but recent research has begun to paint a very different
picture.
There are very few differences between
lonely and nonlonely people.
• They do not differ in intelligence or attractiveness.
• They spend about the same amount of time interacting with other
people.
• Thus, lonely does not mean alone: Loneliness is essentially
independent of the quantity of relationships or social interaction
(Wheeler, Reis, & Nezlek, 1983).
• Not all lonely people are the same, either. Researchers have recognized
variations in loneliness.
• It may be quite common for people to feel a temporary loneliness when
they move to a new place and are separated from their friends and
family.
• In many cases those feelings go away as soon as the person starts
making friends at the new home.
• Other people, however, suffer from chronic loneliness that may last for
months or years. In general, when researchers speak of lonely people,
they are referring to people who suffer chronic loneliness that has lasted
for a substantial period of time and is not showing signs of letting up.
• By and large, the lonely do not lack social skills, though they some-
how fail to use them as much as others (they can get along well with
others but they don’t; Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2005).
• The main deficiency that has been established is that lonely people
are poorer at figuring out other people’s emotional states
• This lack of emotional sensitivity could be either a cause of loneliness
(because it makes it harder to attract and keep friends), or possibly a
result, or perhaps both.
• These findings indicate that loneliness is much more complex than
simply a failure to find other people to be with.
• In principle, loneliness can also be an issue of either the quality or the
quantity of relationships. You might be lonely because you don’t have
enough contact with others, or because the time you spend with
others does not satisfy your needs.
• In practice, the data suggest that most loneliness stems from a lack of
close, satisfying relationships. Lonely people may spend plenty of time
with other people, but just talking to many different people is not
good enough, and they may suffer if they do not feel that enough
people care about them and want to maintain a long-term, close
relationship. Put another way, loneliness is typically rooted in the
quality rather than the quantity of social interaction
• Other people fight off loneliness by forming quasi-relationships with
nonhuman entities. For example, they might bond with a dog or cat,
or treat a potted plant like a person. Some people even name their
cars and treat them like family members
• Loneliness takes its toll on the body. Lonely people sleep as much as
nonlonely people, but the sleep is not as good or as refreshing, and
they may end up feeling chronically tired. Loneliness also seems to be
bad for one’s physical health. Lonely people take longer than others to
recover from stress, illness, or injury