Sex Differences in Jealousy in Evolutionary and Cultural Perspective: Tests From the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States

Abstract

As predicted by models derived from evolutionary psychology, men within the United States have been shown to exhibit greater psychological and physiological distress to sexual than to emotional infidelity of their partner, and women have been shown to exhibit more distress to emotional than to sexual infidelity Because cross-cultural tests are critical for evolutionary hypotheses, we examined these sex differences in three parallel studies conducted in the Netherlands (N = 207), Germany (N = 200), and the United States (N = 224) Two key findings emerged First, the sex differences in sexual jealousy are robust across these cultures, providing support for the evolutionary psychological model Second, the magnitude of the sex differences varies somewhat across cultures—large for the United States, medium for Germany and the Netherlands Discussion focuses on the evolutionary psychology of jealousy and on the sensitivity of sex differences in the sexual sphere to cultural input