Jealousy in Sexual and Emotional Infidelity: An Alternative to the Evolutionary Explanation - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Sex Research, May, 2000 by Dawn K. Nannini, Lawrence S. Meyers

To minimize alpha inflation, significance of the univariate results was evaluated using a Bonferroni correction (.05/7 = .007). Effects whose significance fell between the corrected alpha and the conventionally used .05 level were considered trends. Table 1 contains the univariate F-ratios and the means and standard deviations for the significant multivariate effects.

Table 1. Significant Multivariate Effects of Analysis of Variance

                                     Gender

                           Men          Women

Dependent measures      M      SD     M      SD     F

Emotional upset        9.19   2.57   9.82   2.06   4.04(*)
Pleasantness           3.89   1.69   3.89   1.63   0.58
Anticipated effort     7.32   2.62   7.08   2.63   1.08
Certainty              6.36   2.24   6.30   2.22   0.01
Attentional activity   6.44   2.63   6.17   2.88   0.68
Responsibility         5.05   1.65   4.44   1.81   5.95(*)
Situational control    3.97   2.91   4.09   3.19   0.19

                          Jealousy evoking event

                          Sexual       Emotional

Dependent measures       M      SD     M      SD

Emotional upset        10.74   0.88   7.29   2.62
Pleasantness            3.49   1.45   4.80   1.69
Anticipated effort      7.35   2.82   6.86   2.23
Certainty               6.63   2.25   5.71   1.88
Attentional activity    6.11   3.16   6.62   2.29
Responsibility          4.44   1.74   5.43   1.40
Situational control     3.29   3.02   4.76   2.91

                        Jealousy evoking event

                          Sexual/
                         Emotional

Dependent measures       M      SD        F

Emotional upset        10.49   1.15   112.03(**)
Pleasantness            3.37   1.41    24.85(**)
Anticipated effort      7.40   2.76     0.67
Certainty               6.66   2.40     5.23(**)
Attentional activity    6.17   2.70     1.56
Responsibility          4.36   1.93    10.72(**)
Situational control     4.10   3.05     4.30(*)

(*) p < .05.

(**) p < .007.

Contrary to the pattern predicted by the evolutionary model, the main effect of gender indicated that women experienced more distress over all conditions of infidelity--sexual, emotional, and the combination of sexual and emotional--than did men. Women also felt less responsible for their partner's disloyalty than did men. The sexes did not differ on the remaining five cognitive dimensions of emotion.

For the main effect of the condition of infidelity, Tukey comparisons indicated that the conditions containing sexual involvement, either by itself or together with emotional involvement, proved to be more upsetting than emotional involvement by itself. Additionally, situations in which the imagined partner had become either sexually involved or both sexually and emotionally involved with someone were found to (a) be less pleasant, (b) result in more certainty, and (c) generate lower feelings of responsibility than the situation in which the imagined partner had become only emotionally involved with someone outside of the romantic relationship. For the situational control scale, Tukey comparisons showed that sexual infidelity was recognized as being an event beyond the individual's control more than emotional infidelity: the combination of sexual and emotional infidelity, however, did not differ in situational control from either of the two types of infidelity by themselves.