Another gem from MSN: Jealousy and the sexes

If you've visited your hotmail account today (and if you live in the non-GMail Dark Ages, like I do) you may have noticed today's little nugget for thought. I swear, I don't know what MSN is trying to do, but every other day it seems to come up with some "research" on one subject or another. Though most I find annoying ("7 Reasons Women Cheat", "Is your date super?"), this I thought might have some truth. Then again, it might not.


Jealousy: Is is the same for both men and women?

There are two different views about the both the origins of jealousy and the different ways men and women experience jealousy. One school of thought is that jealousy is an adaptive evolutionary mechanism. Researchers in this camp have found that men tend to be more jealous about sexual infidelity, whereas women are more disturbed by emotional infidelity. Their reasoning is that men needed to know that their efforts to feed and protect their mates actually propagated their genes and not some other man’s. Women, on the other hand, needed to hold onto a man’s emotional love in order to be fed, protected, and sheltered.

Another group of researchers found that culture had more of an influence on jealous behavior than evolutionary needs. They concluded that men and women tend to become most jealous over sexual infidelity, but they think that both of their jealousies are far more influenced by societal and family experience than by survival of the species.

See, I have a hard time believing there is a real difference, but I'm not a guy so I can't say for sure. But to imply that women don't get jealous over sexual infidelity is crap, as might be assuming that a man wouldn't mind so much if his wife was in love with another.

The article then went on to talk about what kind of people get jealous. The insecure ones, they say, are most likely to, as are the ones who have been cheated on the past.

Yes, well, that's kind of a given. But I know plenty of perfectly secure people who have never been cheated on who get riled up by the "green monster." What does that say then? That jealousy is just part of human nature? Sure, but then there are people who claim to "never get jealous."

I hate those people.