Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine jealousy toward infidelity in bisexual individuals. Each participant completed an online survey including a forced-choice question regarding what distresses them more: the emotional aspects of the infidelity or the sexual aspects of the infidelity. Results supported the hypothesis: a higher percentage of bisexual men dating women reported being bothered by the sexual infidelity than bisexual men dating men, bisexual women dating women, and bisexual women dating men. Additionally, there was a gender by relationship orientation interaction where the traditional sex difference emerged when comparing women dating men and men dating women, but the sex difference disappeared when comparing women dating women and men dating men.
Currently, there is a debate regarding the source and validity of sex differences in jealousy. Past research has identified that there is a substantial sex difference in jealousy (Becker, Sagarin, Guadagno, Millevoi, & Nicastle, 2004; Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992; Edlund, Heider, Scherer, Farc, & Sagarin, 2006). Infidelity has been found to trigger jealousy in both men and women; men typically report stronger feelings of jealousy when presented with a scenario of sexual infidelity, while women tend to view emotional infidelity as a stronger primer for jealous feelings.
Evolutionary psychological theories have been used to explain this sex difference. One explanation for why men are more concerned with sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity is paternity uncertainty (Buss et al., 1992). Throughout evolutionary history, our male ancestors could never be 100% sure that their mate’s child was their own. Men today have inherited their ancestors’ suspiciousness about potential sexual infidelity because they want to make sure the child they are supporting is their offspring. Women, on the other hand, are more bothered by the emotional involvement that comes with the infidelity (Buss et al., 1992). According to evolutionary psychological theory, emotional involvement by a male mate with another woman can lead to the mate spending more time with the other woman, thereby diverting resources away from the original woman. The resources a man is spending on another woman are resources that he is not spending on the original mate and any potential offspring created through a sexual relationship (Buss et al., 1992). Additional research supports this theory; men who reported being in a committed sexual relationship express feelings of jealousy toward sexual infidelity more than men who had reported never being in a committed sexual relationship (Becker et al., 2004; Buss et al., 1992). This suggests that once a man is in a committed sexual relationship, he is more concerned with sexual infidelity.
Potential moderators of the sex difference in jealousy theory are the gender of the rival and mate. Sagarin, Becker, Guadagno, Nicastle, and Millevoi (2003) found that the sex of the individual involved in the infidelity scenario with the opposite-sex member of the relationship played a key role in the type of jealousy felt by a partner. Sex variance in jealousy was nonexistent when the opposite-sex partner was imagined to be cheating with a member of the same-sex, suggesting that sex differences in jealousy are derived from reproductive challenges that are simply not present in same-sex relationships. Additionally, individuals in homosexual relationships tend to be more focused on the emotional aspects of the infidelity than the sexual aspects (Harris, 2002, 2003), regardless of the gender of the same-sex relationship (men with men or women with women). Not only does this suggest that the gender of the mate matters, but it also provides further support to the theory that it may only be heterosexuals who are concerned about reproductive challenges.
A competing theory of sex difference in jealousy hypothesis that addresses sexual orientation is the “double-shot” hypothesis. The double-shot hypothesis states that the sex difference in the type of jealousy comes from the belief that, for women, emotional infidelity by their partner implies that their partner has committed sexual infidelity (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996). This hypothesis also suggests that homosexual men should perceive and react to their partners’ infidelity in the same way as heterosexual women—more concerned about emotional aspects of the infidelity, while homosexual women should perceive their partners’ infidelity in the same way as heterosexual men—more concerned about the sexual aspects of the infidelity. A meta-analysis conducted by Carpenter (2012) supports this hypothesis. The meta-analysis found that the sex difference patterns in jealousy found in heterosexual men and women were reversed when studied among homosexual men and women. One difference between the double-shot hypothesis and the sex difference in jealousy theory is that the double-shot hypothesis states that it is the gender of the unfaithful partner that determines the meaning and threat implied by infidelity—not the gender of the betrayed partner (Sheets & Wolfe, 2001). However, other research found that the evolutionary theory but not the double-shot hypothesis accounted for sex differences in jealousy in different infidelity scenarios, such as when one type of infidelity occurred but not the other or when both types of infidelity occurred (Buss et al., 1999).
An emerging theory that tries to explain the differences between the evolutionary hypothesis and double-shot hypothesis is the reproductive threat-based model (RTBM; Sagarin, Becker, Guadagno, Wilkinson, & Nicastle, 2012). The RTBM states that evolved sex differences in jealousy developed because of the paternal uncertainty for men whose female romantic partners become (or have the potential to become) involved with a male rival. RTBM predicts that the sexes will differ only when the jealous perceivers’ reproductive outcomes are differentially at risk; men whose female partners are having a sexual relationship with other men would be more focused on the sexual aspects of the infidelity while men whose mates are dating other women as well as women in general (dating either men or other women) would focus on the emotional aspects of the infidelity, given that there is no risk of impregnation. While RBTM and the double-shot hypothesis make similar predictions when it comes to how men dating women, men dating men, and women dating men react to jealousy, they have different predictions regarding women dating women. The double-shot hypothesis would predict that the sexual infidelity should be as distressing as the emotional infidelity because the sexual infidelity would imply an emotional infidelity. RTBM would predict that the emotional infidelity is more distressing because there is no reproductive threat in this scenario.
Previous research on sex differences in jealousy has focused on heterosexuals and homosexuals. As noted by Carpenter (2012), there is a distinct gap in the literature when it comes to looking at bisexuals and their patterns of jealousy in romantic relationships. A bisexual is operationally defined for this study as an individual attracted to both men and women. Because bisexuals are attracted to both genders, it is possible to believe that they would react to infidelity in a manner consistent with the reactions of heterosexuals or homosexuals: the reaction, one could hypothesize, would be dependent on the gender of the person they are dating. Bisexual women, regardless of the gender of the person they are dating, and bisexual men dating men would be more distressed by the emotional aspects of infidelity. While bisexual men who are dating women would show higher levels of distress toward the sexual aspects of the infidelity. These findings would support the theory that reproductive challenges and paternal uncertainty drives the type of jealousy that people experience in an infidelity situation.
The present study aims to identify the differences in reactions to infidelity in bisexual relationships with regard to jealousy taking into account the sex of the mate. Bisexuals give a unique insight into the debate over sex differences in jealousy because they are attracted to both men and women and therefore may experience jealousy differently depending on the gender of their partner. A bisexual sample allows for the testing of the different predicted findings between two mutually exclusive groups—heterosexuals and homosexuals—within one sample.
We believe that the type of jealousy (sexual vs. emotional) the male target will experience will be related specifically to the gender of the person they are dating, while female targets should experience emotional jealousy regardless of the gender of the person they are dating. Therefore, it is hypothesized that women dating women, women dating men, and men dating men will experience more emotional jealousy than sexual jealousy, while bisexual men who date women will report the sexual aspects of the infidelity as more distressing than the other groups. With these results, we would expect that there would be a gender by relationship orientation interaction where the traditional sex difference in jealousy would emerge with bisexual men who are dating women and bisexual women dating men and the traditional sex difference would disappear with bisexual men dating men and bisexual women dating women. This hypothesis builds from RBTM by suggesting that in bisexuals, the traditional sex difference in jealousy would emerge in men dating women and women dating men because these relationships are the ones that have potential reproductive outcomes and those reproductive outcomes could be at risk.
Method
Participants
A total of 134 self-identifying bisexuals (48 women dating men, 36 women dating women, 27 men dating women, and 23 men dating men) who are currently in a monogamous relationship completed a survey about jealousy online. They were solicited through various lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organizations throughout the United States. The age range of the sample is 19–68 years, and the mean age of the sample is 36.7, SD = 12.58.
Materials and procedure
The jealousy survey included questions about many aspects of jealousy for an unrelated study. For the purpose of this study, the first question that was asked used the forced-choice question from Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992):
Please think of a serious committed romantic relationship that you have had in the past, that you currently have, or that you would like to have. Imagine that you discover that the person with whom you’ve been seriously involved became interested in someone else and this distresses you. What would distress or upset you more (choose only one): -Imagining your partner enjoying passionate sexual intercourse with that other person -Imagining your partner forming a deep emotional attachment to that person.
After this question was asked, we asked the participant to state the gender of the person they were thinking about when answering the previous question as a double-check to see whether the gender of the person they were thinking about in the scenario and the gender of the person they were dating were the same.
The forced-choice measure was used because we were trying to do a replication of the original research design with a bisexual population. Additionally, previous research has found that forced-choice and continuous measures can show the sex difference in jealousy (Sagarin, Becker, Guadagno, Nicastle, & Millevoi, 2003).
Results
Participants were broken up into four categories based on their gender and the gender of the person they were thinking about in the jealousy scenario. To test whether bisexual men dating women were choosing the sexual aspects more than the other groups, we conducted a logistic regression with a Helmert set of contrasts to compare bisexual men dating women to the other three groups. The results were significant, b = 1.176, SEb = .820, Exp(B) = 3.24, Wald(1) = 6.693, p = .01. This suggests that bisexual men dating women were choosing the sexual aspects of jealousy at a higher rate (49%) than bisexual men dating men (16%), bisexual women dating women (25%), and bisexual women dating men (17%).
An additional logistic regression was run to test the gender by relationship orientation (same-sex vs. opposite-sex) interaction, which was marginally significant, b = −1.478, SEb = .820, Exp(B) = .28, Wald(1) = 3.252, p = .071. For participants in an opposite-sex relationship, the traditional sex difference emerged: a significantly greater proportion of men dating women (13 of 27 or 49%) than women dating men (8 of 48 or 17%) reported greater distress in response to the sexual infidelity, χ 2(1, N = 75) = 8.49, p = .004. In contrast, participants in a same-sex relationship showed no sex difference: a comparable proportion of men dating men (6 of 23 or 26%) and women dating women (9 of 36 or 25%) reported greater distress in response to the sexual infidelity, χ 2(1, N = 59) = .009, p = .93.
A post hoc comparison between women dating women and women dating men was conducted on the proportion of women who chose emotional infidelity as more distressing and was found to be nonsignificant, χ 2(1, N = 84) = .885, p = .35, suggesting no difference in women. Additionally, a post hoc comparison between men dating men and men dating women was conducted on the proportion of men who chose emotional infidelity as more distressing and was approaching significance, χ 2(1, N = 50) = 2.56, p = .10.
Discussion
The results support our hypothesis: bisexual men dating men, bisexual women dating men, and bisexual women dating women, all reported that emotional infidelity elicits stronger feelings of jealousy than sexual infidelity, while bisexual men dating women found the sexual aspects of the potential infidelity to be more distressing than the other groups. Additionally, the interaction between sex and sexual orientation was approaching significance where the traditional sex difference emerged when examining women dating men and men dating women, but the sex difference disappeared when examining women dating women and men dating men.
Bisexual men dating women were more upset by the sexual aspects of infidelity than the other groups. This finding makes sense according to the sex difference in jealousy theory. This perspective argues that bisexual men dating women would be more concerned with the sexual aspects of the jealousy because they are the only group that is concerned with paternal uncertainty. Bisexual men dating men and bisexual women dating women would have no reproductive outcomes and bisexual women dating men would always know that their offspring is their own.
Additionally, these results show that in opposite-sex relationships, the sex difference in jealousy exists, while in same-sex relationships, the sex difference disappears. These results are consistent with the predictions of the RTBM. The model would predict that sex difference in jealousy should only exist in opposite-sex relationships, which is what occurred—bisexual men dating women showed higher levels of distress to the sexual infidelity when compared with bisexual women dating men, who were more bothered by emotional infidelity. Following this theory, no sex difference existed in same-sex relationships—bisexual men dating men and bisexual women dating women were distressed by sexual infidelity at equal rates. Furthermore, the results do not support the double-shot hypothesis, which would expect the bisexual women dating women would be more distressed with the sexual aspects of the infidelity, while bisexual women dating men would be more distressed by the emotional aspects of the infidelity. Instead, the data show no difference between women dating men and women dating women in reactions to emotional infidelity, while men dating men and men dating women were approaching significance in reactions to infidelity.
While the paternal uncertainty and reproductive threat explanations make sense, they are not the only potential explanation for the results. Societal expectations may play a role in how people behave toward infidelity. For men in relationships with women, it might be expected that they are more upset about the sexual aspects of the infidelity because that is what society expects of them. Likewise, men dating men might not be distressed by the sexual aspects of the infidelity because it is a societal norm to value sexual monogamy less than men dating women (Bailey, Gaulin, Agyei, & Gladue, 1994) and that sexual fidelity is not related to relationship satisfaction in homosexual men’s relationships (Hickson et al., 1992).
A limitation of this study is that we only ask survey participants specifically about their current monogamous relationship; we do not know whether the type of jealousy they are choosing is the type they would always choose across time and different romantic relationships. Additionally, we do not look at individual differences within the participants in terms of their bisexual attraction and relationships; specifically, we did not look at the differences and similarities in the types of relationships they desire with males and females. An interesting follow-up investigation would include a longitudinal study, in which one individual is asked about the type of attraction, relationships, and jealousy they are experiencing while in a variety of different relationships. If bisexual men were found to change the type of jealousy they experience based on the gender of the person they are dating at each time of the survey that would further support the RTBM of jealousy. Another limitation with this study is that the Buss et al. (1992) wording of the jealousy question was used. As noted by Carpenter (2012), the use of the word “passionate” may conflate the two types of jealousy. A follow-up experiment using Buss et al.’s (1999) wording for the question should be conducted.
Important future studies could also examine whether the gender of the potential interloper affects the type of jealousy experienced by the target. If the cuckolder is cheating with a same-sex or opposite-sex partner, there would be different predictions about the type of jealousy the target would experience. If the cuckolder is dating an opposite-sex person, then the sex difference would emerge; while if the cuckolder is cheating with a same-sex partner, then emotional infidelity would be more distressing. If a same-sex/opposite-sex difference emerges, this would add additional support for RTBM. This would also be in line with the findings of Wiederman and LaMar (1998), who concluded that jealousy in response to sexual infidelity in heterosexual women and men is moderated by the sex of the rival.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to examine jealousy toward infidelity in bisexual individuals by asking a forced-choice question on jealousy. Results supported the hypothesis that bisexual men dating women reported higher levels distress with the thought of sexual infidelity than bisexual men dating men, bisexual women dating women, and bisexual women dating men. Additionally, a gender by sexual orientation interaction occurred where the traditional sex difference emerged when examining women dating men and men dating women, but the sex difference disappeared when examining women dating women and men dating men. These findings support the RTBM that the sexes will differ in jealousy only when the jealous perceivers’ reproductive outcomes are at risk.
Footnotes
Authors’ note
The findings reported here were initially presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychologists in San Diego, California, USA. The authors would like to thank Lauren Joseph and Nikki Andel for insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.