Challenges for the Dynamic Functional Model of Jealousy

As a believer in discrete emotions and a proponent of a functional and motivational approach to them, I found a lot to admire in Chung and Harris’s article and the dynamic functional model of jealousy (DFMJ) it defends. The infant and dog studies cited here are interesting evidence for the evolutionary origins of jealousy. There is a thoughtful elaboration of how a common human motivational structure might play out in different expressions of and propensities to jealousy in the context of different personalities and different relational conditions. Best of all, the authors pose what seems to me exactly the right challenge against theories that treat jealousy as a psychological construction or a blend of some more basic emotions such as fear and anger: namely, those theories do not explain why jealousy has a unique and consistent motivational role, distinct from those of fear or anger, that arises early in development across cultures and seems to be present in some animals as well. And the authors convincingly press a similar objection to theories that seek to divide jealousy into further categories of distinct emotions: such theories fail to recognize the common motivational structure of jealousy that cuts across the putatively distinct types of jealousy. Their argument is that when we carve emotions at their motivational joints, jealousy will emerge as a psychological kind.

So the theory depends to a great extent on identifying a pretty specific motivational role for jealousy that is sufficiently robust and discrete to support the identification of an emotion kind at the right level of grain. Here I believe there is some work left to be done. The authors’ (Chung & Harris, 2018) central suggestion about jealousy’s motivational role is that jealousy has a distinctive goal. I find the characterization of that goal a bit unclear, and I also worry that the idea of an emotional goal by itself is insufficient to characterize what is distinctive about jealous motivation. I will develop these two points in turn.

The authors describe jealousy’s goal in different ways at different points in the article. Initially, it is “preventing others from usurping important relationships” (p. 272). Later, it is “regaining the loved one’s attention” (p. 273). Still later, the loved one’s affection and even the resources he affords are the things that it is jealousy’s aim to regain or to secure. These are related but different suggestions about the goal of jealousy. The first one is about preventing the rival, the others are about securing various different things that the rival had threatened.

Suppose that you successfully drive off the rival but there is some work to be done on your relationship before you can secure the full measure of affection and resources you used to get from the beloved. Is that further work to be done by jealousy? Or was jealousy’s goal met when the rival left? Are the feelings of unease and attempts at ingratiation that persist over the next few hours/days/weeks continuing manifestations of ongoing (“elaborated”) jealousy? Or are they efforts to shore up a relationship in the aftermath of jealousy? Despite the initial characterization of jealousy’s goal in terms of preventing the rival from usurping, I think the authors are more inclined to the latter, more expansive conception of jealousy’s goal.

That is because the DFMJ is a process view of jealousy. Part of what is distinctive about it is the idea that there is more to jealousy than “core” jealousy. Some of the things that others would think of as downstream from an episode of jealousy count as part of the process and, thus, if I understand the view, part of the emotion (part of the “manifestation” of “elaborated” jealousy). The authors seem to want to move beyond a bout-focused theory of emotions as short-lived irruptive motivational states toward one that allows jealousy to be a longer term state that unfolds over stages and pursues its characteristic aims through more complex behavior, thinking, motivation, and emotions. This includes various further appraisals, including appraisals of self as deficient in some way, and even other emotions such as anger and fear recruited by jealousy. All of this is claimed to be part of the jealousy process on the grounds that all of it serves jealousy’s goal. But there are reasons to be cautious about trying to extend a functional motivational theory of emotion to include so much.

The authors point out that a functional model of jealousy need not slavishly follow functional models of other emotions. If the problems to which the emotion is directed do not admit of solution by brief bursts of emotional motivation, like fleeing or fighting, we should not expect specific behaviors, or even brevity, to be part of the emotion’s profile, they suggest. But there are other reasons why defenders of functional/motivational theories of discrete emotions should be hesitant to give up on the traditional conception of episodes as brief, aside from uniformity. First, emotional bouts are associated with phases of strong feeling that we do not seem to be able to sustain for long. Such bouts are helpful in thinking about what the goal of an emotion is. One of the hallmarks of a goal is that it identifies a satisfaction condition for the state, which typically changes how you feel and also stops the urgent motivation toward various emotional behaviors. Because they don’t want to focus on bouts of feeling, the authors aren’t availing themselves of that way of trying to answer the earlier questions about when the goal has been met.

A second reason not to include too much elaboration in the emotion of jealousy is that not all motivation for the sake of a goal is emotional motivation, even when the goal is one that could have been had emotionally. For example, I know that the flu is unpleasant and dangerous, that flu season is nigh, and that the flu shot will increase my resistance, so I get the vaccine. I can do all that without ever being afraid of the flu—though of course someone else might seek out the shot literally out of fear. So an adequate account of fear can’t rest with the idea that it involves an appraisal of danger and the goal of threat avoidance, on pain of failing to distinguish someone who is just being instrumentally rational from someone who actually is afraid of the flu. Similarly, once you allow various other discrete emotions, appraisals, and behavior to count as part of jealousy simply because they are ways of pursuing the broad goal of securing your relationship, it is hard to see how to differentiate jealous ingratiation from ingratiation brought on by a normal desire to shore up your relationship after a rough patch (which might or might not have involved a rival). In other words, there are emotional and nonemotional ways of having, and acting on, the goals of threat avoidance and of securing one’s relationship, and a full theory of these emotions should help us understand the difference between acting out of emotion and acting on a goal that might have been emotional but isn’t, as it happens.

I think the authors should allow that elaborations are downstream from distinctively jealous motivation, and expand on their account of jealousy’s motivational role by emphasizing the distinctively boutish aspects of emotional motivation: what Nico Frijda called “control precedence” (Frijda, 1986). I believe Frijda was right to think that the most clearly emotional motivation is not merely goal-directed, it is urgent, clamoring for attention. It narrows attentional focus, restricts access to information that is otherwise normally available, motivates toward direct means of pursuing the goal—even when this is not the best means—and tends to prioritize the emotion’s goal out of keeping with its considered position in the person’s overall structure of ends. These are some of the hallmarks of emotional motivation, and we see them most clearly in what the authors call “core jealousy” (2018)—which is part of why I find it plausible that core jealousy is indeed a distinct emotion. But control precedence is short-lived—we cannot maintain a narrowed focus and urgent desire for long. Hence, emotions tend to be short-lived states that offer fast and frugal motivational solutions. The DFMJ’s attempt to extend jealousy runs the risk of assimilating phenomena that I think it would be more fruitful to differentiate.