2003/12/01 by Jamie L. Goldenberg, Mark J. Landau, Tom Pyszczynski +4 · 2 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology #Psychology #Jealousy #Mortality salience #Salience (neuroscience) #Terror management theory #Self-esteem #Distress #Social psychology #Developmental psychology #Emotional distress #Clinical psychology #Anxiety #Psychiatry
paper · doi:10.1177/0146167203256880
openalex publication_date 2003/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The authors propose that gender-differentiated patterns of jealousy in response to sexual and emotional infidelity are engendered by the differential impact of each event on self-esteem for men and women. Study 1 demonstrated that men derive relatively more self-esteem from their sex lives, whereas women's self-esteem is more contingent on romantic commitment. Based on terror management theory, it is predicted that if gender-differentiated responses to infidelity are motivated by gender-specific contingencies for self-esteem, they should be intensified following reminders of mortality. In Study 2, mortality salience (MS) increased distress in response to sexual infidelity for men and emotional infidelity for women. Study 3 demonstrated that following MS, men who place high value on sex in romantic relationships exhibited greater distress in response to sexual infidelity, but low-ex-value men's distress was attenuated. The authors discuss the implications for evolutionary and self-esteem-based accounts of jealousy as well as possible integration of these perspectives.