Jealousy and rivals,
Jealousy makes us mimic romantic rivals
It’s not every academic paper that opens with a reference to Legally Blonde. (Just the really good ones.) In the 2001 rom-com, Reese Witherspoon’s character, Elle Woods, is dumped by her boyfriend, who says he needs to marry “a Jackie, not a Marilyn” — then promptly proposes to an East Coast woman who fits the bill.
To win him back, Woods attempts to transform herself into someone more like her adversary.
Researchers use the movie to illustrate their novel discovery, borne out across multiple studies, that jealousy can motivate people to change their self-view in order to feel similar to their rivals. The finding is surprising in that previous research has linked such shifts in thinking with a desire to get closer to somebody, such as a romantic partner.
“This isn’t somebody you should like or want to cultivate a relationship with; this is someone you view as a threat,” said lead author Erica Slotter, a PhD and assistant professor of psychology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “So it’s a completely and totally different motivational pathway.”
The study, to appear in the October issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, involves four experiments using 352 romantically involved men and women of varying ages.
Each was designed to explore the extent to which jealousy influences self-concept — that is, the physical appearance, material belongings, attitudes and beliefs that individuals believe are representative of who they are.
The initial experiment showed that generally it’s jealousy in the moment — not a jealous disposition — that predicts the extent to which a person will alter their self-view when feeling threatened by a romantic rival. Followup studies then explored the conditions required to induce such an effect.
In all experiments, participants completed a pre-test of personality in which they identified traits that did or didn’t fit with their selfconcept (athleticism, musicality and so on). They were then randomly placed into a condition wherein jealousy was likely to be experienced or not. For example, in one “rival flirtation” scenario, they were asked to envision themselves at a bar wherein they caught an attractive adversary flirting with their partner — but their partner rebuffed those advances.
In a “partner flirtation” scenario, the partner reciprocated this flirtation. Participants were then given a written profile of the romantic rival that included, among other things, his or her personality traits.
‘When we feel that our partner’s interest is waning because their attention is focused on a rival, (we assume) it might behoove us to take on characteristics of this rival. We’re changing who we are, essentially, to try to protect our relationship.
ERICA SLOTTER Assistant professor of psychology, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
They then underwent a jealousy assessment and finished off by completing a second personality test.
Importantly, the latter assessment included one trait of the adversary that the participant had previously identified as not being reflective of their own personality.
Consistently, participants’ endorsement of this “not me” trait didn’t change significantly in scenarios in which their partner gave no cause for concern.
But in conditions where his or her behaviour was suspect, endorsement of the “not me” attribute shot up significantly.
“When we feel that our partner’s interest is waning because their attention is focused on a rival, (we assume) it might behoove us to take on characteristics of this rival,” said Slotter. “We’re changing who we are, essentially, to try to protect our relationship.”
Taken together, the experiments suggest that self-change can be predicted by certain situational conditions — for instance, learning that your partner has chosen a “Jackie” over your “Marilyn” — but only to the extent that jealousy is felt in the moment.