Women's Health Issues: A Wealth of Perspectives

In The Dangerous Passion, evolutionary psychologist David Buss articulates his theory that jealousy has been selected for in evolution because it guards against infidelity, an important issue because, he says, we are “hardwired” to cheat. He argues further that there are substantial gender differences in which violations provoke jealousy. Women feel jealous about a partner’s emotional infidelity, whereas men feel jealous about a partner’s physical, sexual infidelity. This pattern occurs because, in the course of evolution, men have had to guard against the uncertainty of paternity; it is disadvantageous for them to spend time and energy helping to rear a little tyke carrying another man’s genes. Women, in contrast, have needed men’s resources in order for them and their children to survive, and so they react against the possible loss of emotional, relational loyalty. The book was clearly intended for a high-level general audience and says little—except for dozens of lively anecdotes—that Buss and his colleagues have not said previously in journal articles (e.g., Buss, Larsen, & Westen, 1996). Sociologist Ira Reiss (1986), in his important sociocultural theory of sexuality, provides an alternative view. Jealousy, according to Reiss, is a boundary-setting mechanism for what the group (the culture, the subculture, the tribe) feels are important relationships. Marriage, in our society and many others, is viewed as an important relationship and when its boundaries are violated, we expect that the betrayed spouse will feel anger and hurt. Interpersonally, according to Reiss, jealousy is a response to a perceived threat to a relationship that one cares about. Psychologically, jealousy is a secondary emotion, given its label when we feel anger or hurt over the violation of a romantic relationship. All human societies recognize sexual jealousy in marriage and have cultural norms for handling it (Reiss, 1986). Husbands express more sexual jealousy than wives do because sexual infidelity violates not only the marital relationship but also the man’s power and control over his wife. My goal is not to suggest that Reiss’s theory should be the feminist framework for understanding jealousy. Rather, my goal is to illustrate how one could tell an entirely different story about jealousy that matches equally well with the research. Buss sees cross-cultural universals as evidence for evolutionary determination. Reiss sees cross-cultural universals as evidence that all societies have had to deal with certain social problems and have developed roughly similar norms for dealing with them. One of the flaws in Buss’s evolutionary theory of jealousy is the lack of specification of mechanisms or processes. Evolution can have an effect on behavior or psychological processes only through genes, those tangled bits of DNA. We live in the era of the Human Genome Project, and a good chunk of the human genome has been mapped already. The evolutionary theorists need to specify the intervening mechanisms. Which genes on which chromosomes control jealousy? What proteins are synthesized by those genes? How does that affect neurotransmitter secretion? Hormone secretion? And how do those turn on the emotion of jealousy? If the evolutionary theorists could specify these intervening mechanisms, they would have a good scientific theory. Right now, they just do not have it. Feminist psychologists need to begin telling their own fascinating tales about jealousy and other sexual phenomena and then testing them with carefully collected empirical data. Only when we can tell tales with Buss’s flair will we compete for the general public’s attention and imagination.