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Women's Romantic Jealousy Predicts Risky Appearance Enhancement Effort.

Steven Arnocky1, Megan MacKinnon1, Sadie Clarke1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, Canada.

Evolutionary Psychology : an International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior
|July 25, 2023
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Romantic jealousy predicts women's costly appearance enhancement strategies for mate retention. This finding highlights jealousy's unique role beyond envy in driving appearance modification efforts.

Keywords:
appearance enhancement effortattitude toward cosmetic surgerybenefit provisioning mate retentiondietingfemale competitionmate retentionromantic jealousywomen's jealousywomen's mate retention

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Human Behavior
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Appearance enhancement is viewed as an adaptive, sexually dimorphic strategy in human evolutionary psychology.
  • Research has primarily focused on appearance enhancement for mate attraction, with less attention to mate retention.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if romantic jealousy predicts costly or risky appearance enhancement in women.
  • To differentiate the predictive power of romantic jealousy from dispositional envy in appearance enhancement behaviors.

Main Methods:

  • Surveyed 189 undergraduate women on romantic jealousy, envy, and appearance enhancement attitudes/intentions.
  • Assessed willingness to engage in behaviors like cosmetic surgery, tanning, and diet pills.
  • Measured intent to spend income on appearance enhancement and use of facial cosmetics.

Main Results:

  • Romantic jealousy and dispositional envy were positively correlated.
  • Romantic jealousy significantly predicted positive attitudes toward cosmetic surgery, tanning, and diet pills.
  • Romantic jealousy also predicted higher intended spending on appearance enhancement, independent of envy.

Conclusions:

  • Romantic jealousy uniquely predicts women's costly and potentially risky appearance enhancement efforts.
  • These findings suggest appearance enhancement can serve as a mate retention strategy driven by jealousy.
  • Further research can explore the evolutionary implications of jealousy-driven mate retention behaviors.