Can earlier relationship experiences act as a stable moderator of the sex difference in forced-choice sexual jealousy responses?

Abstract

The sex difference in forced-choice sexual jealousy responses has over the past 20 years gradually been established as a stable sex difference by the empirical literature (e.g. Sagarin et al., 2012). The search of possible moderators of the sex-difference has therefore been intensified. In this thesis I aim to investigate to what extent, if any at all, does earlier relationship experiences act as a stable moderator of the sex-difference. For that purpose, I administrated four infidelity scenarios and questions regarding earlier relationship to 473 undergraduate students, 281 women and 192 men. The results from the infidelity scenarios support the established view that men become more upset by sexual aspects of infidelity compared to women. This result is also in line with previous studies conducted in Norway (Kennair et al., 2011; Bendixen et al., submitted). In search of possible moderators connected to earlier relationship experiences I investigated the possible moderation of whether the participants were in a relationship or not, whether the participants have experienced infidelity or not, and whether the participants were in their earlier twenties or late twenties. The results indicate that none of these three factors acted as moderators. For the participants who had experience with infidelity, I investigated the possible moderation of whether the infidelity happened in a previous or current relationship, how long ago since the infidelity occurred, and the degree of commitment in the relationship where the infidelity occurred. None of these three factors resulted in any positive findings. Overall, the results of this thesis indicate that the sex-difference is quite robust in terms of different relationship experiences. In the discussion I emphasize that future research should replicate my negative findings with larger sample sizes and with samples containing other respondents than just undergraduate students. This thesis show that the quest to find stable moderators of the established sex difference in jealousy may be harder than previously thought.