Several cognitive theorists have pointed out that most studies supporting the no-tion that jealousy evolved into an ‘innate module,’ making use of forced-choice models: subjects had to choose between sexual and emotional infidelity. Psycholo-gist David DeSteno and his colleagues, who assumed this forced-choice model might have influenced the experiments’ outcome, chose an additional approach. They reasoned that if sex differences re-flect wired-in, sex-specific differences, then depriving people of the opportunity to reflect on the choice should increase the difference between sexes. They im-posed a ‘cognitive load manipulation’ on participants by asking them to remem-ber a string of seven digits while answer-ing questions. The cognitive load did not change males’ responses, but females’ responses shifted toward picking sexual infidelity as the more powerful jealousy trigger. Maybe, DeSteno argues, women respond different to forced-choice be-

cause it’s socially desirable to pick emo-tional infidelity over sexual infidelity. In addition, research psychologist Christine Harris, another critic of the evo-lution-based theory of jealousy, points to the fact that cultural differences exist when it comes to jealousy. For example, the differences found between Europe-an and American men, are just as large as those between American men and women. In some studies conducted in Asian countries the difference was even larger: only 25 percent of the Chinese men thought sexual infidelity to be more distressing than emotional infidelity. Har-ris also rejects the idea that that men are more likely to commit jealousy-moti-vated crimes, offerring evidence for the sex-specific jealousy module. “When we leave the pallid laboratory studies behind and look at people dealing with real infi-delity, people driven by jealousy to com-mit crimes or people morbidly obsessed with the possibility of infidelity, we do

PsychologySocial cognitive theorists accept that men are more sexually jealous than women, and that women are more emotionally jealous than men, but do not believe this has anything to do with evolution. Just like girls are taught to love Barbie while boys play with GI Joe, be-liefs about infidelity –both sexual and emotional- are socially constructed.

not find that particularly stark sex differ-ences support the notion of a sex-specific innate module,” notes Harris. “Individu-als of both sexes experiencing betrayal report that they focus more on the emo-tional rather than sexual aspects of the situation (in contrast to the physiological data). Men show a greater degree of vio-lent or obsessional jealousy, but they do so only roughly in proportion to their gen-eral tendency toward violence and sexual obsession.”

I’m not mad that you had sex with her, I’m mad because you fell in love with her.

I don’t care that you love him, I’m mad be-cause you had sex with him.