Health : The Atlantic: How Romantic Jealousy Changes Us

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How Romantic Jealousy Changes Us Aug 8th 2013, 18:36, by James Hamblin espen_/flickr Dr. Erica Slotter at Villanova University wants to help us understand romantic jealousy and, in doing so, get over it — or embrace it. In a recent experiment published in Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin — one of the few academic articles I've seen that seamlessly references Legally Blonde — Slotter's team of psychologists asked people in relationships to envision various scenarios, some of which would hypothetically make them jealous. As Slotter described them to me, "In one [scenario] they were with their romantic partner, and everything was fine. In another, their partner was flirting with — or even just noticing and commenting on — a potential romantic rival. In a third scenario, that rival was actively pursuing and flirting with the partner."   In the second scenario (but not the third), the subjects said they felt jealous. Slotter then asked them to compare themselves to profiles of the romantic rivals, according to a set of qualities. Were they athletic? Intelligent? Enthusiastic? In the second scenario, people were quick to rate themselves highly in ways that made them similar to the rival. It seemed to be something of an unconscious "I've got what he/she's got" reaction. (Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin) As Slotter explained it to me hypothetically, "If I am with my husband and I notice that he's interested in another person, his interest in me is waning, right? He's probably interested in this person because she is interesting or attractive. If I'm motivated by jealousy, would I make myself more similar to the rival." The crux of this is that, as she put it to me, "The self-change we were seeing was mediated by the amount of jealousy they were experiencing." That's to say, in situations that make us jealous, we change the way we see ourselves to something more similar to the person who "we feel is capturing the attention and affection of our partner." Psychologists have long documented that self-concepts are malleable, especially in the realm of changing to be similar to the people we're interested in romantically. That can be healthy, to a degree. Here, though, Slotter emphasizes, we're changing to see ourselves as like the people of whom we're jealous. As her journal article concludes, "Like Legally Blonde's Elle, we may try to embody the smart, serious individual that we perceive our partner to be attracted to over ourselves. When we feel our partner's feelings for us are waning, the subsequent jealousy we experience is sufficient to promote us changing ourselves to keep the partner." Or at least seeing ourselves differently. The next step then: Is this bad? Slotter's team wants to look at what it actually means for the relationship. "Does this help retain the partner's interest? If so, is that healthy for the couple? But then, if you have a partner with a consistently wandering eye, is this a relationship worth keeping?"

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