On Jealousy and Envy (With Active Table of Contents)

The search identified a total of 20 neurological patients, who experienced jealousy in relation with a neurological disorder; and 22 healthy individuals, who experienced jealousy under experimental neuroimaging settings. Most of the clinical cases of reported jealousy after a stroke had delusional-type jealousy.

The Cultural Insignificance of the Hymen

Right hemispheric stroke was the most frequently reported neurological disorder in these patients, although there was a wide range of more diffuse neurological disorders that may be reported to be associated with different other types of jealousy. This is in line with recent neuroimaging data on false beliefs, moral judgments, and intention [mis]understanding. Together the present findings provide physicians and psychologists with a potential for high impact in understanding the neural mechanisms and treatment of jealousy. By combining findings from case reports and neuroimaging data, the present article allows for a novel and unique perspective, and explores new directions into the neurological jealous mind.

Jealousy is a frequent human emotional experience, although its nature, rationale and origin are poorly understood. In the past decade, neurological and neuroscientific approaches have been helpful in better understanding the neural bases of jealousy. The present article review findings showing accounts of jealousy in patients with structural brain damage or cerebrovascular infarction, and explores new directions in this field.

Taking into account the neurology of jealousy is imperative to allow a better understanding of the potential detrimental effects of jealousy [ 1 — 3 ]. For instance, global homicide statistics depict jealousy as the most frequent catalyst of spousal homicide worldwide. Thus there is a crucial need to better apprehend the neural bases of this negative mental state [ 4 — 7 ]. Jealousy is a complex emotion that is hard to define despite its unequivocal prevalence in interpersonal relationships [ 1 , 2 ]. Despite this clarification, the definition of jealousy remains a topic of debate, which has been the focus of several disciplines.

It is important to note that clinical cases of jealousy do not always include delusions [ 4 , 9 — 11 ]. Various subtypes of jealous reactions may occur. Two common forms of normal jealous reactions are emotional jealousy and sexual jealousy. Many other terms and definitions have been attributed to jealousy including the erroneous belief that jealousy is synonymous with envy. For instance, confusion between jealousy and envy is frequent in everyday usage, and also in the course of clinical work [ 12 ].

However, there are several differences between jealousy and envy. For instance, jealousy is linked specifically to a person in the context of an interpersonal relationship, whereas envy extends to inanimate objects. Because jealousy differs from envy in that jealousy often refers to the fear to lose someone, while envy refers to the will to obtain something , here we will report only neurological cases and neuroimaging of normal and delusional jealousy not envy.

Based on the above definition of jealousy, we perceive jealousy as being due to flaws in false belief psychological systems. Thus, from a neurological viewpoint, one may expect brain areas involved in false beliefs and social cognition to be specifically involved in jealousy notably in delusional jealousy. Because of the well-known role of the right hemisphere in emotion, and a growing body of research in neuroscience demonstrating its association with mental state reasoning, moral judgement, false beliefs, delusions [ 14 , 15 ], and also its facilitation effect in understanding actions and intentions of others based on a simple observation of their body language [ 16 , 17 — 20 ], one may hypothesize a critical role of the right hemisphere in jealousy.

In agreement, Richardson et al. To date, however, there are no reviews documenting the brain mechanisms that sustain jealousy. To address this question, we undertook an exhaustive review of the literature. Such information, we hope, would provide new directions for future interventions, and stimulate research on jealousy. All papers in the literature published through March, inclusive were considered for this review, subject to two general limitations: Materials were identified through computer-based searches, as described below. A systematic computer-based search of the literature was performed using the local university database.

The following electronic databases were searched through Pubmed Medline; Psychinfo; and Google Scholar. The following search terms were used: The set of publications identified from the computer searches was then subjected to the following narrower and more restrictive criteria: Since these issues have been addressed in depth previously they will not be reviewed in the present article. A total of 20 neurological individuals with jealousy post-brain damage were found in 17 published materials that met the criteria for this review Table 1.

The earliest publication was from , and the latest In addition, we found only two studies that investigated the neural bases of jealousy using neuroimaging. The first study was published in and the second study was published in Although no clear confirmation of these allegations about infidelity has been done, most of the cases were described as being delusional jealousy according to or not the DSM-IV criteria. As we described above, delusional jealousy is a psychiatric phenomenon in which an individual has a delusional belief that their spouse or sexual partner is being unfaithful [ 6 ].

It is also known as morbid jealousy, pathological jealousy, conjugal paranoia, or Othello syndrome [ 6 ]. As described by Easton et al. Nevertheless, it is clear that delusions are only present in individuals suffering from delusional disorder-jealous type [ 6 ]: One of the main reasons why some of the present clinical cases do not meet the DSM-IV criteria is the following: Since the patients from the present review had a known neurological condition, some of the authors were cautious when trying to account for their symptoms with the diagnosis of delusional disorder.

Further studies thus need to integrate this information in their systematic clinical investigations. He sleeps with every woman he sees! On one occasion, he thought he had heard voices in the kitchen, but when he entered the room, only his wife was there preparing breakfast. All were older than 18 years of age male mean age Each patient was married, or was in an intimate relationship with a significant other at the time of the delusional jealousy.

Interestingly, these clinical cases were not only observed in elderly patients older than 75 year-old who have a brain atrophy. The youngest patient was 20 year-old, and the oldest was 77 year-old. Westlake and Weeks presented this 20 year-old clinical case of pathological jealousy following a right brain infarction without any associated brain atrophy [ 28 ]. In brief, this young woman was admitted to a hospital with a right hemispheric stroke associated with a history of severe migraine and the use of oral contraceptives [ 28 ].

A CT scan revealed an evolving haemorrhagic cerebrovascular infarction in the right parietal and frontal regions extending into the basal ganglia, including the right caudate nucleus.

The Psychology of Jealousy and Envy

The patient recovered rapidly with minimal neurological deficits, but one month later she was again admitted for a fever and a flu-like syndrome with headache, nausea and increasing left-sided weakness. Repeated CT scans of the head showed no change in the previously noted right middle cerebral artery territory lesion. Headache and nausea persisted and the patient was given a single dose of sumitriptan, which led to dramatic improvement in symptoms.

However, during the subsequent 5-year period, she became increasingly jealous and possessive of her beloved partner. A neuropsychological exam performed at that time revealed mild evidence of right frontal and parietal damage. The patient was diagnosed with a syndrome of jealousy, syndrome that completely disappeared over a 6-week period.

Although the authors mentioned a potential role of their treatment with a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor SSRI; 28 on the disappearance of the syndrome of jealousy, one cannot exclude spontaneous brain recovery, and brain plasticity that would be independent of the SSRI treatment. Further pharmacological studies with a bigger cohort of patients need to be done to test the relationships between SSRI and jealousy.

Based on the present data, the present review cannot make any causal relationship between SSRI and jealousy treatment. Nonetheless, taken together all the present case reports lend support to a potential relationship between brain infarction and clinical jealousy, notably after a right brain infarction both in a young and elderly population. Further studies need to be done to test this assumption. The understanding of mechanisms leading to false beliefs, and misunderstanding of human intentions and actions during an episode of delusional jealousy will provide critical insights on the brain states occurring during jealousy.

From such data, a development of preventive therapeutic and pharmaceutical approaches centered on improving intention understanding might then be considered. Here below we first describe the neural bases of jealousy by describing the only fMRI study that investigated this question in healthy participants.

Then, to better understand the specific neural mechanisms mediating delusional jealousy per se , we present the only neuroimaging study we found that investigated this question in a patient with delusional jealousy. Although jealousy is hard to investigate in laboratory settings, a nascent field in neuroscience aims to unravel the neural basis sustaining in vivo onset of jealousy by investigating emotional versus sexual false beliefs in couples with no brain damage. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI study, Takabashi et al.

The main goal of this study was to elucidate the neural responses to jealousy as it can be expressed through sentences depicting sexual and emotional infidelity [ 2 , 38 ]. Another goal of this study was to investigate the gender differences as a function of normal jealousy types emotional versus sexual since numerous studies in psychology find men to be more sensitive to sexual jealousy than women [ 2 , 38 ].

In their fMRI study, Takahashi et al. Three types of short sentences were provided: Based on an initial survey that evaluated the jealousy rating of every sentence, the authors selected 18 sentences for each of 3 conditions neutral, sexual infidelity, and emotional infidelity.

The average of men and women for the mean ratings of jealousy for 18 neutral sentences was, respectively, 1. The sentences were projected during fMRI scanning. During the scanning, participants were instructed to read the sentences silently and were told to imagine the situations described in the sentences. After reading each sentence, the participants were instructed to press a key button with the right index finger, indicating that they had read and understood it. However, no jealousy ratings were collected during the scanning, which can be considered as an experimental downside of this experiment.

The experimental design consisted of 6 blocks in which the order of presentation of the 3 conditions neutral, sexual infidelity and emotional infidelity was randomized. The participants were also asked to rate the intensity of jealousy and other basic emotions, such as anger, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, and happiness for each sentence using a 6-point analog scale. The authors explained that all their participants were university right-handed students male mean age As described in Takahashi et al.

The participants did not have any history of psychiatric disorders or neurological disorders. None of the participants were taking alcohol at the time, nor did they have a history of drug dependence [ 37 ]. These results are in agreement with several studies findings that jealousy is significantly correlated with anxiety and basic emotions such as disgust, anger, sadness, and fear [ 39 , 40 ]. Neuroimaging results expanded these behavioral results by revealing that men and women recruit divergent brain networks in the experience of jealousy [ 37 ].

These neuroimaging results reinforce theories from neurological case reports, and provide some convincing elements in accounts of a central role of the brain in jealousy in relationship with a brain network mediating false beliefs. More precisely, in men, jealousy mostly involves activation in the visual cortex, limbic system and related areas amygdala, hippocampal regions, and hypothalamus , and in somatic and visceral states e. Women demonstrated greater brain activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus STS and angular gyrus i.

In addition, activations were observed in the visual cortex, frontal regions middle frontal gyrus , thalamus, and cerebellum. The implication of this brain area in many other somatic and addictive experiences might be useful to further investigate in clinical settings. Together these results highlight the recruitment of brain areas mediating mentalization, basic emotions and somatic and visceral sensations that have been integrated from past experiences [ 46 — 48 ].

Nevertheless, this study has some limitations that need to be addressed in future research studies. First of all, as the authors acknowledge it, their stimuli including sexual infidelity might also involve emotional infidelity, and thus induce both emotional and sexual jealousy. This possible conjoint activation of emotional and sexual jealousy might account for the identical results of self-rating of jealousy in males and females.

However, the overall higher ratings of different emotions, including jealousy for sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity is against this argument. Results are in line with previous studies using a similar rating scale for sexual and emotional infidelity. Second, subjects were aware that the scenarios were hypothetical, which limits the interpretation of the results in comparison with delusional-type jealousy. Thus, neuroimaging studies need to be done in order to test patients with delusional jealousy.

Finally, the authors did not collect any behavioral data during their fMRI sessions. Although their data set is solid, their choice of methodology might have influenced the hyper-activation of some subcortical areas e. Also, it is important to note that the authors did not specifically address the question of individual differences, which can constitute an important limitation in the interpretation of their results. Further studies need to carefully investigate this question. To date, only one study has investigated the neural bases of delusional jealousy using neuroimaging technology [ 49 ].

During hospitalization for a transient left-sided hemiplegia after a right middle cerebral artery infarct, a year-old man became convinced that his wife had an extramarital affair with a teacher many years ago. During the three years following his infarct, the patient had to be hospitalized on several occasions because of verbal and physical abuse toward his wife. The patient also suffered from depression, in which one episode resulted in a serious suicide attempt. A month after his infarct, a detailed neuropsychological investigation revealed that the patient had a mild intellectual impairment and some visuo-spatial memory deficits.

Although the patient was generally calm with his friends, he showed a pronounced lack of emotional control when discussing with his wife. A CT scan of his brain showed a low-density defect of the right temporal and parietal lobes as well as mild cortical atrophy. This advanced neuroimaging technique revealed a large hypoperfusion of the right hemisphere, involving the right frontal lobe, the possible result of a deafferentation or diaschisis effect [ 49 ].

This is in line with Levine and Grek study on the anatomical basis of delusions after right cerebral infarction, which suggests that delusions depend primarily on pre-morbid brain atrophy rather than location and size of the lesion. However, this conclusion has been challenged by Westlake and Weeks, as we described above, who presented a young patient with a right infarction. Of particular interest in the framework of false beliefs and jealousy are the temporo-parietal junction, posterior temporal sulcus, angular gyrus, and insula.

Interestingly, other candidate brain areas reflecting brain processes that may potentially subserve other subtypes of social cognition were also observed, such as emotion processing, and executive functioning action monitoring, attention, dual task monitoring, episodic memory retrieval; [ 50 ] , but none of them overlapped uniquely with the regions activated during jealousy per se.

The present clinical and neuroimaging results provide critical insights for neurological theory on jealousy by unraveling its neural basis. First, most of the present clinical cases of reported jealousy after a stroke had delusional-type jealousy. The absence of a specific right hemispheric lateralization in the Takahashi et al. Subjects were aware of the hypothetical connotation of every jealousy-arousing sentence. Further neuroimaging studies need to be done to clarify this point in persons with and without delusional jealousy.

This is a critical question since delusional jealousy receives increasing attention from the forensic psychiatry, psychology, and the media due to its linkage with aggression, and domestic violence [ 52 ]. Although we cannot exclude that other mechanisms play a role in jealousy, together the present findings suggest, that beyond a right-hemispheric recruitment for delusional jealousy, jealousy recruits a more distributed brain network that mediates various cognitive functions, such as basic emotions, somato-sensory sensations, false beliefs, and prediction of actions and intentions of other people.

The role of basic emotions in jealousy has been described throughout the ages [ 38 ]. Many studies have found significant interactions between expression of jealousy and other emotions, such as disgust and fear [ 37 , 39 , 53 ]. The recruitment of brain areas that are part of the emotional brain e. Notably, the involvement at least in men of the amygdala, a brain area that is involved in many emotional processes such as fear and anger, reinforces the often-assumed relationship between jealousy and anger.

Unfortunately, to date, no specific neuroimaging studies have been performed to allow us to tease apart the relationship between anger and jealousy in further details. Further studies need to further assess these functional differences in order to better understand the neural plasticity as a function of the various types of emotions that may occur in jealousy. This is important as repressed anger, fear, and jealousy are correlated with relationship disturbances and psychological problems that can also cause sexual dysfunctions and difficulties.

The present neuroimaging and clinical data show that both men and women exhibit jealousy. In healthy subjects, neuroimaging studies show that the brain networks involved in jealousy are slightly different between men and women. Men mainly activate brain areas known to be involved in automatic integration of somatic experiences and basic emotions, although women tend to activate also higher-order cognitive brain areas.

This means that both men and women may experience similar emotions during jealousy episodes. That said, gender differences were found in some cases: Although the modulation of jealousy as a function of gender is sometimes under debate in psychology [ 2 , 38 , 54 — 57 ], the present gender differences are in line with a growing body of research in psychology that repeatedly demonstrates the sexes differ in the experience of jealousy [ 55 ].

Essentially, men are more sensitive to sexual jealousy, while women are more sensitive to emotional jealousy [ 56 ]. For instance, multiple studies carried out by Buss et al. In one study, Buss et al. The participants were presented with hypothetical infidelity scenarios in a forced response format. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that these gender differences for jealousy are a result of the divergent reproductive consequences of partner infidelity for males and females [ 2 ].

Buss and Haselton explain that men are more angered by signs of sexual infidelity, since this indicates a significant risk of genetic adulteress [ 2 ]. The potential loss of reproductive resources and the lingering paternity uncertainty causes men to focus more on indicators of sexual infidelity rather than emotional infidelity [ 2 ]. In contrast, according to Buss et al, women find signals of emotional betrayal more upsetting as these cues threaten a loss of resources and decreasing partner commitment [ 55 ]. Along these lines, emotional jealousy can be seen as an evolved psychological mechanism, which triggers the activation of mate retention tactics in potential relationship threatening situations [ 59 ].

These mate retention tactics have become commonplace within intimate relationships in contemporary society. Humans are an inherently social species that exhibit complex social emotions in interpersonal relationships [ 60 , 61 ]. Interpersonal relationships are so vital to humans that psychological and physical health is crucially affected by the presence and absence of interpersonal relationships [ 60 , 61 ]. Humans strive to protect and sustain their relationships using available tactics [ 2 , 62 ].

Thus, emotional jealousy seems inherently essential to guard these valued social relationships from potential threats [ 2 , 62 ]. Taken together, these studies provide insightful information to the understanding of gender differences in the experience of jealousy. One of the characteristics of delusional jealousy is its linkage with false-beliefs. Despite the small number of neuroimaging studies on jealousy, their results provide very interesting insights because they may be related to a broader field in neuroscience i. The present activation of higher-order brain areas e.

The assumption here is that delusional jealousy may result of disorder between critical nodes of the network decoding intentions of others [ 12 , 51 , 67 ]. This model of jealousy posits that jealousy is critically affected by the way individuals interpret actions of other people.

Based on both neuroimaging studies of jealousy and those of false beliefs we suggest that predicting emotional responses and behaviors of other people involves generating and using internal affective representations. Critically, the brain areas involved in inferring temporary states such as intentions, desires and goals of other people even when they are false and unfair recruits a broad network involved in mentalizing, theory-of-mind and self-mirroring e. As discovered and described by Rizzolatti et al. Furthermore, Rizzolatti and his collaborators demonstrated that the mirror neuron system is important not only when one acts, or looks at someone else acting, but also when one understands the actions and the intentions of someone else just by looking at their body movement [ 51 , 72 , 73 ].

Since this finding, a growing body of evidence has reinforced the role of the mirror neuron system in intention understanding. This is important in social cognitive neuroscience, as the mirror neuron system may be important for mediating the understanding of emotions, actions and intentions of other people based on our past-integrated bodily experiences [ 51 , 72 , 73 ]. This might be critical in jealousy in the sense that one may accuse their spouse on infidelity based on their own integrated past experiences [ 20 , 74 ].

People with a high need for popularity want to create an idealized image on the SNS. Being in a happy relationship is for many people part of such an image Zhao et al. People with a high need for popularity might therefore also be more sensitive to cues that threaten this part of their self-presentation. They might be especially sensitive to activities of their partner on a SNS that may harm the idealized relationship image they like to present. These are public at least within the circle of friends and acquaintances, and such public detections of transgressions are especially damaging for the relationship Afifi et al.

Individuals with a high need for popularity should therefore be more likely to experience SNS jealousy. We argue that self-esteem has a moderating rather than a direct effect and expect that the link between need for popularity and SNS jealousy is qualified by self-esteem. Jealousy develops in relationship threatening situations.

According to Afifi et al. Such a threat should be perceived as more severe by people with a low self-esteem. People with a high self-esteem usually have more trust in their self-worth and consequently also in the love of their partner. Therefore, self-esteem is an important moderator when it comes to romantic relationships. In general, low self-esteem individuals cope less successfully with various stress-situations in the relationship Cameron et al.

The same is expected in the context of SNS jealousy. More specifically, we expect that the link between need for popularity and SNS jealousy is more pronounced for individuals with low self-esteem. For instance, when someone's partner leaves a comment at the profile of a member of the opposite sex, those with low self-esteem who additionally have a high need for popularity might be more threatened and experience a higher level of SNS jealousy.

Individuals with high self-esteem on the other hand are more self-assured and should not feel threatened so easily.

Apart from the specific effects of personality characteristics and SNS use, we also expect that SNS jealousy is influenced by relationship satisfaction. Barelds and Barelds-Dijkstra found that reactive jealousy was positively related to relationship quality, whereas anxious jealousy was negatively related to relationship quality. They also expected possessive jealousy to be negatively related to relationship quality, but this prediction was not confirmed.

The SNS jealousy scale assesses the reactions on ambiguous and potentially threatening SNS behaviors, but not the reactions on actual cheating. Thus, it does not really measure reactive jealousy but covers mainly aspects of possessive and anxious jealousy. Therefore, we expect a negative relationship between SNS jealousy and relationship satisfaction. Prior research on Facebook use and romantic relationships has focused on the negative effects Muise et al.

These studies found that SNS are especially useful for maintaining bridging capital, that is, weaker ties with acquaintances. However, there were also positive effects on bonding capital, strong ties with close friends. Therefore, we think that SNS use can also strengthen romantic relationships. Mod also found that people publicly display their affection on SNS and that partners value these public signs of affection These findings are based on interviews with 11 SNS users. We want to examine in a broader sample whether SNS use has also positive effects on romantic relationships.

We call this scale SNS relationship happiness for the remainder of the paper. SNS happiness should for a great deal be determined by relationship satisfaction. If an individual is overall satisfied with the relationship, the individual is also more likely to experience positive emotions whilst browsing the favorite SNS. SNS use for grooming is expected to have the strongest impact because grooming involves browsing of the profiles of friends and the partner. This might seem counterintuitive at the first glance because we also expected a positive relationship between grooming and SNS jealousy.

The direction of the emotion is determined by the information found on the SNS, but people who frequently browse the profiles of friends are more likely to encounter information about the partner in wall postings or pictures than people who use SNS primarily for self-presentation. People who use the SNS for grooming should be more likely to experience SNS relationship happiness while browsing, for instance when they encounter that their partner talked about the relationship with friends or has uploaded pictures showing the couple together.

Need for popularity should also predict SNS relationship happiness. People who find it more important to look popular on the SNS, should become more happy if their partner publicly displays positive aspects of the relationship. Self-esteem has been found to moderate the effects of SNS use on bridging capital Ellison et al. Individuals with low self-esteem gained more than individuals with high self-esteem. The effects of SNS use on bonding capital were less strong and not moderated by self-esteem.

Therefore, the last hypothesis is:. Of those, 28 males and 75 females were involved in a romantic relationship. Completing the survey that contained various personality measures and questions on SNS use took about half an hour. Only the data of respondents with a relationship and the variables relevant for the current hypotheses are reported in this paper.

Respondents were asked how often they logged in several times a day, daily, several times a week, once a week, several times a month, less often. Eleven items assessed what people actually did on the SNS. Five items referred to self-presentation and profile maintenance e. The Facebook jealousy scale by Muise et al. Only respondents whose partner had a profile on a SNS answered these questions. To assess the positive consequences of SNS use for romantic relationships, five items were created. This time, they indicated their likelihood to experience positive emotions after certain behaviors of their partner.

The behaviors were taken from the SNS jealousy scale and reformulated such that the subject was now the target of the action. Three items in the style of Pfeiffer and Wong's behavioral jealousy subscale assessed traditional monitoring behavior. The goal was to contrast the socially accepted behavior of browsing the partners profile with socially unaccepted behaviors.

The SNS jealousy scale contains some items that explicitly address monitoring behavior. These four items e. Trait jealousy was measured with one item. Need for popularity was measured with seven items from the popularity scale by Santor, Messervey, and Kusumakar Self-esteem was measured with the Rosenberg scale Rosenberg, Respondents agree their agreement with the statements on a 7-point scale.

Table 1 displays the means and standard deviations as well as the intercorrelations between the measures. Note that the scales did not assess the likelihood of events e. The scores on monitoring behavior indicate that about half of the participants reported that they engage in monitoring behavior at least every now and then.

In contrast, the scores for SNS monitoring behavior were much higher see Table 3. These descriptive results provide an answer to RQ1. They indicate that monitoring the partner on a SNS might be more common and apparently socially more accepted than monitoring the partner offline. The first four hypotheses predicted that SNS jealousy would be related to trait jealousy H1 , monitoring behavior H2 , SNS use, especially use for grooming H3 , and need for popularity H4. H6 expected a negative relationship with relationship satisfaction.

To test the hypotheses these variables were simultaneously entered as predictors in a regression analysis, in which we also controlled for gender. The results support H1, H2, and H4. To examine the moderating role of self-esteem, separate regressions with SNS jealousy as dependent variable were calculated for low- and high-self-esteem subjects. In the first block, trait jealousy, monitoring behavior, relationship satisfaction, and gender were included as predictors. In the second block, frequency of login, SNS intensity, SNS use for profile maintenance, and SNS use for grooming were entered, and finally need for popularity was entered in the third block.

Blockwise entering of the variables allowed us to detect whether the indicators of SNS use and need for popularity explained additional variance over and above the relationship variables and gender. H5 predicted that the effects of SNS use and need for popularity would be moderated by self-esteem. That is, different Beta weights were expected for low- and high-self-esteem individuals.

For individuals low in self-esteem, gender and relationship satisfaction had no significant effect.

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Entering the SNS use variables resulted in a nonsignificant increase of adjusted R 2 to. Entering need for popularity resulted in a significant increase of adjusted R 2 to. For individuals high in self-esteem, a slightly different picture emerged. The SNS use variables increased the amount of explained variance significantly to an adjusted R 2 of. That is, the effect of need for popularity was much stronger for low self-esteem individuals, and SNS use only had an effect for high-self-esteem individuals.

Trait jealousy was a significant predictor only for low-self-esteem individuals. The effect of monitoring behavior, however, turned out to be stronger for high-self-esteem individuals. Relationship satisfaction had a marginally significant negative effect on SNS jealousy, but only for high-self-esteem individuals.

H6 received only partial support. These results indicate that the effects of trait jealousy, monitoring behavior, and relationships satisfaction on SNS jealousy are also moderated by self-esteem. To test the hypotheses these variables and gender as control variable were simultaneously entered in a regression analysis. This supports H7 and H8. To test the moderating role of self-esteem H10 , separate regression analyses predicting SNS relationship happiness for low- and high-self-esteem respondents were conducted.

Gender and relationship satisfaction were added as predictors in block 1; the SNS use variables in block 2, and need for popularity was added in block 3. For low self-esteem individuals, the following picture emerged. Women tended to experience more SNS relationship happiness than men. Adding SNS use increased the adjusted R 2 to. The effect of gender was no longer significant, and the impact of relationship satisfaction became stronger. Adding need for popularity led to a marginally significant increase of adjusted R 2 to.

No other effects were significant.

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For high-self-esteem individuals, a different picture emerged. Adding need for popularity did not contribute any explained variance. More important, as predicted by H10, self-esteem moderated the effects on SNS relationship happiness. For the low-self-esteem individuals, frequency of login was the significant SNS use variable. Interestingly, SNS intensity had a marginal negative effect.

H9 predicted an effect of need for popularity on SNS happiness. This effect was only marginally significant, and was only found for the low-self-esteem individuals. H7 predicted an effect of relationship satisfaction on SNS happiness. This effect was only found for the low-self-esteem individuals. These findings indicate that self-esteem moderates effects of relationship satisfaction, SNS use and need for popularity on SNS relationship happiness. This paper focused on the role of SNS use in romantic relationships.

It extended prior research on Facebook jealousy by Muise et al. Moreover, the paper focused on the moderating role of self-esteem. In general, people experienced more happiness than jealousy in reaction to the partner's activities on a SNS. However, low-self-esteem individuals experienced more SNS jealousy than high-self-esteem individuals, whereas these groups did not differ in experienced SNS relationship happiness.

For low self-esteem individuals, need for popularity, trait jealousy and monitoring behavior predicted SNS jealousy. For high-self-esteem individuals, monitoring behavior and SNS use for grooming were the main predictors of SNS jealousy. SNS relationship happiness of the low self-esteem individuals was related to relationship satisfaction and frequency of login, whereas the SNS relationship happiness of the high-self-esteem individuals was predicted by SNS use for grooming only.

These results extend prior research in several ways. First, our research contributes to understanding the role of SNS for romantic relationships. Similar results have been reported by Mod , but based on a small qualitative study. Prior research has already shown that SNS use can increase bridging, and, to a lesser degree, also bonding capital Ellison et al. The present research extends these findings by showing the benefits for romantic relationships, a specific form of bonding capital.

Second, our findings extend research on jealousy by comparing monitoring behavior on a SNS with traditional monitoring behavior. SNS do not only provide people with much more information about their partner, it is also socially more accepted to monitor the partner's activities via a SNS. About half of the sample never engaged in traditional monitoring behavior such as searching the partner's bags or secretly reading the partner's e-mails. However, respondents were quite likely to monitor the partner's SNS profile. These results should be treated with some caution because SNS monitoring was assessed with a different scale likelihood vs.

Moreover, SNS monitoring, in contrast to traditional monitoring, is not per se an intentional activity. Information about the actions of SNS friends is automatically pushed into the user's news feed, and is not secretly pulled from the partner's profile. Information on a SNS is public, at least within the circle of friends. The degree to which knowledge about the infidelity is public had an impact; unsolicited third party discoveries, e. The authors argue that public information is more face threatening than a private confession.

Encountering on the SNS that the partner is in contact with former or potential romantic partners can therefore be regarded as face threatening. We expected that self-esteem and need for popularity influence the extent to which people show jealous reactions in such situations. Indeed, the effects were different for low and high-self-esteem individuals. In general, low self-esteem individuals experienced higher levels of SNS jealousy than high-self-esteem individuals. Moreover, SNS jealousy was predicted by different variables. For low-self-esteem individuals, need for popularity had a strong impact.

The higher their need for popularity, the higher their likelihood to experience SNS jealousy. Zywica and Danowski have shown that low self-esteem individuals compensate their lack of self-esteem by striving for popularity among friends on the SNS. The present results suggest that low self-esteem individuals may compensate their lack of self-esteem by publicly displaying a happy relationship.

If they additionally have a high need for popularity, they are especially sensitive to negative cues and experience more jealousy when encountering relationship threatening comments or pictures on a SNS. The present effects of need for popularity confirm the relevance of the private-public dimension and extend the prior findings. Especially individuals with a high need for popularity try to present an idealized self on the SNS, and a happy relationship would be part of that.

If the partner posts information that thwarts this picture, they are more likely to experience SNS jealousy.

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For the high-self-esteem individuals, in contrast, need for popularity only had a marginal effect. It seems that high-self-esteem individuals are less dependent on the public display of a happy relationship than low self-esteem individuals. Instead, it appears that for this group the actual experienced relationship satisfaction is more important than the public display of the relation.

They are more likely to experience SNS jealousy when their relationship satisfaction is low. This marginal negative effect replicates and further specifies the findings of Barelds and Barelds-Dijkstra The SNS jealousy scale contains items which are related to anxious jealousy, but also items that are more related to possessive jealousy. This mix of items might explain why the effect was only marginally significant. Future research should focus more on the different forms of jealousy.

For both high- and low-self-esteem individuals offline monitoring behavior predicted SNS jealousy. Several items of the SNS jealousy scale focus on aspects of possessive jealousy, and monitoring is an indicator of possessive jealousy. Therefore, it is not surprising that the two concepts are related. Trait jealousy, however, was only a significant predictor for low-self-esteem individuals, and not for high-self-esteem individuals. Trait jealousy is a relatively stable personality characteristic that is not related to a specific partner.

It appears that, especially low-self-esteem individuals with a high score on trait jealousy interpret the behaviors of their partner on the SNS as more threatening, and consequently experience SNS jealousy. Taken together, the results on SNS jealousy indicate that especially low-self-esteem individuals experience relationship threats on SNS.

This qualifies earlier findings that suggest that mainly low-self-esteem individuals profit from SNS use, at least, when it comes to the maintenance of bridging capital Steinfield, et al. In general, we found that individuals were more likely to experience relationship happiness than to experience SNS jealousy.

This is an important contribution to earlier findings.

Introduction

Our study demonstrates that SNS have the potential to increase relationship satisfaction and happiness, because they allow for public demonstrations of affection and relationship commitment. Although low- and high-self-esteem individuals did not differ in their experience of relationship happiness, we again observed different patterns in the predictors for these two groups. For low-self-esteem individuals, SNS relationship happiness was determined by relationship satisfaction, but also by frequency of login. SNS use explained additional variance, showing that using SNS can further enhance already existing feelings of relationship happiness.

Interestingly, there was a marginal, but negative effect of SNS intensity. It could be that these individuals have higher expectations and consequently attach more significance to signs of affection posted by their partner. Need for popularity also had a marginal positive effect. This further corroborates the assumption that low-self-esteem individuals compensate their low-self-esteem with the display of a happy relationship, and become more happy if they succeed in it.

For high-self-esteem individuals, only SNS use for grooming contributed to SNS relationship happiness, indicating that SNS relationship happiness as well as SNS jealousy of high-self-esteem individuals is mainly based on the content encountered on the profiles of friends or the partner.

This also allowed us to reveal interesting effects of SNS use variables. SNS use for grooming was the main predictor of SNS jealousy as well as SNS relationship happiness of high-self-esteem, but not of low-self-esteem, individuals.