Do attachment styles moderate jealousy? - Levy & Kelly, 2010, Psychological Science

1. Do attachment styles moderate jealousy?- Levy & Kelly, 2010, Psychological Science • Recall that men and women tend to respond to jealousy differently and this has been attributed to evolution-based differences in parental involvement (i.e., recall sociobiological theory). • males' need for paternal certainty often results in greater jealousy over a sexual infidelity • females' need for male investment in offspring. Above findings are moderated by attachment style. • Volunteers who reported having a dismissing attachment style (marked by short-term, low-investment relationships) reported feeling greater jealousy about sexual infidelity than about emotional infidelity regardless of gender. • Volunteers with secure attachment styles were more distressed by emotional infidelity than by sexual infidelity, regardless of gender.

2. More Recent Research • Sperm competition following significant absences in response to female infidelity • Shackelford & Goetz (2007) • The “Florida Study” (2008) examined response rates to 3 requests by gender • Go on a date, go to my place, have sex • As seen in other mammals, maternal aggression in lactating mothers is higher relative to bottle feeding mothers (competition with the winner administering a loud unpleasant noise to the loser). Lactating mothers did a longer noise relative to bottle feeders who did not differ from women who were never pregnant • Hahn-Holbrook et al., 2011