Romantic jealousy: Emotions and communicative responses

Two independently conducted studies investigate the relations between jealousy-related emotions and communicative responses. In Study 1, participants provided open-ended accounts of specific jealousy episodes, from which descriptions of jealous communication were coded. Study 2 examined whether people tend to experience jealousy-related emotion and use communicative responses to jealousy in systematic and related ways. Across both studies, fear and anger were central to the experience of jealousy. Various combinations of emotion predicted the different communicative responses to jealousy. For example, violent communication was predicted by high levels of hostility and low levels of guilt, while communication with the rival was predicted by high levels of passion and hostility. These results suggest that people are likely to express jealousy differently depending on the specific emotions they experience.