Jealousy in Heterosexual Men and Women

Evolutionary psychology explains jealousy as a result of selection pressures in order to maximize individual's reproduction ability. Jealousy is ultimately evolutionary strategy for keeping one's partner, precaution of infidelity and ensuring fatherhood certainty. Results of previous studies using this evolutionary approach suggests that there are specific gender differences in perception of jealousy. Heterosexual men generally show more anxiety associated with sexual infidelity and heterosexual women show more anxiety associated with emotional infidelity. The aim of this study was to examine the experience of jealousy, its perception and attitudes towards it from the perspective of heterosexual men and women in late adulthood. The research itself consisted of two parts, qualitative and quantitative. In the qualitative part was used the method of semi-structured interviews and the main aim of this part was to find out as much information about individual experiences with jealousy of our participants as possible. The main aim of the quantitative part of this study was to find out if there is a significant difference in the degree of particular types of jealousy between men and women in the late adulthood. The research sample for the qualitative part of the study consisted of 16 participants, 10..