Self-Monitoring and Romantic Relationships: Individual Differences in Romantic Jealousy

To extend the research on self-monitoring and romantic relationships, we explored the connection between self-monitoring and romantic jealousy using a between-subjects design. We hypothesized high self-monitors (like men) would find sexual infidelity more distressing than emotional infidelity, whereas low self-monitors (like women) would find emotional infidelity more distressing than sexual infidelity. Participants completed the 25-item Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974) and 6 hypothetical infidelity scenarios (Buss et al., 1999). To statistically control for third variables, participants also completed the 11-item Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (Gangestad & Simpson, 1991). Although we found a main effect for self-monitoring in romantic jealousy, these results did not support our hypotheses. That is, these reliable differences in self-monitoring reflected more or less distress by emotional infidelity. Limitations (e.g., third variables, directionality) and future directions (e.g., potential moderators/mediators for self-monitoring differences in romantic jealousy) of this research are discussed