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Sex Differences in Response to Sexual and Emotional Infidelity
Among Spanish and Chilean Students
Article in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology · July 2006
DOI: 10.1177/0022022106288474
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SEX DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSE TO SEXUAL AND EMOTIONAL
INFIDELITY AMONG SPANISH AND CHILEAN STUDENTS
ANA MARIA FERNANDEZ
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile
JUAN CARLOS SIERRA
IHAB ZUBEIDAT
Universidad de Granada, Spain
PABLO VERA-VILLARROEL
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile
This study evaluates sex differences in response to sexual and emotional infidelity in two Spanish-speaking
samples. An extension of previous findings with Anglo, European, and Asian students leads to the prediction
that men report being more distressed by sexual than by emotional infidelity, and women report the reverse.
Five hundred and eleven students from Spain and Chile respond to a questionnaire consisting of forcedchoice-scenarios. Significant sex differences in jealousy as a function of type of infidelity emerges and this
is consistent with previous research on jealousy.
Keywords: evolutionary psychology; jealousy; sexual infidelity; emotional infidelity; forced-choice
methodology
In the present article, we evaluate the extension of findings from an evolutionary psychological perspective to describe sexual differences regarding the subjective experience
of jealousy in two Spanish-speaking samples. In addition, we conducted the research using
a combination of several different methodological variations derived from the original
forced-choice scenarios developed by Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992),
obtaining a single measure of the combined situations of distress toward sexual and emotional infidelity that have been developed in this area.
Jealousy has been defined as an emotional reaction to the loss of a valued relationship (Buss
et al., 1992). However, according to research in evolutionary psychology, jealousy has been particularly triggered by different kinds of infidelity situations that are sex specific. For women, it
is the loss of emotional involvement that would particularly lead to jealousy, whereas for men,
jealousy would be experienced by a loss of sexual exclusivity. Buss and Schmitt (1993) indicated that there are distinctive ways in which men and women respond to the demands of mating, which are as predictable as a function of biological sex. Therefore, in the present article,
we only address sexual differences in response to jealousy and do not address the possible
implications that sexual orientation and/or a gender approach may have in this context.
Previous cross-cultural research and between-country studies found that there are sex differences in response to sexual and emotional infidelity. Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin (1953)
AUTHORS’ NOTE: This research was partially supported by a research grant from Universidad de Santiago de Chile, assigned
to the first author. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ana Maria Fernandez, Escuela de Psicología,
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Avenida Ecuador 3650, Tercer Piso, Santiago, Chile: e-mail: anfernan@lauca.usach.cl.
JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 37 No. 4, July 2006 359-365
DOI: 10.1177/0022022106288474
© 2006 Sage Publications
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JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
informed that more than 50% of American men and less than 25% of American women
reported that sexual infidelity had been the cause of their divorce. Specific hypothesis about
the kind of infidelity that would be more distressing for men and women were confirmed by
Buss et al. (1992) with an American college sample using paper-and-pencil assessments and
physiological responses measuring hypothetical infidelity scenarios. The same results, using
a forced-choice self-report technique, are described on other Caucasian American samples
(Buss et al., 1999; Buunk, Angleitner, Oubaid, & Buss, 1996); African Americans (Abraham,
Cramer, Fernández, & Mahler, 2002); and foreign samples from countries such as Germany, the
Netherlands (Buunk et al., 1996; Schützwohl, 2004); and Korea, and Japan (Buss et al., 1999).
In Spanish-speaking countries, research on jealousy is scarce. A few studies have been
conducted in Spain: one exploring social knowledge of jealousy (Carrera & Garcia, 1996)
and another study exploring jealous reactions as a function of rival characteristics (García,
Gomez, & Canto, 2001). Similarly, in Argentina, Casullo and Fernández (2003) have
investigated jealousy in sexual relationships and the conceptions of love in romantic
relationships (Casullo, Fernández, & Cayssuals, 2003).
Research with Spanish-speaking samples seems to support the universal features of sex
differences in mating psychology, which are consistent with an evolutionary perspective of
jealousy. Thus, women seem to be more concerned about the emotional aspects of mating,
and men seem more concerned about the sexual aspects of their mating relationships.
Unfortunately, research on jealousy, including Spanish-speaking samples, is limited. Only
one preliminary investigation replicated Buss et al.’s (1992) findings, reporting that
Chilean students demonstrated that sexual infidelity was a stronger cue to jealousy in men,
whereas emotional infidelity was a stronger cue to jealousy in women (Fernández, Olcay,
Castro, Escobar, & Fuentes, 2003).
In the present research, we tested the extension of evolutionary predictions on sexual
asymmetries in response to different jealousy scenarios in Spanish-speaking samples from
Chile and Spain. We used college students as a way to compare our results with previous
research in jealousy across countries (Abraham et al., 2002; Buss et al., 1999; Buunk
et al., 1996; Schützwohl, 2004). This could be unadvisable if we consider that students are
not always representative of the general population. However, previous cross-cultural
research has well thought-out some advantages of working with student samples (McCrae,
Terracciano, & 78 members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005; Paez &
Vergara, 2000), because they tend to be more comparable cross-culturally and across countries (especially if we intend to validate the extension of previous research with Englishspeaking students) and also because they are similar in age, education, values, and positive
disposition to participate in research.
Specifically, we expected to find sexual differences in the amount of distress reported
in response to sexual and emotional infidelity in the context of a committed relationship
clearly defined by the participant’s sex. Second, we expected to replicate this finding in
both Spanish-speaking countries based on the extensions of previous research in this area.
METHOD
Participants were 511 students selected from public and private universities in Chile (129
women and 107 men) and Spain (142 women and 133 men), who answered the questionnaire
during regular classes in the winter semester. The mean age for Spanish participants was 22.61
years (SD = 3.36), and the mean age for Chilean participants was 21.20 years (SD = 2.46).
Fernandez et al. / SEX DIFFERENCES IN JEALOUSY
361
PROCEDURE
In both countries, the samples were voluntarily drawn, and participation in the study
was not rewarded. Participants were recruited collectively by a researcher and asked to
complete the questionnaire in a classroom setting. Students received a questionnaire with
an informed consent form, stating that they were asked to complete a voluntary and anonymous survey about different relationship situations. They then completed a demographic
survey and were asked to answer the questions individually. The instructions asked participants to think of or imagine a committed relationship in which they discovered that their
partner became interested in someone else. Then they had to indicate which one of the following scenarios (A or B) was most distressing:
Scenario 1
A. Imagining your partner forming a deep emotional attachment to that person
B. Imagining your partner enjoying a passionate sexual encounter with that person
Scenario 2
A. Imagining your partner trying different sexual positions with that other person
B. Imagining your partner falling in love with that other person (original questions by Buss
et al., 1992)
The third and fourth scenarios presented situations that pointed exclusively to one type of
infidelity but not the other (“imagining your partner had sex with that person with no
chance of forming a deep emotional attachment”; for the reverse, see Buss et al., 1999). In
the fifth scenario, the infidelities were mutually exclusive too, but they involved a former
partner; and in the sixth scenario the sexual infidelity involved “a one night stand” with no
chance of future involvement of any kind, and “a deep emotional attachment” with no
chance of sex ever occurring. In the last scenario, participants were told that their partner
“had formed a deep emotional attachment and also had sex with someone else.” Then they
were asked to indicate “which aspect of the infidelity (A or B) was most distressing:
Scenario 1
A. The fact of having sex with the other person, or
B. The deep emotional attachment to the other person (see Fernández, 2000, for the development of the fifth, sixth, and seventh scenarios)
RESULTS
The stability of participants’ responses across the infidelity scenarios, adding up to a
total score of sexual and emotional infidelity distress, showed an acceptable internal consistency of the measure across the sexual infidelity situations (Cronbach’s α = 0.830) and
the emotional infidelity situations (Cronbach’s α = 0.801).
A 2 (sex: Men and Women) × 2 (country: Chile and Spain) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted on both Infidelity subscales (Sexual and Emotional). A significant effect of participants’ sex on sexual infidelity emerged, F (1, 509) = 50.61, p < .000,
η² = 0.56. More men (M = 3.24, SD = 2.40) than women (M = 1.84, SD = 2.04) reported higher
distress to sexual than to emotional infidelity. Emotional infidelity was also significantly
affected by the sex of the participant, F(1, 509) = 53.50, p < .001, η² = 0.80. More women
(M = 5.21, SD = 2.09) than men (M = 3.76, SD = 2.40) reported higher distress to emotional
infidelity over sexual infidelity (see Figure 1).
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Reported Distress
6
5
Mean Scores
4
3
2
1
0
Sexual Infidelity
Emotional Infidelity
Sexual Infidelity
CHILE
Emotional Infidelity
SPAIN
Type of Scenario
Men
Women
Figure 1: Mean Distress to Sexual and Emotional Infidelity Reported by Chilean and Spanish Men and
Women
No significant effects of country of origin on infidelity choice emerged (F’s < 3.5,
p > 0.05, η²s < 0.10). People from Chile (M = 2.67, SD = 2.45) and Spain (M = 2.25,
SD = 2.21) showed similar patterns of distress to sexual infidelity. Chilean (M = 4.33,
SD = 2.45) and Spanish participants (M = 4.70, SD = 2.26) had similar emotional infidelity
patterns.
DISCUSSION
In the present research, previous evidence of sex differences in response to hypothetical
sexual and emotional infidelity scenarios were replicated in the context of committed relationships with Spanish-speaking students from Chile and Spain. Respondents’ sex in both
countries was related to the amount of distress reported across the infidelity scenarios. Overall,
men, more so than women, found that sexual infidelity was more distressing than emotional
infidelity situations. Similarly, more women than men reported higher distress to sexual infidelity over emotional infidelity. These results are consistent with an evolutionary approach of
jealousy and previous research conducted in European, American, and Asian countries.
Fernandez et al. / SEX DIFFERENCES IN JEALOUSY
363
Although people from Spain had previously reported more egalitarian mating preferences
than other cultures (Buss, 1990), the results of the present study suggest that students from
this country are very similar to students from elsewhere in their responses to hypothetical
sexual infidelity situations.
Our results are consistent with other studies of Spanish-Speaking samples concerning
the sexual fantasies of men and women (Sierra, Ortega, Martín-Ortiz, & Vera-Villarroel,
2004) in which comparable results to American findings with English-speaking samples
were extensive to Spain and Chile.
Current research on personality and sexuality among nations has reported universal patterns of personality traits (McCrae et al., 2005), adult romantic attachment (Schmitt & the
International Sexuality Description Project, 2004), and sex differences in the desire for
sexual variety (Schmitt & the International Sexuality Description Project, 2003) that seem to
support the universal perspective proposed by evolutionary psychology to explain sex differences in mating behavior. Nevertheless, some critics of this position have also attributed this
pattern of results to artifacts of a forced-choice method or sociocultural variables that influence sexual behavior (DeSteno, Bartlett, Braverman, & Salovey, 2002; DeSteno & Salovey,
1996; Harris, 2004; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996). However, our measure of distress applied
to jealousy addressed most of the possible critics from this perspective, and combined different scenarios added up the possible effects of different ways of presenting the infidelity
situations.
The results of the present research do not solve most of the theoretical criticisms to an
evolutionary approach of jealousy, because this was not intended in the study. Yet the infidelity scenarios that constituted the measure in the present research were developed by Buss
et al. (1999) and were extended by Fernández (2000) and Abraham et al. (2002) in response
to some of the critics to an evolutionary approach to jealousy. Indeed, our results support the
extension of the findings in Anglo, European, and Asian countries to Latin American and
European Spanish-speaking samples. Therefore, we provide information in the line of Buss
and Schmitt’s (1993) approach to jealousy regarding the response of Spanish and Chilean
college students to different jealousy scenarios. And we aggregated in a single measure each
infidelity type, which has not been reported elsewhere.
Finally, restrictions to generalization provided by small samples of the student population
may be a methodological weakness of the present research and most studies in this line. The
need of further investigations, with a larger and more representative sample of the whole
population, is addressed for future research in this area.
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Fernandez et al. / SEX DIFFERENCES IN JEALOUSY
Ana Maria Fernandez is an assistant professor at University of Santiago de Chile, Chile. She is a PhD
candidate at Universidad of Chile and received her master’s degree in experimental psychology from
California State University. She is an associate editor of the Journal Terapia Psicologica. Her main
research interests include evolutionary psychology, human sexuality and psychological assessment and
psychometrics.
Juan Carlos Sierra, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Granada, Spain, and editor of
International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology. His main research interests are in the areas of
human sexuality, human sleep disorders, and psychological assessment.
Ihab Zubeidat, PhD, has a master’s in clinical psychology (Spanish Association of Behavioral Psychology).
His main research interests are in the areas of human sexuality and anxiety disorders.
Pablo Vera-Villarroel, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Santiago de Chile, Chile, and
editor of the Journal Terapia Psicologica. He is vice-president of the Latin-American Association of
Analysis and Modification of Behavior (ALAMOC). His main research interests are in the areas of empirically supported treatments and health psychology.
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