Science fiction is rife with stories of invasion by B.E.M.s (Bug-Eyed Monsters), but an invasion that affects many people in the real world is that of the G.E.M.s (Green-Eyed Monsters). Yes, jealousy is a fact of human existence.
A recent study, however, showed that it affects different countries in different ways. The country that reports the most jealousy is Brazil, while the country that reports the least jealousy is Japan.
Also, jealousy affects the genders differently. Men tend to experience more jealousy at the thought of their wives having sex with another man, while women tend to experience more jealousy at the thought of their husbands having a strong emotional attachment to another woman. Both genders experience jealousy at both things, but they tend to experience a stronger jealous reaction over one than the other.
The article presents some speculation from different schools of psychology on why this is (though it seems plausible to me that it is because men are more focused on sex than women and women are more focused on emotional bonding than men, leading each gender to experience the strongest jealousy when its special focus is threatened.)
What is even more interesting is why different countries report different levels of jealousy. The study found that it doesn’t seem to be a random thing. There is something that the jealousy rate correlates with: the fertility rate. The higher the fertility rate is, the higher the reported jealousy rate is.
Japan, has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. For a start, it seems that the Japanese engage in marital relations far less often than any other country surveyed. A recent study found that the Japanese engage in such relations an average of 36 times per year, which is about half the rate of the next lowest country on the survey (Hong Kong, where the rate was 63 times per year).
America was at the top of the list (124 times per year on average), but before people start chanting “USA! USA! USA!”, remember that the rate of marital relations is not the same as the fertility rate–at least not in a country with widespread contraception. Thus it is Brazil that has the highest fertility rate, and correspondingly the highest jealousy rate.
What does this tell us about human relations and human nature? For a start, it tells us that the cultures in which couples are doing their job reproductively are the ones that have higher jealousy rates. Why would that be? Well, here’s a possibility: Marital relations get people attached to each other emotionally. If you don’t have marital relations often, you don’t get as attached to your partner emotionally and don’t feel as threatened at the possibility of unfaithfulness in marriage (whether it is sexual or emotional unfaithfulness that you find most threatening). Similarly, if you stunt the growth of the emotional bond by using contraception to frustrate the natural result of marital relations, you end up caring less about your partner’s faithfulness and thus have lower rates of jealousy.
You’ll also probably wind up with higher rates of divorce and adultery.
This points up the whole reason for jealousy in the first place: It reinforces the bond between the couple. It helps keep them together in faithful, stable unions that help propagate the species. Of course, nobody should let feelings of jealousy drive them to do irrational things, but kept within the bounds of reason, the jealous impulse (i.e., feeling threatened and/or angered by the thought of sexual or emotional unfaithfulness) is something that strengthens the couple’s union. If that union is allowed to express itself in regular, non-contraceptive marital relations then it will benefit from that strengthening.
