The crux of cognitive load: Constraining deliberate and effortful decision processes in romantic jealousy

Abstract

DeSteno, Bartlett, Braverman, and Salovey [Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 83(2002)1103–1116] challenged the evidentiary support for the hypothesis of evolved sex differences in jealousy. They attribute this support emanating from studies forcing men and women to choose between sexual and emotional infidelity as generating more negative emotional responses to a methodological artifact. This attribution is based on the results of their study allegedly demonstrating that sex differences in jealousy emerge in the forced-choice response format only when participants employ deliberate and effortful decision processes but disappear when using automatic or simple decision processes. The present study offers and tests an alternative account of their results. Specifically, the participants were forced to employ a simple decision process by either a substantial time pressure or a jealousy-related word load or jealousy-unrelated digit-string load imposed on the participants while choosing between sexual and emotional infidelity as causing more jealousy. The sex differences predicted by the evolutionary hypothesis were found in the time pressure and word-load condition, and they were attenuated in the digit-string condition. Additionally, only in the digit-load condition was sexual infidelity selected more frequently when it appeared as the first response option, indicating that the empirical basis of DeSteno et al.'s challenge of the evolutionary view of jealousy is in all likelihood attributable to a methodological artifact.