Everybody gets jealous one time in their life or another. Jealousy is a natural reaction to something we feel uncomfortable with, usually if another person has something you want. We can’t help it. Is there a root cause of jealousy we don’t really understand? Why do we get jealous so often?
I wanted to do research to find the root cause of jealousy and how it affects the people around us. According to this study by the American Psychological Association, a professor at Penn State University named Jeffery G. Parker Ph.D. did a study that found a correlation between jealousy and aggression and low self-esteem. He found that it affects many adolescents as young as children in the 5th grade. Dr. Parker and a team did an observational study that involved 500 subjects aged from 5th -9th-grade students by sending out a questionnaire about hypothetical scenarios regarding jealousy in their friendships. The study found that the kids with a low self-esteem revealed they are more prone to have jealousy. Girls seem to experience jealousy more than boys do. The research showed that girls are more prone to jealousy is because girl are more emotional being naturally, and they have high expectations for relationships. If anything disturbs that expectation it’ll come out as aggression and jealousy. Yet this study only shows a certain age group, jealous can affect the relationships with your significant other.
According to one of the biggest studies by Chapman University discovered that men and women have contrasting experiences with jealousy. Their experimental study poll found that heterosexual males are more prone to jealousy with cheating regarding their significant other. Agreeing with the first study done on children and friendships, this study’s results discovered that women are in fact more likely to be hurt by emotional cheating than the physical cheating.
According to Dr. Frederick, jealousy in adults can expose aggressive and violent acts.
According to these studies, it seems that jealousy can cause low-self esteem and aggression. It can also be reverse causation where low self-esteem can cause jealousy. Both of them are interchangeable. Although the second study from Chapman University, they polled over 64,000 adults which seem like a decent amount of data to have a better understanding of jealousy it’ll be interesting and more supporting if there were more studies on jealousy. There can be many other underlying factors of jealousy, like trust issues etc.
In conclusion, be confident with yourself! The right one will make you feel special where you don’t need to be jealous.
Here’s a cute little video of how to deal with jealousy.
Sources: http://illuminessencemag.com/jealousy-an-aphrodisiac/
This post is good because everyone experiences jealousy. I remember having jealous feelings way earlier than fifth grade, as young as wanting someone else shoes in pre-k. It makes sense to me that girls are more jealous than boys because they are more emotional naturally. It is fascinating to me that women would be more hurt by emotional cheating and men would be more angered by physical cheating. I would definitely be more upset by emotional cheating as well. I think most jealousy has everything to do with yourself and almost nothing to do with others. To avoid it I would focus on personal self esteem rather than finding “the right one.”