Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: The automatic evaluation of rivals in jealousy-evoking situations', which was written at the University of Groningen under supervision of Abraham P.Buunk.An evolutionary perspective on human (social) behaviour assumes that the human mind has evolved to be responsive to contextual stimuli that are relevant to fundamental motives such as survival or reproduction.In the current paper, we argue that the presence of a rival is one such contextual stimulus.We hypothesise that given the fact that the pair bond is essential to human reproductive success, rival evaluation over the course of human evolution has evolved into an automatic process, and that subliminal exposure to a rival should suffice to evoke jealousy.We describe three studies using subliminal priming that confirm this hypothesis, and which show that sex-specific jealousy was evoked by rival characteristics to which participants were exposed outside their conscious awareness -whether these were in the form of words, photographs, or line drawings.
Authors: Karlijn Massar, Abraham Buunk
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2152833249