JEALOUSY EVOCATION, PARTNER REASSURANCE, AND RELATIONSHIP STABILITY -AN EXPLORATION OF THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF JEALOUSY

Three studies examined possible effects of jealousy evocation and jeal ous expression in romantic relationships, In Study 1, we used an indir ect method to examine subjects' motivations for evoking jealousy in th eir romantic partners, Students' attributions for ambiguous interactio ns suggest that jealousy evocation is goal specific and that it is pri marily used for mate retention, A majority of Study 1 participants als o reported that they had previously attempted to evoke jealousy in a r omantic partner to accomplish relationship goals, In Study 2, we exami ned the expected effect of jealousy evocation, from the perspective of the jealous partner, Here, results suggest that jealousy evocation is unlikely to produce immediate relationship benefits; in fact, it seem s more likely to provoke fighting between romantic partners, Finally, in Study 3, we examined the longitudinal association of jealousy with relationship stability, Although there was a positive lagged correlati on between participants' partners' jealousy and relationship stability , this association was not significant when participants' prior relati onship commitment was controlled, This suggests that while jealousy it self is not causally related to relationship stability, a person's rea ctions to their jealous partner may be. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.