PERSONALITY, BIRTH-ORDER AND ATTACHMENT STYLES AS RELATED TO VARIOUS TYPES OF JEALOUSY

The relationships between jealousy, personality, attachment styles and birth order were examined in a sample of 100 Dutch men and 100 Dutch women. Three types of jealousy were examined: reactive jealousy (a neg ative response to the emotional or sexual involvement of the partner w ith someone else), preventive jealousy (efforts to prevent intimate co ntact of the partner with a third person), and anxious jealousy (obses sive anxiety, upset, and worrying about the possibility of infidelity of the partner). The three types of jealousy were not at all related t o egoism and dominance, but significantly correlated with neuroticism, social anxiety, rigidity and hostility. Only among women was a low;se lf-esteem correlated with jealousy. On all three jealousy measures, th ose with an anxious-ambivalent attachment style were more jealous than those with an avoidant style, with those with a secure attachment sty le being the least jealous. Attachment style was strongly related to m ost personality dimensions, but the effects of attachment style upon j ealousy stayed virtually the same when controlling for personality fac tors. The most important finding in the present study was that laterbo rns were more jealous according to all three measures than firstborns, a finding that was not due to personality differences between first-a nd laterborns, nor to differences in attachment style, gender or occup ational level of the father. Because some evidence was found that only borns were slightly less jealous than firstborns, it is suggested tha t the experience of exclusive love and attention in one's childhood, l eads to a lower level of jealousy among firstborns. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.