The role of relationship development and attachment in the experience of romantic jealousy

We argue that a relationship development perspective is useful for understa nding the experience of jealousy in romantic relationships. In particular, we highlight relational uncertainty and intimacy as two indicators of relat ionship development that are likely to coincide-with people's propensity to experience cognitive and emotional jealousy. Because recent theoretical in sights about jealousy have stemmed from an attachment perspective, we also examined the extent to which people's attachment orientation predicted thei r experience of jealousy. We conducted a study in which 132 individuals inv olved in dating relationships reported on characteristics of themselves and their relationships. Consistent with our predictions, relational uncertain ty was strongly tied to cognitive jealousy, and intimacy was closely linked to emotional jealousy. Also as expected, attachment anxiety exerted a dire ct positive effect on emotional jealousy. Taken together, these results she d light on how the experience of jealousy is associated with both relations hip and individual characteristics.