Causes of Jealousy

Tyson Lee
Direct Causes Jealousy. In the article they discuss the many theories that have been put out there for the reasons of why jealousy happens. Those theories have come out in the past decades, and there are strong supports for any of the theories presented. But the experiments are hard to create the actual emotion of jealousy in a lab setting. The testing of a theory of jealousy concentrating on threats to the self-system, two experiments are tested that try to put the troubles of obtaining the data in previous experiments and argue for an ideal that is focused on unpredictability in self-evaluation. In the first study they had forty six undergrads (females) at Northeastern University participate in the experiment for partial fulfillment of one of a course requirement. The participants were randomly assigned either the jealousy role or the control condition. The primary goals were to demonstrate how jealousy can be created in a lab setting and to look into whether that jealousy is facilitated by the threats to self-esteem. At the end of the experiment and after gathering all of the data the researchers found out that when the lowering of human beings self-esteem begins to happen jealousy begins to intensify. The results of this experiment give strong support for the theory that when ones self-esteem is threatened jealousy can occur. In the second study they had forty three undergrads (thirty female, thirteen male) at Northeastern University and were assigned the same roles as in experiment one either the jealousy or control condition. In the second study hoped to not only get the same results but to further evaluate the theory of jealousy. But this time they were looking for any signs of aggression in addition the self-esteem threat and jealousy. In study number two they found exactly what they were looking for, jealousy is indeed a cause of aggression. There are still a lot of studies to be done to further understand what the causes of jealousy are. There are two though, the first is the desire to feel good about yourself, and the second is the necessity to be in beneficial relationships.
I believe that this article and its containments are important to me because sometimes we need to look at ourselves and see what we are actually doing instead of just reacting on the spot to what just happened when jealousy occurs. Because when jealousy happens as proved in the studies of the article it can lead to aggression behaviors and signs. So this article and its studies could be used to help people realize what is causing their aggression and could help them learn how to go about things and how to react to situations in which they become jealous and begin to feel the anger and aggression take over. What’s good about the article is that it could actually be applied to our everyday life in helping us become better people and figuring out ways to maybe help our self-esteem along with all of our jealousy issues.