Abstract
Jealousy is not only a way of experiencing love but also a stabilizer of romantic relationships, although morbid romantic jealousy is maladaptive. Being engaged in a formal romantic relationship can tune one’s romantic jealousy towards a specific target. Little is known about how the human brain processes romantic jealousy by now. Here, by combining scenario-based imagination and functional MRI, we investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of romantic jealousy and their development across stages (before vs. after being in a formal relationship). Romantic jealousy scenarios elicited activations primarily in the basal ganglia (BG) across stages, and were significantly higher after the relationship was established in both the behavioral rating and BG activation. The intensity of romantic jealousy was related to the intensity of romantic happiness, which mainly correlated with ventral medial prefrontal cortex activation. The increase in jealousy across stages was associated with the tendency for interpersonal aggression. These results bridge the gap between the theoretical conceptualization of romantic jealousy and its neural correlates and shed light on the dynamic changes in jealousy.
Highlights
To test Hypothesis 1, we carried out analysis for the correlation between romantic jealousy effect (Partner – Control) and romantic happiness effect (Partner – Control)
We carried out a two-way repeated-measures ANOVA for the jealousy ratings, which showed a significant interaction between Target (Partner vs. Control) and Stage, F(1,36) = 29.10, P < 0.001 (Fig. 3a)
As can be seen from the figure, for both of these ROIs, the differential activations between Partner and Control were larger in Stage 2 than in Stage 1, consistent with the finding in jealousy rating. This is the first study to explore the dynamic features of romantic jealousy and happiness, i.e., how the change in romantic stages modulates the psychological, behavioral, and neural processes related to romantic jealousy and happiness
Summary
It is conceivable that when facing the same relationship-threatening event, those who are happier in their relationship will find it more surprising and unacceptable, and will feel more jealousy. Given the critical role of jealousy-evoked aggression and impulsiveness in response to adverse events, we further hypothesize that the increase in romantic jealousy would be related to individual’s aggressive tendency in relationship (Hypothesis 3). To test these hypotheses, we investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of romantic jealousy and happiness and their development across stages by combining scenario-based imagination and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We assessed the association between the changes of romantic jealousy and the aggressive behavioral tendency
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