So imagine this, your wife or husband just returned back from their "business" trip and they just confessed to you that they had sex with a mystery man/woman. How would this make you feel? Would it make you feel better that they would never see this person again and it was only a one time thing? Many of us would feel jealousy and maybe a bit more such as rage or deep sadness. But this is normal, I mean, how couldn't you be just a little jealous. Is this universality of jealousy mean that it could be programmed into our DNA? A new study investigates over 3000 pair of finish twins and comparing the answers given by each group of twins the researchers were able to show that one third of the difference in levels of jealousy are likely to be genetic in origins. Women reported being more jealous than men but men were far more fearful that their partners had been sexually unfaithful rather than emotional infidelity. Why? Because in the internal case of reproduction. To make it short and simple, men unlike women, cannot be certain that they are the recipient of the child and are naturally more perturbed of the thought of their partners being sexually unfaithful rather than emotionally hurt because it would jeopardize the successful transmissions of their genes. You may not be feeling this at the time or even thinking this, but deep down this is one of the main reasons you are jealous.The beginnings of our lives also play a major role of whether you get jealous such as the way we were brought up or the people around us. I know I have been brought up to never be jealous when my brothers got things that I didn't, or whether someone else gets a bigger slice of pizza than me. That has not stopped be from feeling jealous, but allowing others to see that I am. Even though I have been brought up to not become jealous, there is always a inner me that will always be jealous of certain things, and this new idea of jealousy being programmed into out genes would make sense in that the feeling of jealousy isn't
going away anytime soon.
I think that most people experience a similar level of internal jealous feelings which would support the notion that jealously is genetic. I think the key difference among persons is how we externalize the jealousy. People will handle their jealous behaviors in drastically different ways. Some will cope by pretending it doesn't both them and others will become so jealous that it will appear they are paranoid. My thinking is that which type of person you will become is determined from how you are raised and your childhood development.
ReplyDeleteMany people display the act of jealousy whether its in your genes or not. It may be much more strongly shown is some people who do posses the trasit in there genes. Many show jealousy out of the act of love and do not realize what they are doing until confronted.
ReplyDeleteI always thought that people get jealous because they either don't have what they want or because someone has something better than they do. I never really thought about jealousy having something to do with our genes. However, this article is very interesting, and highlights the ins and outs of jealousy. Jealousy is not really the best thing to be having whether it is genetic or just something that is mental.
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