Men become somewhat more supportive of feminine honor norms when they feel jealous

An online experiment found that men become somewhat more supportive of feminine honor norms when they feel jealous. This was not the case with women. Additionally, individuals with a more restricted mating orientation also showed greater support for feminine honor norms. The paper was published in Cognition and Emotion.

Feminine honor norms are cultural expectations about how women should behave to be regarded as respectable and honorable. They typically require women to uphold a reputation for sexual purity through behaviors such as dressing modestly or maintaining virginity before marriage. A woman’s behavior may be seen as reflecting not only on herself but also on her family or wider social group.

These norms can therefore encourage women to avoid actions that might attract gossip, criticism, or accusations of impropriety. They may also prescribe traditional gender roles, such as being caring, loyal, obedient, and devoted to family responsibilities.

Feminine honor norms are often reinforced by relatives, peers, religious teachings, and community expectations. In many cultures, it is considered that a woman abiding by feminine honor norms also protects the honor of her partner. Feminine honor norms can sometimes provide women with a valued social identity, but they can also restrict autonomy and justify unequal monitoring or control.

While researchers often cite protecting the honor of male partners or upholding patriarchal dominance as explanations for these norms, some scientists suggest an alternative view: feminine honor norms may serve as a form of “ideological mate guarding.” Because humans evolved in environments where paternity uncertainty was a reproductive risk for men, men developed adaptations to guard their mates. By promoting cultural norms that restrict female sexuality, individuals can deter infidelity without relying solely on direct, physical mate-guarding tactics.

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Pelin Gul, a researcher at Iowa State University, and her colleagues hypothesized that higher levels of sexual jealousy, elicited via exposure to a threat of infidelity, would increase support for feminine honor norms. They also wanted to know whether individuals with a more restricted mating strategy would show greater endorsement of feminine honor norms.

These researchers conducted two experiments. Participants in the first experiment were 388 men recruited via an online research platform. Their average age was 33 years. About 44% were married.

Participants were randomly assigned into two groups. Participants in the jealousy induction group were instructed to think of their romantic partner or someone towards whom they have strong romantic feelings, and then imagine that person flirting and being intimate with another person at a party. While imagining this scene, they paused and wrote about how they imagined it at specific points. The other group was a control group tasked to imagine an anxiety-producing scenario in which they took an important academic exam and failed.

As a check of the effect of the experimental scenario, participants completed an assessment of jealousy, which doubled as an indicator of participants’ subjective experience of jealousy. They also completed an assessment of support for feminine and other honor norms.

The second experiment aimed to test whether women also support feminine honor norms when they are induced to feel sexual jealousy. Participants were 551 U.S. adults. Among them, 264 were women. Participants’ average age was 33 years. The experimental procedure was identical to the one used in the first experiment.

Results of the first experiment showed that participants in the jealousy group felt much more jealous than participants in the control group, indicating that the experimental manipulation worked as intended. However, the support for feminine honor norms did not differ between the two groups.

In spite of that, participants who reported feeling greater jealousy tended to report stronger support for feminine honor norms. A more restricted mating strategy was also associated with stronger support for feminine honor norms. A more restricted mating strategy means that an individual is more selective about their romantic partners, has stronger preferences for long-term commitment and exclusivity in a relationship, and is less willing to engage in casual or short-term sexual relationships.

Results of the second experiment confirmed that individuals feeling greater jealousy tended to show higher support for feminine honor norms. Interestingly, men—but not women—in the jealousy group tended to report somewhat greater support for feminine honor norms compared to the control group, indicating that the experimental induction of jealousy likely increased their support for feminine honor norms. The association between jealousy and support for feminine sexual norms was also stronger among men than among women.

The researchers note that these associations persisted even after controlling for state masculinity threat, religiosity, political conservatism, age, and other types of honor norms, such as masculine and family honor.

“Across two studies, state jealousy was consistently associated with support for feminine honor, and experimentally induced jealousy increased support for feminine honor in Study 2,” the study authors concluded. “Although the experimental effect was not observed in Study 1, these findings provide initial experimental evidence consistent with the ideological mate-guarding account and extend prior correlational work by introducing state jealousy as a theoretically meaningful construct in this domain.”

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of jealousy and human mate retention strategies. However, it should be noted that all assessments were based on self-reports leaving room for reporting bias to have affected the results. The study also focused exclusively on heterosexual participants, and the findings may not generalize to other sexual orientations or non-Western cultures with different honor traditions.

The paper, “Effects of experimentally induced jealousy on support for feminine honor,” was authored by Pelin Gul, Stephen Foster, Sajad Sojoudi, and Tom R. Kupfer.