Adult Attachment and Personality as Predictors of Jealousy in Romantic Relationships

Marina Richter; Katja Schlegel; Philipp Thomas; Stefan Johannes Troche

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.861481

Adult Attachment and Personality as Predictors of Jealousy in Romantic Relationships

Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 12:13:861481. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.861481. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Marina Richter¹, Katja Schlegel², Philipp Thomas², Stefan Johannes Troche²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Psychotherapy, Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany.
² Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.

Abstract

Functional relationships between romantic jealousy and traits, such as neuroticism or adult attachment styles, are well-known. For the first time, we conducted a joint analysis of the Big Five traits and attachment dimensions as predictors of jealousy, which considered gender differences as well as differences in infidelity experiences and relationship status. In 847 participants, path modeling showed that higher neuroticism, lower agreeableness, and lower openness predicted higher romantic jealousy. The attachment dimensions "anxiety" and "depend" partly mediated the effect of neuroticism and fully mediated the effect of agreeableness on romantic jealousy. The direct and indirect relationships did not differ as a function of gender, relationship status, and infidelity experiences. These findings contribute to a better understanding of individual differences in romantic jealousy from a personality perspective.

Keywords: attachment; gender differences; infidelity experience; jealousy; personality.