Jealous Men May Be More Likely to Support Traditional Rules About Women’s Sexuality

A new psychology study suggests that when people experience greater sexual jealousy, they become more supportive of cultural rules that expect women to remain sexually pure. The association was particularly strong among men, offering new insight into how emotions may feed into attitudes that constrain women’s behavior.

Published in Cognition and Emotion, the research also found that people with a more restricted approach to sex tended to endorse feminine honor norms more strongly. These norms expect women to be modest, loyal and chaste and often connect a woman’s sexual reputation to the honor of her family or partner.

What are feminine honor norms?

Feminine honor norms are widely observed expectations about how women should behave to be considered respectable. They typically emphasize sexual restraint, modest clothing and behavior, and strict loyalty to husbands or long-term partners.

In many communities, a woman’s sexual reputation is viewed as reflecting not only on herself but also on her relatives and wider social group. As a result, these norms can restrict women’s freedom, justify close monitoring and underlie harmful practices such as honor-based violence and forced marriage.

Study author Pelin Gul, a social psychologist at the University of Groningen’s Campus Fryslan, said she wanted to investigate the psychological roots of these norms. As a woman from Turkey, a country often described as an honor culture, she noted that such expectations can influence women’s access to education, employment and healthcare.

Jealousy as ideological mate guarding

Traditional explanations often emphasize patriarchy and male dominance when accounting for the persistence of restrictive standards surrounding women’s sexuality. Some evolutionary psychologists propose an additional mechanism: feminine honor norms may operate as a form of ideological mate guarding.

Historically, men faced uncertainty about paternity because they could not be certain that offspring were genetically theirs. Emotions such as jealousy evolved partly to reduce this risk, encouraging vigilance toward romantic partners and attempts to prevent infidelity.

By promoting cultural rules that restrict women’s sexual behavior, individuals may reduce perceived infidelity risks without relying solely on direct physical surveillance. Gul and her collaborator, psychologist Tom Kupfer of Nottingham Trent University, tested whether jealousy would measurably increase support for these norms.

Inside the two experimental studies

In the first experiment, 388 men were recruited through an online platform. Their average age was 33, and nearly half were married. Participants were randomly assigned to either a jealousy condition or a control group.

Men in the jealousy condition were asked to imagine a current or desired romantic partner flirting and behaving intimately with another person at a party and then describe the scene in writing. The control group imagined failing an important academic exam, a scenario intended to provoke anxiety without triggering sexual jealousy.

Afterward, participants completed measures assessing jealousy and their support for several types of honor norms, including those focused on women’s sexual conduct. The manipulation successfully increased jealousy, but average support for feminine honor norms did not differ between the two groups overall.

However, men who reported experiencing greater jealousy, regardless of their assigned condition, also expressed stronger endorsement of feminine honor norms. Those with a more restricted mating orientation, favoring long-term exclusive relationships over casual sex, likewise showed stronger support for these norms.

Do women respond to jealousy too?

The second study expanded the sample to 551 U.S. adults, including 264 women, with an average age of 33. Researchers again used the same jealousy-induction and control scenarios to examine whether the pattern would emerge among women as well as men.

Across the full sample, higher levels of experienced jealousy were associated with stronger support for norms restricting women’s sexuality. The association remained even after accounting for factors including religiosity, political conservatism, age and endorsement of masculine or family honor norms.

Crucially, men assigned to the jealousy condition tended to show somewhat greater support for feminine honor norms than men in the control condition. The same pattern did not emerge among women, suggesting that experimentally heightened jealousy had a clearer influence on men’s attitudes.

Role of mating strategy and gender

The researchers also assessed participants’ mating strategies using standard sociosexuality measures. People with a restricted sociosexual orientation tend to favor committed monogamous relationships, be more selective about partners and show less openness to casual sex.

Gul and colleagues found that a more restricted mating strategy predicted stronger endorsement of feminine honor norms among both men and women. This challenges the idea that such norms are simply imposed by men and passively accepted by women.

From an evolutionary perspective, women who prioritize long-term monogamous relationships may benefit from discouraging unrestricted sexual behavior among other women. Rivals who are more open to short-term relationships could pose a threat to their own partnerships, potentially increasing the appeal of norms that limit such competition.

Limitations and broader implications

The authors caution that the research relied on self-reported data, which can be affected by social desirability and recall biases. All participants were heterosexual, and the primary tests involved largely Western samples, meaning the patterns could differ in non-Western or strongly honor-based societies.

Nevertheless, the findings highlight jealousy as a psychological factor that may subtly shape moral and cultural attitudes toward women’s sexuality. Over time, aggregated individual reactions could contribute to broader value systems that legitimize restrictions on women’s behavior.

The researchers plan to investigate whether similar associations between jealousy, mating strategy and honor norms can be observed in countries such as Iran and Turkey. They also intend to examine whether ideological mate guarding predicts not only attitudes but real-world behaviors, including attempts to punish perceived violations of feminine honor.

By connecting an everyday emotion such as jealousy with broader cultural patterns, the study adds nuance to debates surrounding gender, power and sexual control. It suggests that understanding harmful honor-based practices may require considering both social structures and the emotional processes that can help sustain them.

Article prepared by Victoria Caldwell.