Personality antecedents of the experience and expression of romantic jealousy

The present study investigates the role of personality as an antecedent factor to jealousy experience and expression utilizing Guerrero and Andersen's (1998) Componential Model of Jealousy Experience and Expression. Whereas personality constructs have been commonly examined as correlates or concomitants of jealousy there has been relatively little empirical work examining the role of personality in the context of this model, which highlights the distinction between jealousy experience and expression. The present study addresses this issue by examining the relation between the components of the model and well-established measures of adult attachment, the Five-Factor Model of personality, and specific maladaptive personality traits in two samples. The first sample is composed of 400 undergraduate students and the second sample is composed of 184 married community residents who have reported experiencing jealousy in their romantic relationships. Additional analyses evaluate the relation between jealousy experience and expression as well as the relation between relationship satisfaction and jealousy. While adult attachment dimensions tend to be the strongest predictors of the elements of jealousy experience and expression, other personality variables exhibited important and meaningful relations as well. The majority of these other personality variables tended to contain elements of negative emotionality at their core. The present study also provided replication of several relations between elements of the componential model of jealousy.