NEW YORK: Women are more prone to romantic jealousy spurred by Facebook posts on their boyfriend’s wall than men, a new study has found. Their jealousy increases particularly if they think other people can see that their relationship may be in trouble, researchers from the University of Alabama said.
As many as 226 heterosexual college-age men and women in the US were told to imagine that they had discovered a photo of their partner with a person of the opposite sex on the social networking website Facebook, ‘MyHealthNewsDaily’ reported.
Women reported greater feelings of jealousy when they imagined the scenario than did men. They rated their level of jealousy as a six out of a possible nine, compared to a four out of nine for men.
Both women and men reported the greatest level of jealousy if the photo’s privacy settings meant that the photo could not be viewed by other people on Facebook — an indication that their romantic interest was trying to hide something. Women were also more hurt by the scenario than men if there were relatively few photos of them with their partner on Facebook.
“Women may experience more negative [emotions] when they believe that others are able to view lack of evidence of being in a committed relationship,” researchers said.
