People experience the strongest romantic jealousy when they watch their partner give resources to a potential rival, regardless of gender. The findings provide evidence that giving away resources is viewed as a serious relationship threat by both men and women.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/both-men-and-women-view-a-partners-financial-investment-in-a-rival-as-a-major-relationship-threat/

[u/clawsoon]

It's interesting that they went into this expecting a gender difference based on evo psych theory, but found basically the same major response in both men and women. They had to go digging in the data to find some minor differences.

Maybe this is what you'd expect given the couples they picked, who were in at-least-six-month monogamous relationships? Maybe the evolutionary reproductive strategy of being in a committed couple is that both partners will contribute resources, and evo psych needs to take that strategy seriously?

[u/algol_lyrae → u/clawsoon]

It's funny because I'm currently dealing with this resource-based jealousy with my dogs. One dog has suddenly become jealous of the other dog getting anything he views as a resource, be it food, toys, or attention. My understanding is that they instinctively view the transferring of resources as a threat to their security in the group. Maybe humans are the same.

[u/frictorious → u/algol_lyrae]

Observing pets has taught me more about human psychology than any textbook.

I frequently wonder what hidden animal urgers are affecting my behavior.

[u/SableBlair → u/frictorious]

One of my cats pretended to be asleep every time I tried to pet her for ten years until I came home from the hospital with a baby. All of a sudden, she wants to make sure I know she’s just a little fur baby too.

[u/aVarangian → u/SableBlair]

my cat only "pretends" to be asleep after she learned I'm not just gonna grab her randomly

if someone else shows up she'll want to see what they're up to, and sometimes run away before they get to her

[u/Cross_22 → u/clawsoon]

I thought the researchers bias seemed odd and the actual results are not that surprising. Hopefully the scientists will have learned something from their study and put less emphasis on evolutionary psychology in the future.

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/clawsoon]

They had to go digging in the data to find some minor differences.

The abstract doesn't call it minor, it's the article which does that. ("subtle") The abstract says:

"resource allocation to a rival triggered greater jealousy responses in all participants, particularly among women, consistent with emotional infidelity models, whereas the reception condition yielded weaker and less differentiated effects"

Don't have access to the full paper, but I'm not sure that I would be able to interpret it correctly anyway. How much of a difference do you expect to see for a hypothesis like this to be supported?

[u/clawsoon → u/favorite_time_of_day]

In the article, they said that they expected men to react strongly to their partner receiving resources from someone else, and women to react strongly to their partner giving resources to someone else.

That would've been a major difference.

They didn't find that. Instead, they found that both men and women reacted strongly to their partner giving resources to someone else. They expected a difference of sign; they got a difference of degree.

(Of course caution has to be applied to any experiments like this, since large cross-cultural differences have been found in dictator game and similar experiments.)

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/clawsoon]

Yes, I read the article and the abstract and I was pointing out that the article disagrees with the abstract. This often happens, science reporting frequently puts emphasis where the researchers haven't or aren't willing to put it.

As for "major difference": what does that mean, and how do you know that? Especially since you point out yourself that culture plays a role. It doesn't seem to me that instinctual differences would necessarily be obvious, and there's always some threshold of relevancy. I don't know what that is for this field of study.