Unfaithful posts on Facebook make women more jealous

London: Women are more likely to get jealous or upset than men when they read messages on Facebook or other social media indicating that their romantic partner has been unfaithful, a study has found.

Researchers from Cardiff Metropolitan University in the UK investigated how jealousy manifests between the sexes when people find compromising messages on their partner’s social media accounts.

As part of the study, 21 male and 23 female undergraduate students were shown imaginary Facebook messages in a Facebook format, revealing that their partners had been either emotionally or sexually unfaithful.

Eight short messages along the lines of: “You must be my soulmate! Feel so connected to you, even though we haven’t slept together,” (Emotional infidelity) and “You must be the best one-night stand I’ve ever had,” (Sexual infidelity) were shown to participants.

The “discovered” message was either composed and sent by the participant’s partner, or came from someone else.

Participants had to rate how distressed they would have felt if they had come across such messages while accessing their partner’s Facebook messaging service without permission.

Men felt more distressed when they read social media messages that revealed their partners’ sexual rather than emotional infidelity.

However, women were more upset than men in response to emotional messages.