clipped from: findarticles.com Evolutionary psychology is the predominant framework within which differences between the sexes in the elicitation of jealousy have been studied. As is true for a number of other behavioral (Buss, 1995a; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) and psychological (Buss, 1995b; Buss & Kenrick, 1998) differences between men and women, such as expressions of violence, competition, and risk taking, jealousy is said to reflect adaptations to the distinct pressures that men and women faced in their evolutionary past. The era from which many of the proposed adaptations are believed to have derived is the Pleistocene era, a period when homo sapiens are generally assumed to have been organized in hunter-gatherer groups. To the extent that such an organization presented unique demands on the sexes, it is hypothesized that men and women developed somewhat different strategies for their survival.
