ABSTRACT
Can any good come out of jealousy? My own answer-as evidenced in the preceding chapters-is a definite yes. To find out what other people think about this question, I asked 103 men and women to rate their agreement with the following statements (on a 1 to 7 scale ranging from 1 = Disagree strongly to 7= Agree strongly):1
The respondents agreed most strongly with the statement that jealousy is positive in that it forces people to examine their relationship. Yet, as can be seen by their mean rating (4.7), they agreed with it only to a certain extent. The same rating (4.7) was given to a statement describing a negative effect of jealousy with which the same respondents agreed least: that jealousy makes people feel guilty. They agreed much more strongly with statements about the other negative effects of jealousy:
selves as jealous agree that it has positive effects. There are several possible explanations for this.
