Is Jealousy Different in Transgender People?

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We experience jealousy in response to losing or the threat of losing a romantic partner to an imagined or actual rival for a partner’s attention. The intensity of our jealousy may in part be determined by a rival’s features considered important in partner selection. For example, heterosexual women value features such as dominance and status in a male partner, and, therefore, male jealousy would be motivated by a rival rated high on such features. Heterosexual men have a preference for physical beauty and youth in a female partner, and, therefore, female jealousy is likely motivated more by female rivals rated high on these qualities.

Transgender individuals have a gender identity not consistent with their biological sex, and, therefore, the question arises as to whether it is biological sex or gender identity that motivates jealousy in transgender people who may be threatened by a rival for their partner’s attention.

This question was investigated by Arístegui, Castro Solano, and Buunk (2019), whose study also considered two other factors.

• Social comparison orientation, which may be defined as the extent to which we are interested in the thoughts and behaviours of others in similar situations. Essentially, individuals high in social comparison experience more jealousy than those low in social comparison.

• Intrasexual competitiveness, which is characterised by wanting to view oneself as better than others and expressing envy and annoyance by excluding and denigrating others when we judge them to be treated more favourably than us.

In their study, the researchers employed 228 transgender individuals, 134 male-to-female with male partners and 94 female-to-male with female partners. Participants were then shown a scenario that described a jealousy-provoking situation, which described a party where a potential rival was attempting to flirt with their partner. The gender of the rival was varied according to whether the scenario was being read by a female-to-male transgender participant or a male-to-female transgender participant.

Following this, participants were asked, "When my partner and a different man/woman would flirt with each other, I would feel particularly jealous when the other person …." There were 24 attributes that described the rival, and participants were required to rate how jealous they would feel with each. The 24 attributes were grouped into four broader categories: physical attractiveness (e.g., good figured, beautiful legs), physical dominance (e.g., muscular, physically stronger), social power (e.g., more authority, better education), and social communal attributes (e.g., better listener, more sensitive).

Participants then completed measures of social comparison orientation responding to items such as “I always like to know what others in a similar situation would do” and “I often compare myself with others with respect to what I have accomplished in life,” and intrasexual competitiveness, responding to items such as “I tend to look for negative characteristics in attractive transgender women/nontransgender women” and “When I go out, I can’t stand it when men pay more attention to a same-gender transgender friend/nontransgender of mine than to me.”

What provoked jealousy

Regardless of gender identity, in both groups, it was communal attributes that provoked the most jealousy, followed by physical attractiveness in the male-to-female group, and physical dominance in the female-to-male group.

The degree of jealousy motivated by the physical dominance of a rival was greater in female-to-male participants than in male-to-female participants. However, the degree of jealousy motivated by the physical attractiveness and social power and dominance of a rival was greater in male-to-female participants than in female-to-male participants. This difference is consistent with findings from studies on heterosexuals and suggests that jealousy among transgender people is determined by their gender identity and not their biological sex.

The fact that male-to-female transgender participants reported more jealousy in response to social power and dominance compared to female-to-male transgender individuals seems surprising as such attributes are generally related to male competition. The researchers speculate that this may be due to the cultural diversity of the Latin-based population employed for this study.

Intrasexual competitiveness

One further finding was that individuals in the female-to-male and male-to-female groups who scored high on the intrasexual competitiveness measure reported more jealousy motivated by all categories of rival characteristics. Generally, male-to-female transgender participants scored higher on intrasexual competitiveness compared to female-to-male participants. Intrasexual competitiveness is generally associated with male competition with other males suggesting that, overall, intrasexual competitiveness is determined by biological sex and not gender identity.

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Several limitations can be identified in this study. Firstly, participants consisted of transgender individuals who identified as heterosexual, and, therefore, it was difficult to determine whether the jealousy-provoking characteristics of rivals in this study were motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity, or, indeed, biological sex. One other anomaly in this study is that most of the transgender women participants engaged in sex work, which may have led to them scoring unusually high on levels of intrasexual competitiveness.

However, this is the first study to show that transgender individuals' jealousy is motivated by gender identity rather than by biological sex.