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Morbid Jealousy

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Pathological jealousy

Definition

It is an intense form of jealousy, mostly involving the intimate interpersonal relationship, and it produces significant distress and impairment.

Introduction

Jealousy is a complex human emotion. The Cambridge dictionary defines “jealousy” as “a feeling of unhappiness and anger because someone has something or someone that you want” (Dictionary 2015). Jealousy is often described as a negative emotional state. Jealousy as an emotion has a close link with anger and sadness (unhappiness). Jealousy often results in unhappiness or anger. Jealous feelings are often discussed in the context of ownership (power, possession), performance, sexual activity, and love (Bhugra 1993; Zandbergen and Brown 2015). Jealousy is also strongly linked to the emotion “love.” Love gets colored with jealousy, when it demands the “exclusive, unconditional, continued and total possession of the romantic partner” (Maggini et al. 2006).

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Correspondence to Sujita Kumar Kar .

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Kar, S.K., Singh, N. (2020). Morbid Jealousy. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2035-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2035-1

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