Women’s Intrasexual Competitiveness and Jealousy Across the Ovulatory Cycle: A Hormone-Based Study. Julia Stern, Tabea Hildebrand, Kathleen Casto. Social Psychological and Personality Science, August 26, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221117712
Abstract: Research on social status competition among women suggests that underlying hormonal shifts associated with the ovulatory cycle systematically drive alterations in preferences and behavior. Specifically, it is proposed that the fertile window, marked by heightened estradiol and lower progesterone levels, is related to increased psychological motivation for intrasexual social comparison, leading to increasing competitiveness and jealousy. In this pre-registered, longitudinal study, 257 women provided saliva samples for hormone assays, rated the attractiveness of other women, and self-reported intrasexual competitiveness and jealousy across four testing sessions. Multilevel analyses revealed no compelling evidence for (hormone-related) cycle shifts in intrasexual competitiveness, attractiveness ratings, or jealousy. Rather, women higher in intrasexual competitiveness seem to rate other women as more attractive in general. We discuss how our results contribute to a growing body of literature suggesting that women’s social attitudes and preferences are more stable and less hormonally influenced than previously assumed.
Keywords: ovulatory cycle, steroid hormones, intrasexual competitiveness, social comparison, jealousy
Popular theories in biosocial and evolutionary psychology suggest that women’s social status behaviors are regulated systematically by the hormonal and physiological processes underlying the ovulatory cycle. Specifically, the brief mid-cycle fertile window is thought to be associated with greater intrasexual social comparison and mate-seeking behavior. This study’s aim was to address whether or not women’s intrasexual social comparison changes across predicted phases of the menstrual cycle and in relation to phase-associated hormone levels. We found no compelling evidence that the fertile window of the cycle is related to increased derogation of other women as potential rivals, self-reported intrasexual competitiveness, or self-reported jealousy. Thus, attitudes and perceptions associated with status and competition with other females do not appear to vary systematically across the cycle. Further, we found no compelling evidence that the fertile window is associated with evaluating men’s faces as more attractive (supplement), in contrast to findings for men’s bodies, voices, or behaviors (Jünger, Kordsmeyer, et al., 2018; Jünger, Motta-Mena, et al., 2018; Stern et al., 2020). Rather, women higher in intrasexual competitiveness rated other women’s faces as being more attractive in general, regardless of conception risk or levels of ovarian hormones. This effect was stronger when the other women were rated as being more attractive by men. Further, women higher in intrasexual competitiveness also reported generally higher levels of jealousy.
Overall, we did not replicate previous studies reporting enhanced competitor derogation, self-reported intrasexual competitiveness, or jealousy in women’s fertile phase (see Tables 1 and 2). Nevertheless, our results are in line with a preregistered large diary study reporting that self-reported jealousy or narcissistic rivalry was unrelated to fertility (Arslan et al., 2021) and with results regarding evaluations of other women’s body attractiveness across the cycle from the same dataset (Stern et al., 2021). Our findings are further in line with two large-scale studies reporting no evidence for a link of ovarian hormones with self-reported intrasexual competitiveness or anxious jealousy (Hahn et al., 2016, 2020). Given that more recent studies reporting null effects (including the current study) employed larger sample sizes and used validated methods (Tables 1 and 2), the reported results cast doubt on previous findings.
Women might, contrary to prior theory, not provoke or derogate other women when they are fertile due to the high costs of victimization especially when at a higher risk for aggression from other females (Bröder & Hohmann, 2003; Hurst et al., 2017; Krems et al., 2016, 2021; Necka et al., 2018). Aggression can lead to social exclusion, decrease the desirability as a potential mate, negatively affect health and wellbeing, and might even affect the possibility to conceive (Archer, 2004; Campbell, 1999; Vaillancourt, 2013). Rather than systematically fluctuating in coordination with fertility, the present study showed that women higher in intrasexual competitiveness reported higher levels of jealousy and rated other women’s faces as being more attractive in general. These findings suggest that intrasexual competitiveness increases the salience of other women’s physical attractiveness and are in line with the suggestion that women should direct their attention and competitive efforts toward their most formidable same-sex competitors (Reynolds, Baumeister, & Maner, 2018). Comparative evaluations of physical attractiveness would be a necessary precursor. Further, in the current study, (heterosexual) women rated other women’s faces as being more attractive than men’s faces in general, which suggests that the facial pictures were evaluated based on generalized perceptions of a feminized conceptualization of beauty rather than on sexual desire, per se. Thus, context-independent pictures of faces may be less likely to capture state fluctuations in mating psychology associated with underlying hormonal shifts. Indeed, previous studies report that trait-like, stable or genetic factors account for more variation in face perceptions than contextual factors (e.g., menstrual cycle or self-perceived attractiveness; Zietsch et al., 2015).
In summary, our results contribute to a growing line of research suggesting that women do not have hormone-dependent and strongly fluctuating social preferences across their cycle. These results are similar to other recent research that has shown no cycle-relevant changes in women’s emotion recognition ability (Shirazi et al., 2010) and political orientation (Harris et al., 2014), although there is debate on mating preferences (e.g., Gangestad et al., 2019; Jones et al., 2019; Stern et al., 2019). Important cycle-related patterns of cognitions and behavior have been observed and are necessary to uncover. However, it is possible that such effects are specific to a narrower set of directly reproductively related cognitions and behaviors, such as higher sexual desire and feeling more attractive (e.g., Arslan et al., 2021; Jones et al., 2018; Schleifenbaum et al., 2021). Thus, perhaps women’s social attitudes and preferences are more stable and less hormonally influenced than previously assumed.
Limitations
There are several limitations of this study. First, we used facial photographs from a database that did not include information about the target women’s position in the cycle. Previous research suggests that women are more attentive to or respond with higher levels of jealousy to other fertile women (Hurst et al., 2017; Krems et al., 2016, 2021; Necka et al., 2018). Thus, results may differ when explicitly investigating shifts in attractiveness ratings across the rater’s and target’s cycle phases. Second, we did not investigate real social interactions. The fact that women did not derogate other women’s attractiveness when evaluating facial pictures does not necessarily mean that they would not try to derogate other women in direct social interactions, that is, during a real competition. Third, the measures we used to assess self-reported intrasexual competitiveness and jealousy were originally designed to assess traits rather than states, which might have led to little variation in these measures across the cycle (although previous studies reported effects using the exact same measures and between-subjects analyses do not suggest limited ability to detect cycle effects). Fourth, we collected our data in a WEIRD country (Germany) and are not able to generalize our results to other countries or investigate cultural differences. Fifth, recent work has pointed out that estradiol levels assessed with salivary immunoassays may not correspond to conception risk or show the expected peak in the fertile phase (Arslan et al., 2022). Thus, we cannot rule out that analyzing estradiol with a different method (e.g., potentially more valid analyses via LCMS that were not available when our hormone assays were analyzed) would have led to different results.