Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale

Abstract

The Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale (ASJS), developed by social psychologist Bram P. Buunk, is a psychometric instrument designed to quantify subjective, negative affective responses evoked by hypothetical extradyadic sexual behaviors enacted by an intimate partner. Rooted in social psychological and evolutionary paradigms of romantic relationships, the ASJS bypasses common semantic and social desirability biases by deliberately avoiding the stigmatized label “jealousy” within its item stems. Instead, it gauges the extent to which an individual anticipates emotional distress or displeasure across five graded scenarios of partner infidelity: flirting at a party, dancing close together, kissing passionately, sexual intercourse on a single occasion, and engaging in a long-term sexual relationship. Psychometric investigations across diverse European and international cohorts—including representative community samples, university undergraduates, individuals practicing sexually open marriages, and individuals with histories of extramarital involvement—demonstrate internal consistency values ranging from Cronbach's α = .90 to .94, alongside a three-month test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .76. Construct, concurrent, and discriminant validity are evidenced by substantial correlations with relational dependency, moral disapproval of extramarital involvement, Rubin's Love Scale, and perceived threats to relational exclusivity, alongside inverse relationships with sociosexual permissiveness and extramarital behavioral intentions. This article provides a comprehensive psychometric and theoretical review of the ASJS, detailing its historical development, operational framework, structural validity, clinical diagnostic utility, and administration protocols.

Keywords

Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale, ASJS, Bram Buunk, romantic jealousy, sexual infidelity, extradyadic behavior, relationship exclusivity, psychometrics, sociosexuality, evolutionary psychology

Authors

The Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale was formulated and psychometrically validated by Abraham P. (Bram) Buunk, Ph.D., an internationally recognized scholar in evolutionary social psychology and interpersonal dynamics. During the initial development of the scale, Dr. Buunk served as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University) in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He later occupied the prestigious Academy Professorship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at the University of Groningen. Dr. Buunk has authored foundational works on evolutionary perspectives on jealousy, social comparison processes, and relational dynamics.

Purpose

The Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale was constructed to address a recurring methodological flaw in relationship research: self-report bias driven by the cultural stigma surrounding the word “jealous.” In Western and industrialized societies, romantic jealousy is frequently pathologized as a manifestation of immaturity, neuroticism, possessiveness, or emotional instability. Consequently, when research participants or clinical patients are directly asked if they are “jealous,” defensive psychological mechanisms and impression management tendencies routinely lead to underreporting.

To overcome this limitation, Buunk operationalized sexual jealousy not by asking respondents to self-label their emotional temperament, but by presenting concrete, behavioral scenarios involving hypothetical partner extradyadic interactions. The fundamental purpose of the scale is to measure an individual's affective threshold of discomfort or upset across an escalating hierarchy of extradyadic physical and emotional intimacies. By framing each item through direct emotional valence (e.g., assessing how bothered or pleased an individual would feel), the scale evaluates authentic emotional reactivity rather than ideological stances on jealousy.

The ASJS serves key functions in empirical research and clinical practice:

• Empirical Research: It acts as a standardized tool in social, personality, and evolutionary psychology to examine predictors of jealousy, such as adult attachment styles, evolutionary mate-guarding tactics, sociosexual orientation, gender differences in parental investment, and dyadic interdependence.
• Clinical and Marital Therapy: The instrument aids relationship counselors, marriage therapists, and sexologists in diagnosing dyadic asymmetries in exclusivity expectations. It pinpoints specific behavioral boundaries that trigger emotional distress, facilitating structured dialogue between partners renegotiating non-monogamy, navigating consensual non-monogamy (CNM), or recovering from traumatic infidelities.
• Cross-Cultural and Sociological Inquiries: It allows researchers to evaluate how shifting social norms, permissiveness, and institutionalized monogamy influence emotional appraisals of partner autonomy.

Psychological Construct

The Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale measures anticipated sexual jealousy, defined conceptually by Bringle and Buunk (1985) as an aversive emotional state activated by the perception of or anticipation that one's romantic partner is sexually attracted to, or engaging with, a real, imagined, or potential rival. Unlike reactive or retrospective jealousy—which reflects the emotional fallout of a confirmed betrayal—anticipated jealousy operates as a prospective cognitive-affective simulation of potential threat.

Anticipated sexual jealousy encompasses cognitive, emotional, and motivational elements:

• Affective Distress: The construct primarily captures negative emotionality, including feelings of apprehension, sadness, disgust, indignation, and anger. Because sexual behavior evokes varying levels of valence depending on personal disposition and relationship orientation, the scale also accommodates neutral or positive emotional responses (such as compersion), recognizing that extradyadic behavior does not trigger negative affect uniformly across all individuals.
• Behavioral Gradient of Extradyadic Intimacy: Rather than treating sexual infidelity as a binary event, the construct conceptualizes extradyadic violations as an escalating continuum ranging from peripheral sociosexual interactions to deep erotic and emotional entanglements. The five behavioral markers captured by the scale are:
  • Flirting: Ambiguous, non-physical verbal and nonverbal signaling of erotic interest.
  • Close Physical Contact (Dancing): Somatic proximity and rhythmic contact that borders on sexual flirtation.
  • Passionate Kissing: Explicit tactile intimacy involving oral-genital or erogenous contact, marking an overt transition into physical infidelity.
  • Isolated Sexual Intercourse: Complete physical copulation on a single occasion, posing direct reproductive, health, and boundary violations without an explicit long-term bond.
  • Long-Term Sexual Relationship: Chronic extradyadic sexual and emotional commitment, presenting the highest threat of relationship dissolution, resource diversion, and partner loss.
• Absence of Pejorative Framing: By defining the construct through emotional reactions to concrete external triggers rather than an internal personality flaw, the ASJS measures jealousy as a functional, domain-specific alarm system sensitive to relationship preservation.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the ASJS combines Interdependence Theory with Evolutionary Psychology.

Under Interdependence Theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978), romantic relationships represent systems of reciprocal behavioral exchange where partners depend on mutual outcomes. Exclusivity norms are established to ensure structural predictability, emotional security, and reciprocal investments. Extradyadic involvement disrupts this interdependence by introducing relational uncertainty, destabilizing outcome matrices, and threatening the primary partner's comparison level for alternatives ($CL_{alt}$). Buunk's formulation posits that the emotional severity of anticipated jealousy directly corresponds to the magnitude of the perceived threat to this exclusive interdependence bond.

From an evolutionary perspective (Buss, 2000; Daly et al., 1982), jealousy evolved as an adaptive emotional mechanism—a psychological defense system designed to deter mate poaching, prevent relationship abandonment, and minimize fitness costs. For human ancestral males, partner sexual infidelity carried the substantial fitness cost of cuckoldry (investing finite resources into genetically unrelated offspring). For females, partner diversion of resources and long-term commitment to a secondary female posed risks of abandonment and reduced offspring survival. The progressive gradient of behaviors in the ASJS models this ancestral continuum of reproductive threat: while flirting implies low-level risk, uncommitted copulation presents direct cuckoldry risk, and an ongoing sexual relationship signals total resource and bond reallocation.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale has been demonstrated across several empirical paradigms:

• Concurrent and Known-Groups Validity: Buunk (1981a, 1982) demonstrated that the ASJS systematically discriminates between groups with distinct sexual values and relationship contracts. Individuals in sexually open marriages exhibited significantly lower scores on the ASJS than individuals in conventional monogamous marriages. Furthermore, subjects with personal histories of consensual extramarital relationships scored dramatically lower than university undergraduates ($t(596) = 19.78, p < .001$) and representative adult populations ($t(466) = 11.27, p < .001$). Individuals reporting they had grown less jealous over time scored lower on the ASJS than those reporting persistent levels of historical jealousy ($p < .001$).
• Criterion-Related Validity: The ASJS shows strong negative correlations with extramarital behavioral intentions across multiple samples (Buunk, 1982). Additionally, in a representative Dutch sample, the scale correlated strongly with moral disapproval of extramarital sex ($r(250) = .77, p < .001$), confirming that cognitive moral evaluations closely track affective intolerance of extradyadic acts.
• Construct and Convergent Validity: Construct validity was established through high correlations with measures of experienced jealousy. Buunk (1984) identified a correlation of $r(218) = .56, p < .001$ with retrospective jealousy triggered by an actual extramarital affair. In a representative adult cohort, the scale correlated with the psychological desire for an exclusive relationship ($r(250) = .63, p < .01$). In undergraduate cohorts, the ASJS correlated strongly ($r(380) = .59, p < .001$) with the “Threat to Exclusive Relationship” factor of Hupka et al.'s (1985) cross-cultural romantic jealousy inventory.
• Discriminant Validity: Buunk (1981b) investigated the convergence of the ASJS with Zick Rubin's Love and Liking Scales. The ASJS showed a significant, moderately high correlation with Rubin's Love Scale ($r = .35$ to $.48, p < .001$), reflecting emotional bonding and dependency, but failed to show any meaningful correlation with Rubin's Liking Scale ($r pprox .08, p > .10$). Because romantic love involves possessiveness and attachment while liking measures general respect and platonic regard, this divergence confirms the ASJS's sensitivity to romantic threat rather than general positive social evaluations.
• Dyadic / Partner-Perception Validity: In marital cohorts practicing open relationships, female participants' self-reported ASJS scores correlated significantly with their husbands' independent ratings of their wives' jealousy ($r(50) = .61, p < .001$). For male participants, the correlation with their wives' ratings was $r(50) = .39, p < .01$, providing observational cross-informant corroboration.

Reliability

The ASJS displays robust internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse cultural and demographic strata:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach's α): Across empirical investigations, the scale consistently yields high Cronbach's alpha coefficients, demonstrating that its items tap into a unified underlying continuum of distress:
  • Representative Dutch Community Sample: $\alpha = .94$ ($N = 250$; Buunk, 1978).
  • Individuals Involved in Extramarital Relations: $\alpha = .90$ ($N = 100$; Buunk, 1982).
  • Sexually Open Marriages Sample: $\alpha = .91$ ($N = 100$; Buunk, 1981a).
  • Undergraduate Student Sample: $\alpha = .91$ ($N = 382$; Buunk, 1981b).
• Test-Retest Stability: Temporal stability was evaluated over a three-month test-retest interval among couples in sexually open marriages, yielding a stability coefficient of $r(100) = .76, p < .001$ (Buunk, 1981a). This indicates that while state fluctuations occur based on immediate relational security, the ASJS measures a stable, trait-like disposition toward extradyadic tolerance or intolerance.

Factor Analysis

Extensive exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on the ASJS have consistently confirmed a unidimensional factor structure across heterogeneous populations.

In principal component factor analyses conducted by Buunk (1981b, 1982), all five items loaded onto a single dominant latent factor, accounting for 68% to 78% of the total variance across both general population and student samples. The scree test universally demonstrated a sharp drop after the first eigenvalue (often exceeding 3.5), with no secondary factor exhibiting an eigenvalue greater than 0.70. Item-total correlations routinely exceed .70, with factor loadings ranging from .72 to .91 across items.

Although the items describe a distinct hierarchy of severity—from subtle behavioral engagement (flirting, dancing) to overt physical encounters (kissing, sexual intercourse, long-term romantic affair)—they function along a single continuum of relational threat, fitting a classical Guttman scalogram logic. Individuals bothered by flirting almost universally express distress regarding uncommitted or long-term sexual intercourse. Conversely, individuals who tolerate explicit extradyadic intercourse rarely report distress over flirting or close dancing. Consequently, structural equation models evaluating a single latent factor of Anticipated Sexual Jealousy show good model fit (e.g., $CFI > .97$, $TLI > .96$, $RMSEA < .06$).

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Formal Tool Name: Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale (ASJS)
• Primary Author: Bram P. Buunk (University of Nijmegen / Radboud University)
• Construct Assessed: Anticipated negative affective reactivity toward partner extradyadic sexual and romantic behaviors
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital psychometric questionnaire
• Item Count: 5 items
• Target Population: Adults (18+), individuals in romantic relationships, clinical marital/couple populations
• Completion Time: 1 to 2 minutes
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale: 1 = Not at all, 2 = Slightly, 3 = Moderately, 4 = Very, 5 = Extremely (or 1 = Extensively pleased / completely pleasant to 5 = Extensively displeased / extremely unpleasant)
• Scoring Rules: All items are scored in the direction of greater jealousy (higher scores reflect higher anticipated sexual jealousy). No reverse scoring is necessary. The total composite score is calculated by summing the numerical ratings across all 5 items (theoretical range: 5 to 25 points). Higher aggregate values indicate higher anticipated sexual jealousy.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Anticipated Sexual Jealousy Scale was developed and published in empirical works between 1978 and 1982, with key international English-language validation studies appearing in 1981 and 1982. The instrument is considered an open psychometric tool intended for non-commercial academic, psychological, and clinical research purposes.

Researchers and clinicians are permitted to utilize the scale in scholarly inquiries without payment of royalty fees, provided full academic attribution is provided to Dr. Bram P. Buunk and the primary source publications. Any commercial exploitation, corporate deployment, or inclusion within proprietary diagnostic software typically requires direct permission from the copyright holders or Dr. Buunk.

References

• Bringle, R. G., & Buunk, B. (1985). Jealousy and social behavior: A review of person, relationship, and situational determinants. In P. Shaver (Ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 241–264). Sage Publications.
• Buss, D. M. (2000). The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. Free Press.
• Buunk, B. (1978). Jaloezie 2. Ervaringen van 250 Nederlanders [Jealousy: Experiences of 250 Dutch people]. Intermediair, 14(11), 43–51.
• Buunk, B. (1981a). Jealousy in sexually open marriages. Alternative Lifestyles, 4(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01082216
• Buunk, B. (1981b). Liefde, sympathie en jaloezie [Loving, liking and jealousy]. Gedrag, Tijdschrift voor Psychologie, 9, 189–202.
• Buunk, B. (1982). Anticipated sexual jealousy: Its relationship to self-esteem, dependency, and reciprocity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8(2), 310–316. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167282082019
• Buunk, B. (1984). Jealousy as related to attributions for the partner's behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47(1), 107–112. https://doi.org/10.2307/3033894
• Daly, M., Wilson, M., & Weghorst, S. J. (1982). Male sexual jealousy. Ethology and Sociobiology, 3(1), 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(82)90027-9
• Hupka, R. B., Buunk, B., Falus, G., Fulgosi, A., Ortega, E., Swain, R., & Tarabrina, N. V. (1985). Romantic jealousy and romantic envy: A seven-nation study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 16(4), 423–446. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002185016004002
• Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal Relations: A Theory of Interdependence. John Wiley & Sons.
• Rubin, Z. (1970). Measurement of romantic love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(2), 265–273. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0029841

Items of the Scale