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Romantic Jealousy Paper

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Jealousy plays an active role in social media use, specifically in the context of romantic relationships. Dainton and Stokes defined “romantic jealousy… as the reaction to a real or perceived threat to a romantic relationship” (2015, 369). Marshall, Bejanyan, Di Castro and Lee (2012) used attachment theory to examine the relationship between Facebook-related jealousy and partner surveillance and found that surveillance reduces relational uncertainty, but simultaneously increased jealousy. Tokunaga (2011) found that as social media use becomes more embedded in daily routines, surveillance of romantic partners also increases. Real world examples of partner surveillance like searching his or her belongings or going through his or her personal …show more content…

Today, many relationships are built and maintained exclusively online, and, while Baym et al. (2007) found that online interactions were of relatively high quality, online relationships can be problematic. Cornwell and Lundgren (2001) found that “involvement - particularly commitment and seriousness - tended to be lower in cyberspace… and misrepresentation - specifically of age and physical attributes - tended to be higher in cyberspace.” But what about relationships that exist in both cyberspace and real space? In addition to being reflective of narcissistic tendencies, the creation of the ideal self through selfies and social media can created an altered perception of self that conflicts with their partner’s perception of the individual (Halpern et al., 2016). These differing perceptions are troublesome as the partner is “supposedly the person who knows the other best,” and may feel conflicted by these differences (Halpern et al., 2016). If a relationship exists exclusively in cyberspace, catfishing is a concern. If a relationship exists in real space, with a cyber presence, we see conflict resulting from jealousy and dissonance. For purposes of this study, we will focus on relations that exist in real space and in cyberspace to better understand how social media use is associated with relationship

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