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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Green? An Analysis of
Facebook Use and Romantic Jealousy
Nicole L. Muscanell, MA,
1
Rosanna E. Guadagno, PhD,
2
Lindsay Rice, MA,
1
and Shannon Murphy, MA
1
Abstract
Social networking Web sites, such as Facebook, have changed the way in which people communicate online. The
present study examined the relationship between jealousy and Facebook use experimentally by asking partic-
ipants to imagine viewing their romantic partner’s Facebook page. We varied the hypothetical privacy settings
and number of photos of the couple publicly available on Facebook. Results indicated that imagined privacy
settings and the presence of couple photos affected negative emotions (jealousy, anger, disgust, and hurt).
Furthermore, we found sex differences indicating that women felt more intense negative emotions after thinking
about the fictitious scenario than did men, particularly when evidence of infidelity was public to others. These
results have implications for sex differences in jealousy and suggest that the manner in which people employ
Facebook privacy settings can be negative for romantic relationships.
Introduction
Facebook attracts millions of users worldwide.
1
Ac-
tivity on Facebook involves public discourse through
profile pages or ‘‘walls.’’ This is viewed by people in an in-
dividuals’ social network. Depending on privacy settings, this
discourse may even be public to all Internet users.
2
Research
has examined the implications of sharing information over
social networking sites on relationships.
3–7
However, there is
currently a lack of studies that directly manipulate differences
in user settings to examine psychological outcomes. The
present investigation adds to the current literature by em-
ploying an experimental approach that examines how sex
differences and Facebook user settings impact affective re-
sponses. When we manipulate Facebook privacy settings, we
expect that participant sex and user settings will impact
feelings of romantic jealousy and related emotions.
Facebook and Personal Relationships
The relationships people have with others on Facebook are
visible to many, often resulting in a loss of privacy within
personal relationships. In particular, a romantic partner’s
social interactions with others become largely public.
6,8
Mis-
interpretations of others’ Facebook interactions and negative
feelings may result, especially between romantic partners.
9
Thus, sharing with others not only maintains social connec-
tions but may also have negative implications for romantic
relationships.
Facebook recently added the function ‘‘See Friendship,’’
which allows individuals to view entire online relationships
and social histories between people. This includes access to all
public messages exchanged, photos of the involved people,
and events attended.
10
Facebook users can also upload pho-
tos and link them to other users, without the profile owner’s
permission and knowledge. Roughly half of Facebook users
surveyed by Tufekci and Spence
7
reported that an unwanted
picture of themselves was linked (‘‘tagged’’) to their profile by
a Facebook friend. The tag to the unwanted photo can be
removed by the user, but people who have access to the
uploader’s Facebook profile can still see the photo. Though
removing the tag decreases the chance of a romantic partner
seeing this unwanted photo (one’s partner would have to be
friends with the uploader), these photo histories may still fuel
jealousy, serving as permanent evidence of interactions with
others outside the relationship.
Although we argue that these public histories on Facebook
may fuel negative emotions for couples, it may also be the
case that utilization of more stringent privacy settings could
produce negative emotions. That is, when individuals utilize
settings such that many parts of their profile are private, this
may lead to increased suspicion on a romantic partner’s be-
half. We argue that this could lead to negative emotions in
two ways: First, an individual may interpret this as a sign that
his/her romantic partner does not publicly acknowledge
their relationship. Second, it could indicate that one’s partner
is hiding evidence of interactions with other potential ro-
mantic interests. Overall, we argue that both the public nature
A version of this has previously been presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, 2011.
1
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
2
National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia.
CYBERPSYCHOLOGY,BEHAVIOR,AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
Volume 16, Number 4, 2013
ªMary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2012.0411
1
of Facebook (allowing individuals access to information they
otherwise may not have had) and having very private set-
tings (indicating that the partner may be hiding something)
could lead to negative emotions.
Online Jealousy
Jealousy within romantic relationships stems from real or
imagined third-party threats to the integrity of the relation-
ship.
11
Situations resulting in jealousy within a romantic re-
lationship range from a partner revealing interest in someone
else, having an interaction with a past partner, or obtaining
attention from an individual outside of the relationship.
12
Jealousy can occur in online contexts as well as in offline
ones.
13
Muise et al.
6
explored the relationship between Facebook
use and jealousy and found that individuals who spent more
time on Facebook reported more jealousy within romantic
relationships and increased monitoring of their romantic
partner’s Facebook profile. The researchers found that in-
creased time spent on Facebook may lead to increased ex-
posure to ambiguous information (e.g., a nondescript post
from a stranger) linked to a romantic partner. Muise et al.
argue that exposure to such information without context may
lead to increased jealousy given that a person may be unsure
about what that public information means, and this may lead
to ‘‘stalking’’ behavior on Facebook to find more evidence of
relationship threats. Similarly, other research indicates that
individuals who use Facebook more often report feelings of
jealousy and surveillance of their romantic partner’s profile.
5
These results support the notion that Facebook use may
produce or exacerbate jealousy within romantic relationships.
The Present Study
Utilizing the theoretical framework of Muise et al.,
6
we
examined jealous responses to a hypothetical scenario in
which participants were asked to imagine a relatively am-
biguous scenario involving their romantic partner’s Facebook
profile. Furthermore, we sought to determine whether or not
their romantic partner’s specific Facebook settings within
Facebook would impact interpretation of these ambiguous
scenarios and impact jealous emotions. Specifically, partici-
pants imagined seeing their romantic partner’s photographs
and privacy settings for those photos on Facebook. This
methodology using imagined scenarios has been successfully
used in previous research
13–20
to examine emotions that are
typically tied to romantic jealousy: jealousy, anger, disgust,
and hurt. We varied the number of photos of the participant
and his or her romantic partner together on Facebook and
also the photo privacy settings that participants imagined
their partner utilized.
Since it has been previously shown that women tend to
report greater feelings of romantic jealousy,
18
we expected
women to experience more jealousy and related emotions
(anger, disgust, and hurt) than men. Second, we predicted
main effects for both photo privacy settings and the presence
of couple photos available on a romantic partner’s profile
(photos of the participant along with his/her romantic part-
ner). We predicted that participants would report more in-
tense negative emotions when they imagined their romantic
partner had his/her photos to be set to private, as this may
indicate that one’s partner is trying to hide his/her current
relationship. We predicted that participants would report
more intense negative emotions when they imagined their
romantic partner did not have any couple photos present on
Facebook. Again, we expected that this would suggest that
one’s partner is attempting to hide his/her current relation-
ship. Finally, we sought to answer the following research
question: Will gender, privacy settings, and presence of
couple photos interact to influence participant’s self-reported
negative emotions?
Method
Design
Participants were 226 (158 women, 68 men) undergradu-
ates (M
age
=19, SD =1.75) who received course credit for their
participation. Participants were largely Caucasian (86 per-
cent). All participants included in the analyses were Facebook
users and were heterosexual.* This study utilized a 2 ·3·3
(Participant sex: women vs. men ·Photo privacy settings:
private photos vs. viewable only to Facebook friends vs.
public to all Facebook users ·Presence of couple photos
[photos of participant with romantic partner]: none vs. few
vs. many) between subjects factorial design.
Procedure
Participants accessed the materials for this study online
and were told they would be participating in a study on
Facebook use. We assessed demographics and whether or not
the participant was a Facebook user. Participants were then
randomly assigned to one of the nine conditions described
earlier, and asked to read the scenario given next.
‘‘Please think of a serious committed romantic relationship
that you have had in the past, which you currently have, or
that you would like to have. Imagine that you discover a
photograph of your serious romantic partner with another
person of the opposite sex on Facebook. Imagine that you
discover this when trying to login to your own Facebook
account, and you notice that your romantic partner’s account
is still logged in. At this point, you discover that his/her
photos set to be viewable by ONLY [All Facebook friends/All
Facebook users/him or herself]. In addition, your romantic
partner has [No photos of the two of you together/Few
photos of the two of you together/Many photos of the two of
you together] posted on Facebook.’’
Then, participants were asked to complete four items as-
sessing jealousy and related emotions, serving as our primary
dependent measures.
13,15
Specifically, participants were asked
to report how jealous, angry, disgusted, or hurt they would
feel in response to the scenario described earlier on a scale
ranging from 1 (not at all) to 9 (extremely) (see Appendix A).
Results
Data analysis strategy
In accordance with previous research,
13,15,20
a series of
ANOVAs examined each of the four emotional reactions
*Twelve participants who were not heterosexual were excluded
from the analyses. Participants imagined a romantic partner of the
opposite sex, thus this manipulation was only relevant to hetero-
sexual individuals.
2 MUSCANELL ET AL.
separately. The data were analyzed using a 2 ·3·3 (partici-
pant gender: women vs. men ·Photo privacy settings: private
photos vs. visible to all Facebook friends vs. visible to all
Facebook users ·Presence of couple photos on Facebook: no
photos with their romantic partner present vs. few photos
with their romantic partner vs. many photos with their ro-
mantic partner present) between-subjects factorial. We used
Fisher’s LSD tests for all post hoc analyses. Results are pre-
sented by each of the four emotional responses. See Table 1
for means for each emotion by participant sex and experi-
mental condition.
Jealousy
There was a significant main effect for participant sex,
F(1, 208) =5.74, p=0.02, g
p2
=0.03, indicating that women re-
ported feeling more jealous than men in response to the
imagined scenario (M=6.01, SD =2.32 vs. M=4.60, SD =2.77).
There was also a significant main effect for the photo privacy
settings employed by the romantic partner, F(2, 208) =4.91,
p=0.008, g
p2
=0.05. Post hoc tests indicated that participants
reported more jealousy when their partner’s photos were set
to private (M=6.40, SD =2.10) as compared with being
visible to either all his/her Facebook friends or all Facebook
users (M=5.13, SD =2.96 and M=5.16, SD =2.34). Next,
there was a significant main effect for the presence of couple
photos, F(2, 208) =4.28, p=0.02, g
p2
=0.04. Post hoc tests in-
dicated that the absence of photos of the participant with
their romantic partner produced the highest ratings of jeal-
ousy, (M=6.47, SD =1.98) as compared with having a few
couple photos available (M=4.54, SD =2.82) or having many
couple photos available (M=5.59, SD =2.48). Participants
were also more jealous when many couple photos were
available as compared with having a few couple photos
available.
There was a significant two-way interaction between
gender and photo privacy settings, F(2, 199) =3.94. p=0.02,
g
p2
=0.04. Simple effects indicated that women were more
jealous than men when their partner’s photos were visible to
either all Facebook friends (M=5.87, SD =2.60 vs. M=3.81,
SD =3.14) or all Facebook users as compared with being
private (M=5.62, SD =2.16 vs. M=4.21, SD =2.47) (Fig. 1).
Anger
There was a significant main effect for participant gender
on anger, F(2, 208) =5.68, p=0.02, g
p2
=0.03, indicating that
overall, women were angrier than men (M=6.01, SD =2.23
vs. M=4.97, SD =2.39). There was also a significant main ef-
fect for photo privacy settings, F(2, 208) =4.58, p=0.01,
g
p2
=0.04. Post hoc tests indicated that participants were an-
grier at the thought of their romantic partner’s photos being
private (M=6.45, SD =1.97) rather than visible to all Facebook
friends (M=5.19, SD =1.30) or all Facebook users (M=5.24,
SD =2.21). Finally, there was a significant main effect for the
presence of couple photos, F(2, 208) =4.10, p=0.02, g
p2
=0.04.
Post hoc tests indicated that participants were angrier if there
were no photos of the couple present on Facebook (M=6.58,
SD =1.86) as compared with their partner having a few
photos present (M=4.83, SD =2.61) or having many couple
photos present (M=5.40, SD =2.35).
FIG. 1. Two-way interaction between participant sex and
privacy settings on ratings of jealousy. *denotes significant
differences between bars being compared.
Table 1. Means by Participant Sex, Privacy Settings, and Presence of Couple Photos for Each Emotion
Men Women
Private All FB friends All FB users Private All FB Friends All FB users
M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD
No photos
Jealous 5.60 1.65 6.67 2.29 3.50 2.65 6.90 1.76 6.71 2.13 6.29 0.95
Angry 5.60 1.51 6.22 1.99 4.75 0.96 7.00 1.61 6.86 2.71 6.57 0.98
Disgusted 5.70 1.57 6.33 2.24 5.25 1.26 6.46 1.95 6.50 2.59 4.86 2.19
Hurt 5.70 1.64 7.00 2.00 5.50 1.29 7.26 1.62 7.43 2.24 7.14 0.70
Few photos
Jealous 6.25 0.96 2.00 2.00 4.20 3.42 5.00 2.90 5.25 2.74 5.55 2.25
Angry 6.75 0.50 2.60 1.64 3.80 3.11 5.27 2.80 5.46 2.48 5.82 2.36
Disgusted 5.25 1.26 2.67 1.72 3.60 3.21 5.27 3.00 4.96 3.07 5.00 2.58
Hurt 7.25 0.96 2.73 1.67 4.40 3.21 5.73 2.83 6.00 2.62 5.91 2.55
Many photos
Jealous 8.00 2.00 4.50 4.95 4.40 2.23 6.25 2.34 6.25 2.71 5.50 2.33
Angry 7.25 2.06 4.00 2.83 4.80 2.46 6.08 2.31 5.50 2.40 5.25 2.10
Disgusted 7.50 1.92 4.00 4.24 4.47 2.33 6.08 2.58 4.88 2.53 5.00 2.58
Hurt 8.00 2.00 4.50 4.95 5.07 2.66 7.33 2.19 6.38 2.56 6.21 2.32
FB, Facebook.
FACEBOOK AND ROMANTIC JEALOUSY 3
In addition, there was a significant two-way interaction
between gender and photo privacy settings. Simple effects
indicated that women were angrier than men when their
partner had privacy settings, allowing photos to be viewed by
all Facebook friends users (M=5.89, SD =2.56 vs. M=3.96,
SD =2.46) and all Facebook users (M=5.56, SD =2.06 vs. M=
4.58, SD =2.38) (Fig. 2).
Disgust
There was a main effect for photo privacy settings,
F(2, 208) =4.03, p=002, g
p2
=0.04. Post hoc tests revealed that
participants felt more disgust when a romantic partner’s
photos were private (M=6.14, SD =2.16) compared with it
being visible to all Facebook friends (M=4.92, SD =2.85) or
compared with it being visible by all Facebook users
(M=4.80, SD =2.47). There was also a significant main effect
for the presence of couple photos, F(2, 208) =4.15, p=0.02,
g
p2
=0.04. Post hoc tests revealed that participants felt more
disgust if there were no photos of themselves with their ro-
mantic partner on Facebook (M=6.17, SD =2.10) compared
with their partner having a few couple photos present
(M=4.44, SD =2.05) or compared with their partner having
many couple photos available (M=5.16, SD =2.56).
Hurt
There was a significant main effect for gender, F(2, 208) =
6.39 p=0.01, g
p2
=0.03, indicating that overall, women felt
more hurt than men (M=6.53, SD =2.26 vs. M=5.16,
SD =2.61). There was also a significant main effect for photo
privacy settings, F(2, 208) =4.62, p=0.01, g
p2
=0.04. Post hoc
tests revealed that participants felt more hurt if they discov-
ered their romantic partner’s photos were set to private
(M=6.90, SD =1.99) rather than visible to all Facebook friends
(M=5.72, SD =2.82) or all Facebook users (M=5.66,
SD =2.33). Finally, there was a significant main effect for the
presence of couple photos, F(2, 208) =4.67, p=0.01, g
p2
=0.04.
Post hoc tests revealed that participants felt more hurt if their
partner had no couple photos present on Facebook (M=6.98,
SD =1.78) compared with having a few couple photos
(M=5.20, SD =2.75) or many couple photos available
(M=6.03, SD =2.49).
There was also a significant three-way interaction between
gender, photo privacy settings, and the presence of couple
photos on their partner’s profile on Facebook, F(4, 208) =2.50,
p=0.04, g
p2
=0.05. Simple effects revealed that women felt
more hurt than men, specifically when they discovered their
partner’s photos were set to be viewable by all Facebook
friends and there were only a few couple photos present on
their partner’s profile (M=6.00, SD =2.62. vs. M=2.73,
SD =1.67) (Fig. 3).
Discussion
The current study provides further evidence for sex dif-
ferences in jealousy in an online context and, more impor-
tantly, demonstrates through experimental manipulation,
that sex differences, Facebook privacy settings, and avail-
ability of public information all influence the extent to which
individuals experience negative emotions via Facebook. This
study makes an important contribution to the existing
FIG. 2. Two-way interaction between participant sex and
privacy settings on ratings of anger. *denotes significant
differences between bars being compared.
FIG. 3. Two-way interaction between participant sex and
privacy settings on ratings of anger: (a) All Facebook friends;
(b) private; (c) all Facebook users. *denotes significant dif-
ferences between bars being compared.
4 MUSCANELL ET AL.
literature by demonstrating that relatively ambiguous infor-
mation can be interpreted differently depending on the
availability of certain types of information—photos in this
case—and user privacy settings. Ultimately, subtle differ-
ences in the manner in which people utilize Facebook may, at
least, temporarily impact an individual’s emotional state,
leading to more jealousy, anger, disgust, and hurt. Overall, as
predicted, women reported more intense feelings of jealousy,
anger, and hurt in response to imagining a fictitious scenario
on Facebook. This is consistent with previous research which
demonstrated that women report more intense emotions in
response to situations invoking jealousy.
18
Participants were more jealous, angry, disgusted, and hurt
when they imagined that their romantic partner had no
photos of them as a couple present on Facebook. We specu-
late that this may lead to more intense negative emotions,
because it indicates that one’s romantic partner either does
not acknowledge being in a relationship, or may be at-
tempting to hide their current relationship. Similarly, partic-
ipants reported feeling more negative emotions when they
imagined discovering that their romantic partner had his/her
photos set to be private as opposed to being viewable by
others on Facebook. Again, we argue that this may be an
indication (to participants) that their romantic partner is at-
tempting to hide a current relationship, or hide evidence that
may indicate interest in other potential romantic partners.
The results of the current study also provide further evi-
dence for sex differences in jealousy in an online context.
Specifically with regard to our research question, we found
significant two-way interactions between participant sex and
photo privacy settings for jealousy and anger. First, women
reported more intense jealousy and anger as compared with
men when they imagined their romantic partner’s photos
were viewable by other Facebook friends and users compared
with being private. We also found a significant three-way
interaction between participant sex, photo privacy settings,
and presence of couple photos. Specifically, women felt more
hurt than men when they imagined their romantic partner
had only a few photos of them as a couple present and their
partner had his photos set to be viewed by other Facebook
friends. These findings demonstrate that sex differences in-
teract with Facebook user settings to influence emotional
outcomes. Overall, these findings suggest that the public
nature of potential infidelity may influence emotions differ-
ently for men and women. That is, women may experience
more negative effect when they believe that others are able to
view lack of evidence of being in a committed relationship.
This is consistent with research which demonstrates that
women are more likely to define themselves in terms of others
and also demonstrate a stronger need for positive approval
from others.
21–24
Since women may base their self-concept on
others and also highly value what others think, they may feel
more negative emotions when evidence of relational failure
becomes public.
Social networking Web sites can be beneficial in allowing
people to keep in touch with others, but the results of this
study indicate that negative emotions can also be induced by
the nature of sites such as Facebook. It should be noted that
the scenario we asked participants to imagine was relatively
ambiguous (they imagined seeing a photo of their romantic
partner with someone of the opposite sex, but were not in-
structed to imagine specific behaviors). Thus, the results of
the current study suggest that Facebook can be a place
where individuals interpret ambiguous information in a
non-ambiguous way, producing negative emotions.
We suggest that utilizing Facebook in a specific manner
can allow individuals access to information they may not
otherwise have had access to and can also lead to a lack of
public presence on a romantic partner’s Facebook profile,
which may signal secrecy or a lack of importance of the re-
lationship. Many people believe that a relationship is not real
unless it is Facebook official.
25
Thus, it may be unsettling to be
omitted from a romantic partner’s online profile.
Limitations and future directions
This study utilized empirical methods to provoke negative
emotions stemming from use of social media, yet more re-
search needs to be conducted in this area. For instance, one
limitation of this study is that it did not examine Facebook
related jealousy and its direct impact on a romantic rela-
tionship. Future research should determine how user privacy
settings and availability of couple-related information would
impact an actual relationship over time. It would be interesting
to determine whether or not an isolated instance of Facebook
related jealousy, such as in the case of this study, has a sig-
nificant impact on a relationship. In addition, the present re-
search only examined heterosexual college students; thus, the
results are likely to be different for individuals with a differ-
ent sexual orientation and for individuals in different age
groups.
16
Considering that Facebook is now open to ages 13
and older,
26
future research should examine how age affects
these emotions when viewing someone’s profile as research on
age differences in jealousy would suggest.
27
Finally, this research examined self-reported emotions in
response to an imagined scenario. What is less clear is how
these factors would influence behavioral outcomes. Future re-
search should examine to what extent sex, privacy settings, and
public Facebook histories influence individuals’ behavioral re-
sponses once they experience jealousy and other negative
emotions. If instances of Facebook jealousy, such as the ones
invoked in this study, have the potential to lead to negative
behavioral outcomes, this would have implications for real-life
interpersonal interactions. One possibility might be that face-to-
face interpersonal conflict could result from this online jealousy.
Acknowledgment
Special thanks goes to members of ASPECT for their
helpful comments on an earlier version of this work.
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
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Address correspondence to:
Nicole Muscanell
Department of Psychology
University of Alabama
P.O. Box 870348
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0348
E-mail: nlmuscanell@crimson.ua.edu
Appendix
Appendix A. Negative Emotion Items
1. How jealous do you feel in response to the scenario you
just imagined?
1=not at all jealous, 9 =extremely jealous
2. How angry did you feel in response to the scenario you
just imagined?
1=not at all angry, 9 =extremely angry
3. How hurt did you feel in response to the scenario you
just imagined?
1=not at all hurt, 9 =extremely hurt
4. How disgusted did you feel in response to the scenario
you just imagined?
1=not at all disgusted, 9 =extremely disgusted
Note: These 4 emotion items have previously been used in
psychology research on jealousy.
6 MUSCANELL ET AL.
