Healthy living
Mind matters
Short on confidence?
Short men are much more likely to be jealous husbands and lovers, say psychologists
Researchers in Spain and Holland asked 549 men and women to rate how jealous they felt and to pinpoint qualities in their rivals which made them feel envious and insecure.
The team found that men were most concerned about competitors who were attractive, rich and powerful. The shorter the man, the more jealous he became and the reverse was also true: the taller the man, the more relaxed he appeared to be about rivals.
The same relationship between height and jealousy was not found among women, according to the study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour. In fact, women of average height tended to be the least jealous while their taller and smaller friends were more troubled by the charm and beauty of other women.
The team argue that the results make perfect evolutionary sense. Tall men may feel more attractive because increased height is often associated with power, dominance and reproductive success. Average-sized women, on the other hand, have tended to be more healthy and fertile and so of more appeal to the opposite sex
‘It’s too simplistic to say that how you feel jealousy – if you are a male - is down to your height. Jealousy is an extremely complex emotion driven by the fear of losing the one that you love and lots of factors could feed into this,’ says Dr Simon Gelsthorpe, a Bradford-based clinical psychologist with a special interest in jealousy. ‘You may worry that you are unattractive because you are too short or too fat or too thin or too bald. The most important factor is the strength of the relationship - if this is rock solid then you are unlikely to suffer the pangs of jealousy.’
Short men have also come in for a bad press when it comes to managing anger too. The ‘short man syndrome’ or ‘Napoleon complex’ theorises that shorter men are more aggressive in order to compensate for their lack of height. However a study by researchers at the University of Lancashire that set out to test this theory concluded that it was in fact a myth and that short men were no more likely to fly off the handle than their taller peers.
Gelsthorpe points out that getting older and wiser doesn’t necessarily protect you from the green-eyed monster. ‘As people age and family relationships become more diverse and complex there is more scope for jealousy. Grandparents often compete for the love of their children and grandchildren and this can become destructive,‘ says Gelsthorpe, ‘ The important thing is to keep the dialogue open and not let jealousy be expressed as anger.’
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