Friendship jealousy refers to the type of jealousy experienced when an individual perceives a third-party threat to one of their valued friendships. It is not to be confused with envy, or wanting what a friend has.
Jealousy is a complex social emotion often described as a mixture of anger, anxiety, and sadness, though it has also been associated with feelings of hurt, rejection, betrayal, uncertainty, insecurity, and self-consciousness. Despite its typical portrayal in the context of romantic or sexual relationships, jealousy can arise whenever an individual perceives a third-party threat to the status, stability, or exclusivity of one of their existing bonds. Thus, children can feel jealousy when their parents give more attention to their siblings, and friends can feel jealousy when their friends make new friends.
Friendship is typically conceptualized as a dyadic relationship – that is, a close, medium- to long-term relationship between two people. However, dyadic relationships do not exist in a vacuum; rather, they exist within the context of a broader social network, in which associates – such as partners, friends, and enemies – can interact and have their own independent relationships with other people (e.g., strangers). Notably, these interactions and relationships can have substantial impacts on each dyadic partners' well-being. As such, third-party threats to an individual's friendship can come in many forms: a mutual friend, a known acquaintance, a new romantic partner, or an unknown stranger, for example. Commonly used terms describing third-party friendship threats include rival, competitor, poacher, and interloper.
Drivers of friendship jealousy Whether and to what extent an individual experiences friendship jealousy depends on several factors.
Time allocation The number of close relationships an individual can form and maintain is constrained in part by the limited amount of time that individual has to invest in their relationships. Previous empirical research has shown that when a person forms a new or newly close relationship with another individual, that person's existing relationship partners may be ejected from the innermost circle of affection and demoted into less close ones. As such, individuals are likely to feel threatened – and thus jealous – when a friend begins to allocate an unusual, unprecedented, or disproportionate amount of time to their other relationships. The level of threat perceived and ensuing jealousy experienced are expected to increase when a friend's time dedicated to nurturing a budding relationship begins to interfere with the time being allocated to the individual.
Replacement threat and friendship value
An individual's ability to form and maintain multiple close friendships is similarly limited by the maximum number of "slots" or niches available in their friendship hierarchy. It is possible that not every slot is of equal importance; indeed, some have suggested that people rank their friends – for example, with best friends at the top of the ladder and other friends in descending closeness and liking. Generally speaking, the more valuable a friendship is to an individual, the more likely that friend is to attain a higher position in the individual's friendship hierarchy, and the greater the level of jealousy experienced in response to a perceived rival. Friendship value itself is believed to be driven by two main factors: the relative benefits the friendship has to offer, and the extent to which a friend fulfills their friendship partner's friend preferences. Value might also translate to the idea of irreplaceability. For example, a friend who is generous, reliable, and honest offers a more valuable friendship than a friend who is selfish, unreliable, and deceitful, and a friend who is serious and shy will be less valuable to a person who prefers lighthearted, extraverted friends. Moreover, a friend who is generous, reliable, honest, lighthearted, extraverted, and likes the same obscure music artist as that person will be more irreplaceable than a friend missing any one of those qualities. Because value is a major determinant of hierarchical rank, friends in lower ranked positions are more vulnerable to replacement than those in higher ranked ones. Furthermore, the more likely an individual is to be replaced in terms of their respective hierarchical rank, the greater the likelihood that jealousy will be evoked.
Reciprocity violations In the context of friendship, reciprocity refers to the expectation that friendships will be relatively symmetric in regards to exchanges of emotional support, time, assistance, favors, and other kinds of costly investments. In other words, friends should give and take resources in roughly equal proportions. When reciprocity is violated and one friend feels that they are giving more than they are receiving due to third-party interference, jealousy can arise. For example, if an individual consistently provides emotional support for their friend, but that friend does not reciprocate the same level of emotional support because they are diverting support resources to a different relationship, the individual is likely to experience friendship jealousy.
Threats to self-evaluation Although not yet illustrated in the context of friendships specifically, threats to self-evaluation have been shown to evoke jealousy in both familial and romantic relationships. Self-evaluation maintenance theory posits that threats to self-evaluation – or one's belief about one's own strengths, capabilities, and overall worth or value – spur negative emotions which drive behaviors aimed at diminishing those threats. Furthermore, the dimensions an individual holds most central to their self-evaluation have been shown to be the dimensions granted the most weight in assessing the threat posed by a friendship rival. For example, if intelligence is more important to an individual's self-evaluation than physical attractiveness, a rival who is physically attractive but unintelligent may not pose much threat, and is thus unlikely to evoke friendship jealousy. Conversely, a rival who is more intelligent will pose a substantial threat to the individual's self-evaluation, and friendship jealousy is more likely to occur.
Cultural influences and social norms
Friendship jealousy appears to be a human universal, as it transcends region and culture. However, there are some important ways in which culture and social norms might impact the extent to which an individual experiences, perceives, and behaves in response to friendship jealousy.
Friendship jealousy is expected to be more prominent in some cultures than in others due to the differential importance placed on the maintenance of close, non-kin, non-romantic social bonds. Relatedly, cultures in which friendships are highly valued, such as those marked by individualism, are likely to yield higher levels of friendship jealousy. In some cultures, however, avoiding overt expressions of conflict is essential in maintaining positive friendships, so certain displays of friendship jealousy may be stigmatized and less likely to occur. In alignment with research on cross-cultural differences in the link between romantic jealousy and permissiveness toward extramarital sex, it is also likely that sociocultural norms concerning friendship exclusivity might influence the experience of friendship jealousy.
Individual differences
Self-esteem Having low self-esteem has been associated with increased vulnerability to friendship jealousy. This pattern can be explained by the upward social comparisons those with low self-esteem perform when assessing a rival; concluding that one's rival is more valuable than oneself will lead to increased replacement threat, and a resulting increase in friendship jealousy. At the same time, having an inflated self-esteem might also increase friendship jealousy vulnerability due to the instability and fragility which characterize unrealistically high levels of self-esteem. An individual with an inflated self-esteem is more likely to perceive ambiguous stimuli in ego-threatening ways. For example, if a person with an inflated self-esteem witnesses their best friend engaging in conversation with a third-party, they might assume that their status in their best friend's friend hierarchy is being challenged, and friendship jealousy is likely to occur.
Attachment style Research on romantic relationships suggests that there is indeed a link between attachment style and jealousy. Specifically, individuals who demonstrate insecure attachments are more likely to experience romantic jealousy. Although less well-established in the context of friendship, the association between attachment style and jealousy appears to persist. Specifically, individuals with anxious attachment styles are prone to higher levels of friendship jealousy than those with avoidant or secure attachment styles. These associations might be explained by the relationship between anxious attachment and increased fear of abandonment and rejection, surveillance and reassurance-seeking behaviors, and a tendency to interpret social stimuli negatively.
Personality traits Various personality traits have been shown to be associated with friendship jealousy. Aggressive individuals, for example, are more likely to be jealous and possessive of their friends, a finding which is consistent with research on romantic jealousy. With regards to Big Five personality traits, higher levels of neuroticism, and lower levels of openness and conscientiousness have also been linked to increased friendship jealousy.
Sex/Gender Women and girls generally report higher levels of friendship jealousy than men and boys do. This difference has been observed both in real-world and social media contexts, where women report more social media friendship jealousy relative to men. However, while women report greater friendship jealousy in best friendships, men appear to experience greater friendship jealousy when faced with the prospective loss of mere acquaintances.
Several explanations have been offered here. Girls tend to place importance on the exclusivity of their friendships, seek emotional support from their friends, expect loyalty and commitment from their friends, and protect their social circles and activities from outsiders via social exclusion tactics more than boys do. Conversely, boys' social groups are often more sizable and shallow than girls' are. Furthermore, girls seem to be more concerned with their relative hierarchical rank within their social groups – a quality which might increase the salience of replacement threat in their friendships. Human females are also more likely to believe that when faced with a friendship rival, certain actions they take can successfully block prospective interference. Human females' closest same-sex friendships have also been shown to be more fragile than males', with females reporting proportionally higher instances of friendship dissolution.
Age People's vulnerability to friendship jealousy varies over development. However, this variability does not follow a linear trend; the likelihood of experiencing friendship jealousy appears to increase as children age, decrease as children enter adolescence, and increase again from middle adolescence onward. Although friendship jealousy has been shown to persist into young adulthood, more research is needed to identify trends in friendship jealousy over the lifespan.
Mental health