Rivals in the mind’s eye: Jealous responses after subliminal exposure to body shapes

In the present paper, it was investigated whether subliminal exposure to body shapes affects participants’ jealousy. To this end, we subliminally primed male and female participants with line drawings depicting figures with either an attractive body or an unattractive body. Participants then read a jealousy inducing scenario and indicated their jealous feelings. Results showed that participants exposed subliminally to the attractive body shape reported significantly more jealousy than participants exposed subliminally to the unattractive body shape.