CogBlog

Both males and females are capable of extreme jealousy in the form of stalking because both sexes have high stakes in the fidelity of their partners. Men need assurance of physical fidelity to justify resource provision. Women need assurance of emotional fidelity because it serves as an indication of parental investment. Because each sex is looking for a different type of fidelity, the means of stalking change. Men tend to physically stalk a woman to investigate her physical devotion. This method of surveillance would not be effective for judging emotional fidelity. Thus, women tend to do things like read email, check text messages, etc to gauge her partner’s emotional interactions with others.

I definitely agree that women probably stalk men just as much, at least in cases where they are already in some kind of romantic or sexual relationship. However, evolutionarily, men and women have different motivations for their desire for fidelity. For men, paternity certainty is necessary before they contribute any resources to the woman or her children, and for women, they want to make sure the man is devoted all, or as many as possible, resources to her, and not any children he may have by another woman. Overall I think the difference in the number of restraining orders comes down to the male’s greater ability to cause physical harm if he finds something he doesn’t like through his stalking, along with the fact that males would probably show more pride in being willing to involve the law, an outside source, to be on their side, especially against the “weaker” sex.

If a man stalks a woman to the degree that she notices and feels unsafe, this implies that the male is deeply insecure and feels that he has a right to the woman. In such a situation, it also appears that the woman does not desire the man’s company. I don’t think stalking implies jealousy, but rather desperation to know where that person is and who they are with at all times. From an evolutionary perspective, it would be logical for a male to suspect sexual infidelity, and would therefore follow his love interest/obsession around in order to see if she is being loyal to him. However, the woman most likely owes the man no loyalty, as she most likely has no interest in him and probably even fears him if she has a restraining order against him.
Women definitely act upon jealous feelings, though usually not by following him around. Since women (from an evolutionary perspective) fear emotional infidelity more than sexual infidelity (since emotional infidelity implies a probable loss of resources) a woman would not be most concerned about where a man was and who he was with, but rather would search for signs indicating a potential emotional affair. She might go through his phone, emails, or say negative things about a woman she suspects her husband might be in love with. She might directly question him about her suspect and see what he says, or bring her up casually and see what kind of reaction she gets. However, it is not unheard of for either spouse who suspects their partner is cheating to hire a professional to stalk their partner and investigate whether or not an affair is going on. Both sexes are capable of physically stalking their partners/spouses or of hiring someone to do it for them.

I don't know if it is just me... but the only people I know who have stalked others were girls. I would think that guys would be less likely to go to the police and get a restraining order because this would be advertising that he was afraid of a girl. That could be why there are fewer records incriminating girls.
I could see stalking be a perverse/extreme type of jealousy. The stalkees can't obtain the object of their obsession and can't deal with the idea of them being with someone else. Also, both sexes have interests to protect (females resources and males paternal certainity). So, their stalking is a way of checking up on the male or female that they have possession of or believe they have some possesion of.

I completely agree with MaryAnn and was going to present the same case. Women stalk equally as much as men, if not more. Because women need the emotional stability and resources they seem to latch onto their male partner more. This can cause overprotective behavior, leading to obsession, which can lead to stalking. Yes, there is the question of paternal uncertainty, but I also think that it is incredibly important for women to keep track of their partners, especially if they formed that emotional attachment and/or need the resources. However, like MaryAnn also said, men who stalk are more dangerous. The availability bias comes into play here because male stalking cases are more dangerous we hear about them more, and thus we think they happen more often.

I think that we are giving far more credit to females here. Females are just as guilty as stalking as the males, and as far as I can tell employ the same sorts of strategies as well. It might be true that women are more concerned with emotional infidelity than sexual infidelity, but that is not to say that sexual infidelity does not bother them at all. In the Jealousy experiment by Buss, the question was not just what would distress you, but what would distress you MORE, implying that both prospects would be distressing. In fact, a criticism of the experiment was that females were likely to include sexual infidelity with emotional infidelity, so the option became just sex versus sex with love, making emotional infidelity far more loaded than intended. Women are concerned with sexual infidelity as well as emotional infidelity, and they are certainly not above stalking their partner to unearth the truth. The fact that men are more likely to have a restraining order taken out against them for their stalking can be attributed to the fact that men pose more of a danger than women in their stalking. If a man catches his partner in the act, he is big enough to actually inflict some damage on his partner or her lover, whereas if a woman catches her partner in the act, a confrontation is less likely, and f it did occur would most likely be verbal.

Evolutionarily speaking, a male was in charge of the females in his harem and had the right to control their actions. It was not uncommon for females, who are traditionally promiscuous, to have sexual relationships with other males while the head of the harem was absent. For this reason, perhaps stalking is a way for men to monitor and control the women they want for themselves. Thus, in some ways this is an extreme form of jealousy--it is a way for males to ensure that their chosen female is not engaging in sexual infidelity. However, this is also a means of controlling a woman in order to dominate her.

Women do not "stalk" the same way that men do; stalking for women is generally more undercover. Women are more concerned with emotional infidelity than sexual infidelity, and for this reason they are more likely to check their partners' phones or e-mails than to follow them around. This is because sexual infidelity was not truly an issue in our early days when our ancestors were living in harems. Males were expected to have more than one sexual partner, but if they emotionally favored one over the others, the other females in the harem were likely to become jealous.

This may have to do with the idea that males are more concerned with sexual infidelity, while females are more concered with emotional infidelity. Since sexual infidelity is more concrete than emotional infidelity, it makes sense that males might be more likely to stalk someone physically, since there is a chance that they might catch their partner in the act. For females, emotional infidelity is less concrete, and physically stalking someone might not be able to provide proof that they are being emotionally unfaithful. Thus, women might tend to stalk out of jealousy in a more undercover way, looking for various little indirect clues that will add up to a big picture rather than physically stalking the person for the one clue that can prove sexual infidelity.