A dark side of positive illusions? Associations between the love-is-blind bias and the experience of jealousy

Previous work has shown that the tendency to positively perceive a romantic partner's physical attractiveness (i.e., the love-is-blind bias) is associated with positive self and relationship outcomes. Here, we examined possible associations between the love-is-blind bias and a negative relational outcome, namely the experience of jealousy. A total of 217 participants provided ratings of the overall physical attractiveness of the self and their romantic partners and also completed measures of three types of jealousy (anxious, reactive, and possessive), lovestyles, and relationship satisfaction. Results showed that the love-is-blind bias positively predicted the experience of anxious jealousy even after controlling for the effects of lovestyles and relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, the love-is-blind bias was significantly and positively correlated with possessive jealousy, but did not emerge as a significant predictor once the effects of lovestyles had been taken into account. Finally, the love-is-blind bias was not significantly correlated with reactive jealousy. These results indicate that the love-is-blind bias may have a negative relational outcome.