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Abstract
Inoculation theory was applied to the context of jealousy to evaluate the success of inoculation as a preemptive strategy for combating jealousy in relationships. Participants (N = 100) were assigned to one of three conditions: control, jealousy experience inoculation, or jealousy expression inoculation. Over a three week period, respondents in the inoculation conditions received and responded to inoculation messages. At post-test, participants responded to a jealousy evoking scenario and the dependent measures of threat, jealousy emotions and jealousy expressions. Inoculation increased perceptions of threat for female participants. As hypothesized, inoculation successfully improved the likelihood of participants utilizing one of the two positive jealousy expressions, compensatory restoration, when faced with a jealousy-evoking scenario. Inoculation was not successful for reducing negative jealousy expression, and counter to the hypotheses, inoculation increased anger for female participants. This thesis expands the applicable scope of inoculation theory to jealousy and other interpersonal contexts.