Culture plays a big part in men and women's experience of sexual and emotional jealously, and they are not as different as evolutionary psychologists have argued, according to a new study.Dr Christine Harris from the University of California at San Diego casts serious doubts on a popular view of gender differences when it comes to jealousy in a report in the latest issue of the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Review Evolutionary psychologists have long argued that men tend to care more about sexual infidelity compared to women, who are said to be more concerned about emotional infidelity. The gender differences were attributed to natural selection - sexual jealousy encouraging men to prevent women from bearing other men's children; while emotional jealousy encouraged women to ensure men provided for them and their offspring."This research has found that the evolutionary theory of jealousy just does not hold up to rigorous academic scrutiny," said Harris, who has been studying the dynamics of human jealousy since 1993."A thorough analysis of the different lines of research which espoused this point of view raises serious doubts about how much of a sex difference actually exists. It is entirely possible that natural selection shaped the two sexes to be more similar rather than different," she said.The original evidence cited by evolutionary psychologist to support their view of jealousy includes studies based on self-reported data, physiological data, sociological data such as crime statistics, and cases of pathological jealousy. Harris examined these studies and found flaws and in discrepancies in methods and findings that she argues significantly undermines the theory of sex differences in jealousy.One of the key parts of Harris' research involved comparing the results of studies in different countries: "In many of these studies, there is great variability within the males responses," she said. "In many cases, only a minority of men report that a mate's sexual infidelity would be worse than emotional infidelity."Some studies found large differences between American men and women, but found equally large differences between American and European men, and even greater disparities among Asian men. One study showed only 25% of Chinese men found sexual infidelity most distressing, while 75% emotional infidelity most distressing.Harris also questioned studies that claimed men were more likely to kill their spouses in a jealous rage. Many of these studies, she said, failed to consider that men were more likely to commit all types of violent crime. When the proportion of homicides involving jealousy is taken into account, women are just as likely to kill their spouses in a fit of sexual jealousy as are men.The research was praised by Professor Lesley Rogers of Australia's University of New England , whose bookargues that the conclusions of scientists about human behaviour are often influenced by their own cultural experiences, and experience can change the brain's biology."Thank God someone is starting to look at these things from a broader view rather than being tied down to this evolutionary psychology fiasco," she told ABC Science Online."I think the important thing is that Harris has looked across cultures. If evolutionary psychology has any substance and jealousy is encoded in the genes then it is going to be expressed the same way in different cultures. If it isn't, as she's found, it's a spanner in the works for a unitary global explanation for jealousy," she said.