Emotional reactions to a partner’s extradyadic romantic interests are assumed to be negative and characterized by jealousy, an emotional state that arises over a perceived threat to one’s relationship. Yet, reactions may also be positive, and involve compersion, or taking joy in one’s partner’s pleasure in other sexual and relational encounters. Although some have argued that compersion is the opposite of jealousy, research suggests that compersion and jealousy may not be opposing constructs, despite being treated this way in both theoretical and empirical research. Using a convenience sample of polyamorous (N = 3530) and monogamous (N = 1358) individuals, we draw on theories of jealousy, emotional ambivalence, and emotional forecasting to examine people’s anticipated affective responses to hypothetical situations involving a partner’s extradyadic relations and assess whether experience with having a partner engage in extradyadic relations was associated with anticipating less jealousy and more compersion. Results suggest that people in polyamorous relationships report less jealousy and more compersion with their partners, and that personal experience involving a partner’s extradyadic romantic interests predicted more compersion and less jealousy, with experience predicting greater increases in compersion among monogamous than polyamorous participants. Finally, while anticipated compersion was associated with greater relationship satisfaction, neither jealousy nor ambivalence was associated with relationship satisfaction. These results further demonstrate that individuals can experience both positive and negative reactions to a partner’s extradyadic relations, both based on actual experience and projection of responses to future events, and that real-life experiences are important in anticipating these emotions.

对伴侣外在的浪漫兴趣的情感反应被认为是消极的，其特征是嫉妒，这是一种因感知到彼此关系受到威胁而产生的情绪状态。然而，反应也可能是积极的，并涉及同情，或为伴侣在其他性和关系接触中的快乐而感到高兴。尽管有些人认为竞争与嫉妒相反，但研究表明，竞争和嫉妒可能不是对立的结构，尽管在理论和实证研究中都是这样对待的。使用一夫多妻制 ( N = 3530) 和一夫一妻制 ( N = 1358) 个体的方便样本，我们利用嫉妒、情绪矛盾和情绪预测理论来检验人们对涉及伴侣外关系的假设情况的预期情感反应，并评估是否与伴侣进行额外关系的经历与预期更少的嫉妒和更多的同情有关。结果表明，处于多角恋关系中的人对伴侣的嫉妒较少，更多的同情心，涉及伴侣外的浪漫兴趣的个人经历预示着更多的同情心和更少的嫉妒心，经验预测一夫一妻制参与者的同情心比多角恋参与者有更大的增加。最后，虽然预期的补偿与更高的关系满意度相关，但嫉妒和矛盾心理都与关系满意度无关。 这些结果进一步表明，个人可以对伴侣的外在关系产生积极和消极的反应，这两种反应都是基于实际经验和对未来事件反应的预测，并且现实生活的经验对于预测这些情绪很重要。