It can be really difficult to see things clearly when you are jealous.
Researchers found that women can easily miss something that is right in front of them when they are distracted by the possibility that their husband or boyfriend is attracted to another.
According to psychologists, it reveals something profound about social relations and perceptions.
The journal Emotion, published by the American Psychological Association, reports that young couples took part in a test. Couples were seated side by side but in front of separate screens. Men were asked to identify women they found attractive while women were asked to identify specific elements in a landscape, such as a river.
Women had to talk about how they felt. Those who admitted being jealous failed to see the items they were asked to identify, even though they were easy to spot. According to experts, this phenomenon is blindness caused by emotion.
Study researcher Steven Most of the Department of Psychology at the University of Delaware said, "This helps to rule out baseline individual differences between the women and helps us attribute the effect specifically to the jealousy manipulation."
Now, researchers want to do the same kind of test to see if men are blinded by jealousy.