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While the origins and possible function of jealousy have been debated, most theorists agree on one defining feature: It requires a social triangle, arising when an interloper threatens an important relationship. A common assumption has been that the elicitation of jealousy involves, and perhaps requires, complex cognitive abilities, including appraisals about the meaning of the rival threat to one's self (e.g., self-esteem) and to one's relationship.

One possibility is that jealousy first evolved in the context of sibling-parent relationships where dependent offspring compete for parental resources. An implication of this hypothesis is that jealousy may have a primordial or core form that can be triggered without complex cognition about the self or about the meaning of the social interaction. This primordial form of jealousy may be elicited by the relatively simple perception that an attachment figure or loved one's attention has been captured by a potential usurper, which suffices to elicit a motive to regain the loved one's attention and block the liaison. Primordial jealousy may serve as the building block for jealousy elicited by more complex cognitive processes. For example, in adult human relationships, the experience of jealousy is greatly impacted by additional appraisals about the meaning of the interaction (e.g., does this mean my mate will leave me? Am I unloveable?). In both primordial and complex cases of jealousy, there is a motivation to restore the relationship and remove the usurper. However, in the latter case, interpretations of the situation play a large role in the elicitation and experience of the emotion.

The theory that jealousy can take a primordial form finds support from the small but emerging body of research on human infant jealousy. Several studies found that infants as young as 6-months of age show behaviors indicative of jealousy, for example, when their mothers interacted with what appeared to be another infant (but was actually a realistic looking doll). The infants did not display the same behaviors when their mothers attend to a nonsocial item (a book).

The current experiment adapted a paradigm from human infant studies to examine jealousy in domestic dogs. The idea that dogs are capable of jealousy is congenial to the burgeoning body of research on animal social cognition that reveals that dogs have sophisticated social-cognitive abilities. For example, dogs can use a variety of human communicative signals (e.g., pointing, eye gaze) to determine the location of hidden food, are better at using social cues than chimpanzees, show some sensitivity to reward inequity when a partner is rewarded and they are not and appear aware of, and actively attempt to manipulate, the visual attention of their play partners.

To evaluate dogs' jealous behaviors, thirty-six dogs were individually tested and videotaped while their owners ignored them and interacted with a series of three different objects. In the jealousy condition, the owner treated a stuffed dog, which briefly barked and wagged its tail, as if it were a real dog (e.g., petting, talking sweetly). In another condition, owners engaged in these same behaviors but did so towards a novel object (jack-o-lantern pail). This enabled us to test whether the elicitation of jealousy required that the owner show affection to an appropriate stimulus (what appeared to be a conspecific) or whether affectionate behaviors directed to a nonsocial stimulus would be enough to arouse jealous behaviors. In the third condition, the owner read aloud a children's book, which had pop-up pages and played melodies. This condition allowed us to test whether dogs' behaviors in the other conditions were indicative of jealousy per se (arising over the loss of affection and attention towards an interloper) or more general negative affect due to the loss of the owner's attention.

As discussed earlier, the proposed function of jealousy is to break-up a potentially threatening liaison and protect the primary relationship. This motivates several types of behaviors including approach actions such as attempts to get physically or psychologically between the attachment and the interloper, attending to the threatening interaction, seeking attention from the attachment figure, as well as indicators of negative emotion such as aggression, particularly toward the interloper. Across social species, we would expect to see similar types of behaviors that serve the function of this motivational state.