Compersion: When Jealousy-Inducing Situations Don't (Just) Induce Jealousy.

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.

Age of onset of first alcohol intoxication and subsequent alcohol use among urban American Indian adolescents.

The objective was to assess the effect of early onset intoxication on subsequent alcohol involvement among urban American Indian youth. The data come from the American Indian Research (AIR) project, a panel study of urban Indian youth residing in King County, Washington. Data were collected annually from the adolescent and his/her primary caregiver from the 1988-89 school year to the 1996-97 school year, providing a total of nine waves of data. Early intoxication (by age 14) was related to delinquency, family history of alcohol abuse or dependence, poverty, broken family structure, less family cohesiveness, and more family conflict. The effects of these characteristics were, therefore, partialed out in testing effects of early intoxication on later alcohol involvement. Two-part latent growth models of alcohol use and alcohol problems were specified. Effects of early onset intoxication on these trajectories, as well as lifetime alcohol abuse or dependence by the transition to young adulthood, were examined. Findings indicate that adolescents who experienced their first intoxication early (by age 14), used alcohol more heavily from the ages of 16 to 18, experienced more problems related to the alcohol's use from the ages of 16 to 18, and were more likely to have a diagnosed alcohol disorder by the final wave of data collection. Congruent with similar studies in the general population, early intoxication appears to be associated with a deleterious course of alcohol involvement during adolescence and into the transition to young adulthood among urban American Indian youth. Implications for prevention are discussed.