Untying the knot: investigating the mediating role of love in the relationship between antisocial personality and jealousy

Across two studies, we examined how antisocial personality traits are associated with romantic love styles and romantic jealousy in adult samples. In Study 1 (N = 255, M = 28.44, SD = 7.71), antisocial traits—particularly aggressiveness, irresponsibility, and interpersonal manipulation—were positively associated with the Ludus and Mania love styles, which are characterized by manipulation, emotional volatility, and possessiveness. Agape also showed positive associations with select antisocial facets, suggesting a more complex pattern than traditionally assumed. Study 2 (N = 198, M = 23.70, SD = 5.43) extended these findings by examining romantic jealousy and testing a mediation model. Although associations between love styles and antisocial traits were attenuated when controlling for acquiescent responding, aggressiveness emerged as the only antisocial dimension reliably associated with threat-based jealousy. Mania was uniquely associated with threat jealousy, whereas Storge was linked to non-threat jealousy. Path analyses indicated that Mania partially mediated the relationship between aggressiveness and threat jealousy and fully mediated the association between aggressiveness and non-threat jealousy. Together, these findings suggest that antisocial tendencies, especially aggressiveness, are expressed in romantic contexts through maladaptive relational orientations, with manic love functioning as a key psychological mechanism linking dispositional antagonism to jealous responses.