To fully illustrate similarities and differences between the phenomenological and the discursive approach, we will focus how these two perspectives attempt to understand the concept of jealousy. From the perspective of natural science, jealousy is often approached as a variable that can be measured by experiments or surveys. Such measurement is possible by stepping out of the subjective experience in order to grasp the objective meaning and any causal laws which might govern the cause and effect of jealousy (Stenner and Lazard, 2016). However, it has been argued that what appears to be a quantitative measurement of jealousy might be nothing more than a “statistical effect” generated by combined data from many participants (Stenner and Lazard,
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Jealousy is a quite subjective feeling, and therefore analysing subjective accounts of participants is a suitable approach. However, if one would step back from subjectivism and shifted their perspective into the natural science one, we could then easily argue that qualitative methods can be thought of as being reductionistic when studying jealousy because they do not consider elements which might influence feeling jealous, such as evolutionary mechanisms or human needs or a motivation to attach to others. Equally, qualitative methods might accuse experimental approach of also being reductionistic due to reification of complex human feelings to objectified “things” which can be measured (Stenner and Lazard, 2016). Each methodology will generate a different type of knowledge and each knowledge is equally important. If we focused only on experience, we could miss an understanding of how jealousy is constructed within the discourse. If we focused only on a discourse, we could not know how jealousy is experienced. Both qualitative methods might be potentially helpful to quantitative approached which need to quantify the experience in order to measure it. However, how could the experimental method quantify jealousy, if jealousy is experienced subjectively and we cannot be certain whether someone is feeling jealous unless we ask them? If something is to be measured, it needs to be defined. If definition of jealousy relies on subjective experiences, it is certainly a role of qualitative approaches to provide us with a knowledge on what jealousy
Jealousy is a quite subjective feeling, and therefore analysing subjective accounts of participants is a suitable approach. However, if one would step back from subjectivism and shifted their perspective into the natural science one, we could then easily argue that qualitative methods can be thought of as being reductionistic when studying jealousy because they do not consider elements which might influence feeling jealous, such as evolutionary mechanisms or human needs or a motivation to attach to others. Equally, qualitative methods might accuse experimental approach of also being reductionistic due to reification of complex human feelings to objectified “things” which can be measured (Stenner and Lazard, 2016). Each methodology will generate a different type of knowledge and each knowledge is equally important. If we focused only on experience, we could miss an understanding of how jealousy is constructed within the discourse. If we focused only on a discourse, we could not know how jealousy is experienced. Both qualitative methods might be potentially helpful to quantitative approached which need to quantify the experience in order to measure it. However, how could the experimental method quantify jealousy, if jealousy is experienced subjectively and we cannot be certain whether someone is feeling jealous unless we ask them? If something is to be measured, it needs to be defined. If definition of jealousy relies on subjective experiences, it is certainly a role of qualitative approaches to provide us with a knowledge on what jealousy