Sex Differences in Subjective Distress to Unfaithfulness: Testing Competing Evolutionary and Violation of Infidelity Expectations Hypotheses

Summary & key facts

This study tested two ideas about why men and women react differently to a partner's unfaithfulness. One idea comes from evolutionary psychology and links reactions to sex-specific mating pressures. The other idea says reactions come from how people process broken expectations about a partner’s actions. Using logistic regression on responses to different question formats, the researchers found that the participant’s sex — not how they processed expectation violations — best predicted which kind of infidelity they found most upsetting. This sex difference appeared across several ways of asking the question and was not explained by different ideas people had about the link between love and sex

Key facts:

• The study compared two explanations: an evolutionary psychology account and an account based on violation of infidelity expectations.
• Researchers used logistic regression (a statistical method) to test which factors best predicted which infidelity people found most distressing.
• Participant sex was the best predictor of which type of infidelity (emotional vs. sexual) was rated most upsetting.
• Processing of expectation violations did not predict which infidelity was most distressing.
• The finding that men and women differed in their distress was consistent across multiple response formats: forced-choice, mutually exclusive, and combined formats.
• The sex difference was not explained by differences in how men and women inferred the relationship between love and sex.

Abstract

According to an evolutionary psychology perspective, men's and women's processing of threats to their sex-linked mate selection strategies cause sex differences in infidelity distress. An alternative account assumes that the distress results from men's and women's processing of expectation violations regarding the content of an unfaithful partner's actions with a rival. Logistic regressions supported the conclusion that the participant's sex-but not the processing of expectation violations-was the best predictor of the most distressing infidelity presented in forced-choice, mutually exclusive, and combined formats. Our results also indicated that the sex differences in infidelity distress were neither limited to using data from a forced-choice response format nor caused by the distinct inferences that men and women draw about the relation between love and sex.

Topics

Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior

Categories

Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Artificial intelligence Clinical psychology Computer science Developmental psychology Distress Evolutionary psychology Internal medicine Logistic regression Medicine Perspective (graphical) Psychology Social psychology