Sexual infidelity and jealousy in heterosexual men
In a romantic relationship, what’s more devastating: infidelity based solely on sex, or infidelity based on love? The answer to that question might depend on whether or not you’re a heterosexual man.
When dealing with feelings of jealousy and betrayal, specifically when it comes to cheating, heterosexual men and women react in markedly different ways. And how they regard emotional versus physical cheating provides insight into sexual orientation as well as evolutionary psychology, according to a Chapman University study.
An online survey of nearly 64,000 respondents, the largest ever conducted on the subject, found that 54% of men said they’d be more upset if their female partner had sex with another man, even if it’s a onenight stand with no feelings of attachment. Sixtyfive percent of women would feel more threatened if their man became emotionally attached to someone else—even if the relationship wasn’t physical.
‘Heterosexual men and everyone else’
“There has been significant disagreement about whether or not men and women tend to differ in their responses to sexual and emotional infidelity,” said lead researcher David Frederick, PhD in social psychology and assistant psychology professor at
Chapman’s Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences. “Most research relies on small samples or college samples. We set out to examine a broad and diverse sample of Americans.”
Past research never sampled such an inclusive group. The study, published last month in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, was launched online at the MSNBC website, which hosted the survey for two weeks in 2007. For the first time, gay men, lesbians and bisexual individuals were included, further illuminating the subject and providing insight into the LGBT community, a group that has been historically under-studied, Frederick said.
“The one thing that stood out as surprising, however, is that it wasn’t really a difference between men and women,” he said. “It was a difference between heterosexual men and everyone else. They were the only ones who were much more likely to be most upset by sexual infidelity rather than emotional infidelity.”
Bisexual men and women did not differ significantly. Neither did gay men and lesbians.
Remarkably, results were uniform across all age groups, regardless of income level, length of relationship, history of being unfaithful or cheated on, or whether a couple had children.
A primal fear of unfaithful sex?
In explaining why sexual infidelity is an overriding source of jealousy for heterosexual men, Frederick said it could come down to biology and evolution.
“There has been a long-standing argument in psychology over whether men and women will differ from each other, in part because two dominant theoretical perspectives — evolutionary psychology vs. social cognitive perspectives — make different predictions,” he said. “Our results generally supported the evolutionary perspective.”
According to the evolutionary perspective, it boils down to paternal uncertainty: Unlike women, a man can have doubts about whether a child is his, which makes unfaithful sex more threatening. Both men and women experience sexual jealousy, but heterosexual men could respond more dramatically when they feel their mate might bear another man’s child, Frederick said.
“The entire engine of evolution is driven by genes trying to replicate themselves and pass themselves on to the next generation,” he added.
Moreover, while women obviously never face maternal uncertainty, they do risk the potential loss of their relationship or marriage if their partner falls in love with someone else, perhaps breaking up a family. The social cognitive perspective has generally claimed that both sexes would feel equally threatened by both forms of cheating.
Beyond settling academic debates, the implications of the study could provide insight to relationship dynamics, foster greater understanding of the pain and damage done by infidelity and, perhaps, provide clues on getting some closure — or even reconciliation.
“The responses of men and women to the threat of infidelity range from intense pangs of jealousy to elaborate displays of attention to woo their partner back,” Frederick said. Harmful and violent behavior can also result from jealousy, he added, so it’s important to understand its most potent triggers.
“There has been a long-standing argument in psychology over whether men and women will differ from each other, in part because two dominant theoretical perspectives—evolutionary psychology vs. social cognitive perspectives—make different predictions.” —David Frederick, PhD