Gender differences in response to infidelity types and rival attractiveness

Abstract

Some evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that women are more upset by their partners’ emotional infidelity than men, and men are more upset by sexual infidelity than women. In addition, other evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that women are more distressed than men when their partners are unfaithful with a very attractive rival (lover). However, according to the imagination hypothesis, these sexual differences can be explained by gender differences in the “imagination of infidelity.” Based on this context, we hypothesized that gender differences would not be observed when controlling for the effects of infidelity imagination. Participants consisted of 288 college students who were in serious committed relationships. Photographs of attractive and unattractive rival were presented, and participants rated how upset they would be by their partner’s infidelity with the rival. A 2 (gender) × 2 (infidelity type) × 2 (rival attractiveness) factorial design was employed. Analysis of variance for the group who had lower levels of infidelity imagination revealed a significant interaction between gender and infidelity type. However, analyses of covariance with vividness of the partner’s infidelity as a covariate revealed that there were no differences between the genders. Therefore, the imagination hypothesis was supported while the evolutionary explanation for gender differences was not.