Testing the sexual imagination hypothesis for gender differences in response to infidelity.

Tsukasa Kato

doi:10.1186/1756-0500-7-860

Abstract

BackgroundEvolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men are more upset by sexual infidelity than women are, whereas women are more upset by emotional infidelity than men are. On the other hand, the sexual imagination hypothesis states that gender differences in infidelity responses are derived from explicit men’s sexual imagery. Based on the latter hypothesis, we hypothesized that although men would report being more distressed by sexual infidelity than women who were not in a committed relationship (NCR), no gender difference would be reported in a committed relationship (CR).FindingsThese two hypotheses were tested with 598 participants in a CR and 1,643 participants in a NCR. No significant gender difference was found sexual infidelity response in the CR group (d = 0.008, a power of .956), whereas men were more upset than women about sexual infidelity in the NCR group. Moreover, a significant interaction between gender and infidelity type was found in the NCR, whereas no significant interaction between gender and infidelity type was observed in the CR group (partial η2 = 0.005, a power of .943).ConclusionsOur findings supported the sexual imagination hypothesis but were inconsistent with the EJM hypothesis.

Highlights

Evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men are more upset by sexual infidelity than women are, whereas women are more upset by emotional infidelity than men are
The sexual imagination hypothesis regarding gender differences in infidelity responses was tested by comparing individuals who were in a committed relationship (CR) with individuals who were not in a committed relationship (NCR)
We tested the evolutionary explanation for gender differences using Sagarin’s [22] approach; that is, we examined interactions between gender and infidelity type in the CR and NCR groups

Summary

Introduction

Evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men are more upset by sexual infidelity than women are, whereas women are more upset by emotional infidelity than men are. The sexual imagination hypothesis states that gender differences in infidelity responses are derived from explicit men’s sexual imagery. Based on the latter hypothesis, we hypothesized that men would report being more distressed by sexual infidelity than women who were not in a committed relationship (NCR), no gender difference would be reported in a committed relationship (CR). According to some evolutionary psychologists [1-3], men are more upset by a mate’s sexual infidelity than women are, whereas women are more upset by a mate’s emotional infidelity than men are.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion