Author's personal copy Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 129–134 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid Sex differences in response to imagining a partner’s heterosexual or homosexual affair a, b Jaime C. Confer ⇑, Mark D. Cloud a University of Texas at Austin, Department of Psychology, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, TX 78712, USA b Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology, 401 N. Fairview Street, Lock Haven, PA 17745, USA article info abstract Article history: Based on sexual strategies theory, we predicted that men would be less likely to continue an imagined Received 2 June 2010 long-term relationship following a partner’s heterosexual affair compared to homosexual affair. For Received in revised form 29 August 2010 women, it was expected that both affair types would result in a low willingness to continue the relation- Accepted 3 September 2010 ship, but especially so for homosexual affairs. We further predicted that the interaction would remain Available online 6 October 2010 independent of the following moderator variables: number of affair partners, number of instances of infidelity, and real infidelity experience. Participants (N = 718) were randomly assigned to read one of Keywords: eight infidelity scenarios and estimate the likelihood that they would continue the relationship. Results Jealousy confirmed all three predictions. A separate analysis of relationship outcomes following real infidelity Sexual strategies theory Emotional infidelity experiences provided additional corroboration. These results support the conclusion that threats to pater- Sexual infidelity nity and threats of abandonment differentially motivate men and women to terminate relationships in Sexual orientation response to a partner’s infidelity. Sex differences Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Individual differences 1. Introduction commences. To solve their respective adaptive problems, men and women are differentially sensitized to two categories of cues Nearly three decades ago, psychologists applied the principles that trigger jealousy. Men experience heightened distress in of natural and sexual selection to explore previously unknown response to cues of sexual infidelity, which most strongly threatens sex differences in the nature of romantic jealousy (Daly, Wilson, paternity, whereas women experience heightened distress in re- & Weghorst, 1982; Symons, 1979). The abundance of research that sponse to cues of emotional infidelity, which most strongly signals followed has shown that relative to women, men experience great- a loss of commitment and investment (Buss et al., 1992). er distress in response to sexual infidelity and less distress in re- Across various methodologies that have been used to study sponse to emotional infidelity (e.g., falling in love with another romantic jealousy, the sex-differentiated pattern of men experi- person; Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992; Buunk, encing greater distress, relative to women, in response to sexual Angleitner, Oubaid, & Buss, 1996; Pietrzak, Laird, Stevens, & infidelity and of women experiencing greater distress, relative to Thompson, 2002). The main purpose of the present study was to men, in response to emotional infidelity emerges with relative examine whether the imagined behavioral outcomes of a partner’s consistency (and a moderate effect size; Harris, 2003). Although heterosexual or homosexual affair differ between men and women, the forced-choice methodology, introduced by Buss et al. (1992), in light of the well-documented sex difference in emotional predominates the literature (Miller & Maner, 2009; Murphy, Vall- distress. acher, Shackelford, Bjorklund, & Yunger, 2006), the same pattern Sex differences in emotional distress due to partner infidelity of results has been reflected in continuous scales of affective re- can be explained by Trivers’ (1972) parental investment theory. sponse (e.g., anger; Becker, Sagarin, Guadagno, Millevoi, & Nicastle, As the result of women’s internal fertilization, the paternity of 2004) as well as in physiological measurements (Buss et al., 1992; putative offspring is never guaranteed. In contrast, women are as- Pietrzak et al., 2002; c.f. Harris, 2000). Schützwohl has replicated sured of their maternity; however, they face the adaptive problem these findings through the use of several novel methodologies that of possible abandonment once the heavy burden of motherhood measure reaction time (Schützwohl, 2004, 2005, 2008a), memory recall (Schützwohl & Koch, 2004), and distraction (Schützwohl, 2008b). The convergent evidence provided by these methodologies Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 512 471 0111. suggests that sexual and emotional infidelity differentially activate ⇑ E-mail address: [email protected] (J.C. Confer). a robust jealousy mechanism in men and women. 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.007 Author's personal copy 130 J.C. Confer, M.D. Cloud / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 129–134 Unlike the heterosexual affairs referenced in the methodologies variables have been expected to moderate men’s sensitivity to sex- above, homosexual affairs have no direct reproductive conse- ual infidelity and women’s sensitivity to emotional infidelity, yet quences. Yet men and women view homosexual behavior differ- none have done so consistently. For instance, relationship experi- ently depending on whether the sexual partners are male or ence has been shown to exacerbate sexual and emotional jealousy female. Female homosexual behavior is considered to be more ero- (Becker et al., 2004; Buss et al., 1992; Sagarin et al., 2003; Strout, tic than male homosexual behavior (especially for male raters; Ny- Laird, Shafer, & Thompson, 2005); however, other studies have berg & Alston, 1977; Wiederman & LaMar, 1998) and men are more failed to find a moderating effect for this variable (Geary, Rumsey, likely to report that they would have sexual relations with a bisex- Bow-Thomas, & Hoard, 1995; Murphy et al., 2006; Penke & Ase- ual woman than women are to report about a bisexual man (Elia- ndorpf, 2008). These inconsistencies led us to make no a priori pre- son, 1997). Due to their relatively lower obligation to invest dictions concerning the overall effect of real infidelity experience; heavily in offspring, one strategy through which men can increase however, because these experiences should affect men and women their reproductive success is to engage in a greater number of similarly, we expected any effects of this variable to be indepen- short-term heterosexual encounters (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Sy- dent of a participant sex by infidelity-type interaction. mons, 1979). Homosexual behavior in women may signal an Collecting self-report data on participants’ real infidelity experi- opportunity for men to mate with more than one woman simulta- ence also allowed us to assess the actual outcomes of a partner’s neously, satisfying men’s greater desire for more partners. In addi- infidelity. As heterosexual infidelity presents the adaptive problem tion to fantasizing about group sex more frequently than women, of paternity uncertainty unilaterally to men, male victims of sexual twice as many men (31%) than women (15%) report that they infidelity were predicted to have discontinued their actual rela- would have sex with two other people simultaneously (Wilson, tionships more frequently than female victims of sexual infidelity 1987), and 97% of men prefer that the two other people be women in response to their partner’s affair. (Hughes, Harrison, & Gallup, 2004). The fitness costs of a partner’s heterosexual or homosexual 2. Method affair are more similar for women than for men as both types of affairs signal an impending loss of commitment and investment, 2.1. Participants but males face an additional cost of paternity uncertainty for het- erosexual affairs. Consistent with men and women’s differential The sample consisted of 718 undergraduate students (324 male, sensitivity to cues of cuckoldry and abandonment, men report 394 female), collected from two small public universities in Penn- greater distress in response to an imagined partner’s heterosexual sylvania, who agreed to participate in exchange for course credit. affair than homosexual affair (Hughes et al., 2004; Sagarin, Becker, Guadagno, Nicastle, & Millevoi, 2003), whereas women report equal levels of distress in response to both types of affairs (Hughes 2.2. Materials and procedure et al., 2004). Others have argued that despite the possibility unique to heterosexual affairs of a woman’s partner conceiving a child Prior to experimentation, participants were notified that they with an interloper, homosexual affairs are more reflective of ensu- would be requested to imagine themselves in a romantic hetero- ing abandonment as they evince a more complete absence of emo- sexual relationship and that those who had difficulty doing so tional intimacy and satisfaction with one’s partner (Wiederman & could refuse to participate without penalty. Participants subse- LaMar, 1998). In support, both Wiederman and LaMar (1998) and quently completed a questionnaire that began with one of eight Sagarin et al. (2003) found that women report greater distress in infidelity scenarios, each tailored to the sex of the participant, in response to a partner’s imagined homosexual than heterosexual af- which (1) the infidelity-type (heterosexual