Cheating revisited

As I am categorizing the posts of my blog in the "Short fact list" (that is far from being a short list) I came across an older article by me about cheating. An older article that mostly consists of opinion pieces. Horrible. So, here we go again, this times with better data:

The first one gives us a good overview.

Sex Differences in Self-reported Infidelity and its Correlates - Rebecca J. Brand & Charlotte M. Markey & Ana Mills & Sara D. Hodges - 2007

One of the most common findings in infidelity research is that males commit more acts of infidelity. These sex differences apply to the prevalence of infidelity (the number of individuals who report having cheated), and although studied less exhaustively, the incidence of infidelity (the number of cheating liaisons in which an individual engages). [...]

When definitions of cheating include non-intercourse behaviors such as kissing or dating, sex differences appear to be attenuated or disappear (Drigotas et al. 1999; Glass and Wright 1985; Wiederman and Hurd 1999). These behaviors, which are sexual or romantic in nature but fall short of intercourse, are still likely damaging to the relationship and certainly violate many people’s
expectations for their relationships. As evidence for this, Drigotas et al. (1999) asked college students if emotional and physical intimacy behaviors, including flirting, sharing feelings, and kissing, constituted infidelity. Most (76%) reported that they did. [...]

In addition, sex differences in infidelity may be changing in recent years. Wiederman (1997) for instance, found that 23% of men and 12% of women had had an extramarital sexual affair. However, when they examined their data separately for participants under the age of 40, the sex differences in infidelity disappear. Allen et al. (2005; see also Oliver and Hyde 1993) reviewed several studies
showing a shrinking sex difference in successively younger cohorts. Therefore, any attempt to understand sex differences in the predictors and consequences of infidelity requires an up-to-date assessment of incidence and prevalence.

In short, cheating has been a different beast in the past and is now getting (more) equal. There is however difference in the perception of emotional and physical cheating which we will analyze in different surveys soon. To continue with the above study.

In fact, in both Study 1 and 2, women appeared to be the more likely sex to report a higher prevalence of infidelity. Our findings seem to indicate that past sex differences reported in this literature may be misleading or outdated. The specific definitions of cheating used in this research and the inclusion of non-intercourse behaviors as cheating behaviors may at least partially account for the finding that women were likely to report infidelity. It is also possible that we are picking up on a cohort effect. The expression of female sexuality is increasingly depicted in popular culture (e.g., television) as appropriate; virginity is not prized as it once was (Buss et al. 2001; Hoyt and Hudson 1981). Thus, women may find themselves feeling free to partake in not
only multiple sexual relationships throughout their lifetime, but perhaps multiple romantic and sexual relationships at the same time, regardless of their current relationship status. [...]

While approximately equal numbers of men and women in our study appear to be cheating, typically, men who were unfaithful cheated many times [...] Women seem more likely to engage in long-term (although adulterous) relationships while men are more likely to engage in one-night stands (Schmitt 2003). Despite this change in measurement tactic, we found that men reported more episodes on average, even though they did not have higher prevalence overall. [...]

Consistent with our hypothesis, women’s relationships were more likely than men’s to break up after their own infidelity. Further [...] we have some evidence [...] that women may be more likely to begin a new relationship with their extra-pair partner than are men. Both of these findings support the idea that women are cheating to mate-switch. [...] Although men and women reported many of the same reasons for cheating (that they were attracted to the extra-pair partner, that they were bored or unhappy in the current relationship), there were also some telling differences. One of men’s top-five responses that did not appear in women’s top-five was that they cheated out of opportunity. This is consistent with the possibility that at least some men are pursuing a strategy of quantity, mating with multiple partners without a lot of regard for quality. On the other hand, women were significantly more likely than men to report cheating because they were unhappy in the current relationship and because they were made to feel attractive by the extra-pair partner. Both of these reasons are consistent with women cheating as a way to find a better, more attentive partner than their current mate.

The conclusion:

Popular culture conceptualizes women as loyal, faithful caretakers of the men in their lives, while men are conceptualized as creatures with uncontrollable urges that force them to “sow their seed.” Past research has also suggested that men are more likely to be unfaithful than women. However, the present findings suggest that this notion may be old-fashioned and outdated. Our findings
suggest that women do not appear to be altogether less likely to be unfaithful than men. [...] Despite equal prevalence of cheating, our findings support the idea that men and women may cheat for different reasons. Men who cheat seem likely to be pursuing a quantity-over-quality strategy; if they select cheating as a strategy, they may do so merely out of opportunity, with many different women.

Women, on the other hand, may be using infidelity to mateswitch; rather than cheating indiscriminately with a large number of men, they may be selective in choosing a better potential long-term mate, specifically one who will make them happier than their current partner and will validate their attractiveness. Thus, while infidelity may have devastating consequences for both men and women in relationships, different measures may be effective in preventing men’s and women’s cheating behaviors and different ramifications may follow men’s versus women’s acts of infidelity

Before we start with the other studies, in retrospect it is interesting to me to see how these all fit together. I will spoil it, to women it seems the emotional connection is more important than the sexual one. So what does the next study tell us:

Sex differences (and similarities) in jealousy The moderating influence of infidelity experience and sexual orientation of the infidelity - Brad J. Sagarina, D. Vaughn Beckerb, Rosanna E. Guadagnob,
Lionel D. Nicastleb, Allison Millevoib - 2003

Thus, ensuring that putative offspring are indeed one’s own is an adaptive challenge for males, whereas a female faces the different challenge of ensuring that the father invests resources into her children rather than those of rivals. These considerations suggest that male and female sexual jealousy will be qualitatively different (Daly, Wilson, & Weghorst, 1982; Symons, 1979).
Accordingly, Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992) predicted that men and women would differ in their responses to emotional and sexual infidelity, with women being relatively responsive to the former and men to the latter. Both survey and physiological evidence supported this hypothesis: when asked which type of infidelity would distress them more, men were much more likely than women to select the sexual infidelity, and when subjects were instructed to fantasize about one type of infidelity or the other, measures of electrodermal activity and heart rate supported the conclusion that the sexes differed in the two types of infidelity’s relative emotional impacts.[...]

Male victims of infidelity were significantly more likely than male non-victims to report greater distress in response to a sexual infidelity. Furthermore, in contrast to the typical 40–50% ratio
for men on the forced-choice question, nearly two-thirds of male victims of infidelity indicated that a sexual infidelity would cause greater distress. For women, experience as a victim of infidelity did not serve as a moderator, but experience as a perpetrator did. Women who reported cheating on a past romantic partner were significantly more likely to indicate that a sexual infidelity would cause greater distress compared to women who had not cheated. [...] From this evidence, we suggest that it is inaccurate to view men and women as manifesting a gross, context-free sex difference in jealousy. Our results suggest that when men and women face differential adaptive challenges—when their partners become involved with members of the opposite sex—they display a large, reliable sex difference, but when conception is not a possibility—when their partners become involved with members of the same sex—the differential adaptive challenges disappear, and so do the sex differences.

And finally.

Forgiveness or breakup: Sex differences in responses to a partner’s infidelity - Todd K. Shackelford, David M. Buss, Kevin Bennett - 2002

Although many factors contribute to the complex decision to forgive or break up following a partner’s infidelity, work guided by an evolutionary perspective suggests that the decision may hinge on the nature of the infidelity (e.g., Buss et al., 1992; Daly, Wilson, & Weghorst, 1982; Symons, 1979). Among human ancestors, a single instance of sexual infidelity could jeopardise a man’s certainty in paternity, with the attendant reproductive risk of investing a couple of decades of effort in a rival man’s child rather than his own (see Geary, 2000, for a recent discussion of paternal investment). From an ancestral woman’s perspective, a single sexual infidelity committed by her husband would not have carried this magnitude of risk, since her genetic maternity is not thereby compromised and hence her investments would still have been channelled toward her own genetic children. If her husband became emotionally involved with another woman, on the other hand, such affective infidelity would signal the long-term diversion to that other woman of her husband’s energy, commitments, and investments, and hence would be more reproductively costly.

If these selection pressures recurred over human evolutionary history, selection could have created decision-rules to forgive or break up depending on specific features of context such as the nature of the infidelity and the sex of the person committing the infidelity. [...]

The results of this research support the hypothesis that forgiveness or breakup depends on the sex of the respondent and the nature of the infidelity. Men, relative to women: (a) find it more difficult to forgive a partner’s sexual infidelity than a partner’s emotional infidelity; and (b) are more likely to break up in response to a partner’s sexual infidelity than in response to a partner’s emotional infidelity. Conversely, women, relative to men, find it more difficult to forgive and are more likely to break up with a partner who is emotionally unfaithful. These sex differences remain even after controlling for effects attributable to ethnicity and to age. Over human evolutionary history, both sexes incurred reproductive costs as a result of
a partner’s sexual infidelity and emotional infidelity. These costs are sex-differentiated, however. A partner’s sexual infidelity placed men, but not women, at risk of investing resources in a rival’s offspring. A partner’s sexual infidelity therefore represents a potentially more costly adaptive problem for men than for women. Modern men have psychological mechanisms that are exquisitely sensitive to a partner’s sexual infidelity (Buss et al., 1992; Daly & Wilson, 1988).

Women also are sensitive to a partner’s sexual infidelity, but accumulating evidence suggests that women become more upset in response to a partner’s emotional infidelity, which signals the long-term diversion of a partner’s commitment and investment (Buss et al., 1992; Buunk et al., 1996; DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Geary et al., 1995; Wiederman & Allgeier, 1993; Wiederman & Kendall,
1999).

Not that is a much better post on cheating.

Husband's employment status threatens marriage, but wife's does not, study finds

I am losing track where I get my links from. Anyhow scientific stuff and Feck is interested:

According to the study, a woman's employment status has no effect on the likelihood that her husband will opt to leave the marriage. An employed woman is more likely to initiate a divorce than a woman who is not employed, but only when she reports being highly unsatisfied with the marriage.

[...]For a man, not being employed not only increases the chances that his wife will initiate divorce, but also that he will be the one who opts to leave. Even men who are relatively happy in their marriages are more likely to leave if they are not employed, the research found.

Taken together, the findings suggest an "asymmetric" change in traditional gender roles in marriage, the researchers say.

That men who are not employed, regardless of their marital satisfaction, are more likely to initiate divorce suggests that a marriage in which the man does not work "does not look like what [men] think a marriage is supposed to," the researchers write. In contrast, women's employment alone does not encourage divorce initiated by either party. That implies that a woman's choice to enter the workforce is not a violation of any marriage norms. Rather, being employed merely provides financial security that enables a woman to leave when all else fails.

"These effects probably emanate from the greater change in women's than men's roles," the researchers write. "Women's employment has increased and is accepted, men's nonemployment is unacceptable to many, and there is a cultural ambivalence and lack of institutional support for men taking on 'feminized' roles such as household work and emotional support."

The research used data on over 3,600 couples taken from three waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Waves were conducted in 1987-88, 1992-94, and 2001-2

Liana C. Sayer, Paula England, Paul Allison, and Nicole Kangas. She Left, He Left: How Employment and Satisfaction Affect Men's and Women's Decisions to Leave Marriages. American Journal of Sociology, 2011

An example of female privilege or who has the upper hand in relationships?

Read this and tell me if you see anything wrong with it?

A few years ago she had a baby – a beautiful strong-minded little girl – and after much toss and turn – she decided that she was not going to return to work as a teacher. So now she is a stay at home mom. [...] This is like the best mom ever, a woman who studies and thinks out all her moves as a mom – what food her daughter should eat, what fabrics should be close to her skin, how much television is too much television – or is she better off with non at all? This woman who washes her own diapers because she’s worried about the earth and yes, she has a partner – who happens to be a man – who works day and night so that she can stay home and raise their daughter in the way she thinks is best. This is a job, and important one, is it not? It is also a job she loves and one that she feels has great meaning for her.

She decides that she stays at home and raises their daughter in a way she thinks is best. A job she loves and has great meaning for her and well, he works day and night to make that happen. Good for her it seems.

I am not saying anything about the relationship at question. I don't know how they came to the conclusion how to live their life. [EDIT: Feministcupcake made it clear in the comments that their friends have an egalitarian relationship] The way the author writes about her friend makes it seem as there is no "we" in this relationship. The role of the father is down-played (she raises their daughter in a way she thinks is best) and it seems he has no say in the matter at all (her decision) and just has to work to make it happen.

When it comes to relationships it seems women have the upper hand, or society expects women to have the upper hand or the final say. This goes beyond stereotypes of nagging women:

Of the 1,260 men and women whom Pew pollsters surveyed over the summer [in 2008], 43% responded that the woman makes most of the major decisions for the family, with 31% saying that the couple makes most decisions together. There was a small difference (within the margin of error) between the control exerted by wives who earn more than their husbands and those who earn less (46% versus 42%). But in both cases, women wielded sole decision-making power far more than men did, indicating that what "father knows best" is when to defer to mom.

Certainly that was what University of Iowa researchers found last year [2007] when they measured how couples negotiate conflict over household decisions. That study not only confirmed that men will usually go along with their wives but found that when couples do disagree, wives are far more persuasive than husbands in changing their spouses' minds.

[... T]he researchers saw that when spouses engaged in debate, the women gained more ground than their husbands did. "[The women] were communicating more powerful messages and men were responding to those messages by agreeing," Mr. Vogel stated in a press release.

The hypothesis that men hold more sway in relationships because they typically make more money didn't play out.

If a bigger paycheck did mean more power in any area of family decision making, the most likely one would be finances. But even there women are in charge, with more women than men in the Pew survey saying that they manage the couple's budget and wives in the Iowa study winning out over husbands in money disagreements. According to Pew, 45% of women said they hold the family purse strings compared to 37% of men.

This despite two-thirds of the couples reporting that the man had the higher income. In fact, in recent years a substantial amount of research has shown that wives lose some of their household decision-making power when they earn more than their husbands, possibly because by spending fewer hours in the home they forfeit claims to certain household "expertise."

[.. A]dvertisers have been tracking the buying habits of American families since the 1940s. What they have found is that women made more of the household purchasing decisions before the advent of the feminist movement and that they make more of the purchasing decisions now, regardless of how big or small their paychecks are. These marketing surveys have been remarkably consistent, and they haven't changed much in the past 60 years.

To be fair, many of the scholarly studies' conclusions include a "final say" contingency -- many husbands claim that they have veto power when they feel very strongly about an issue. But consumer research shows that with the exception of what car to buy and when to buy it, men rarely claim strong enough feelings to override their wives.

"Across all decision-making realms, it tilts to the woman," noted Rich Morin, the Pew study's lead author. "I was surprised by the percentage of men who made none of the decisions in any of the areas. A significant percentage were just bystanders."

[...] The general consensus of sociologists is that, whereas a woman's marital satisfaction is dependent on a combination of economic, emotional and psychological realities, a man's marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is. Working within this framework, most husbands are unwilling to dig in their heels on any issue unless they have a tremendous incentive to do so.

Warren Farrell wrote about this, too. From "Women can´t hear what men don´t say" [p.21-22]:

Researchers find that when only one sex expresses argument-provoking feelings, it is likely to be the wife - by a ratio of almost six to one (85 percent vs 15 percent). When both sexes participate but one dominates, women are about twice as likely to dominate. Overall, women are more willing to initiate conflict, no willing to escalate conflict, better able to handle it when it occurs, and, when they have initiated it, are quicker to get over it.

These findings come from numerous sources. They are found among couples of high, medium, and low socio-economic status. They are found using a variety of methodologies: the couples at themselves acknowledge the gap, and, much more reliably, researchers who systematically observe couples verify the couple's own assessments.

Probably the most respected researcher in the field is John Gottman at the University of Washington. He records pulse rates, heart output, skin conductance, and other indicators of stress. Then he videotapes the couples to observe facial expressions and body language. He does not ask the couples to fight, since that would be artificial. Instead, he basically works with the couple and when a major air are of disagreement naturally even though this, he asks them to discuss it and attempts to resolve it. When a fight naturally occurs, the equipment is there to record it.

Gottman found that men are more intimidated by angry women than women are by angry men. Men are more stressed by marital arguments, while women are more comfortable with emotional confrontation and are better at it.

Even in the feminist movement, the medium is the message: feminists express anger even as the message is that women cannot express anger; men repress anger even as they are judged to be the sex that has no problem expressing it! We often hear we have a battle of the sexes when, in fact, we have a war in which only one side has shown up. (Men put their heads into the sand and hope the bullets will miss!)

Withdrawal is not the way men do battle with men. It is the way men do battle with women. Because the purpose of doing battle with men was to prepare men to protect women from conflict, not to be the source of conflict.

It is kind of funny when you realize that the titel of the first post I linked was "Social Justice is about everyone, isn’t it?". Yes, it is. One day this might include a more egalitarian view of relationships.