Women,
however, were less likely to forgive and forget if their boyfriend had been
with another man, the University of Texas at Austin study showed.
Researchers
asked 718 college students to imagine being in a long-term relationship and
what their reactions would be to several different cheating scenarios.
They
found that overall, 50 percent of men would likely continue a relationship with
a woman who had a dalliance with another woman, while 22 percent said they
could forgive betrayal with another man.
For
women, the results were reversed. If their boyfriend cheated with another
woman, 28 percent said they'd keep him around, but only 21 percent said they
would if he cheated with another man.
Published
this month in the journal "Personality and Individual Differences,"
the study concluded the participant's reactions were based on basic jealousy
instincts.
"A
robust jealousy mechanism is activated in men and women by different types of
cues — those that threaten paternity in men and those that threaten abandonment
in women," said Jaime Confer, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate
in evolutionary psychology.
Men, they
said, felt more threatened by a rival male because of paternity uncertainty,
whereas they saw a female partner's homosexual affair as "an opportunity
to mate with more than one woman simultaneously, satisfying men's greater
desire for more partners." Mark Cloud, one of the study co-authors,
stressed in an interview that the homosexual infidelity scenario they asked
participants to imagine was very rare in reality.
So, the
researchers asked participants about their real experiences with cheating.
There again, men showed less tolerance of cheating than women.
"Men
were significantly more likely than women to have ended their actual
relationships following a partner's affair," according to the study.
