Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 4:06 pm Post subject: Unfaithful women beware - men know. Or do they? |
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Unfaithful women beware - men know
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Women watch out. New research shows men are better at detecting a cheating partner than females, and they're more likely to suspect infidelities that don't exist.
A US study of heterosexual couples has found that men are the more suspicious of the sexes when it comes to straying, but a leading Australian sex researcher says they are only more suspecting because they are more likely to cheat.
"What we have here is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black," said Sydney therapist Dr Rosie King.
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond gave confidential questionnaires to 203 young couples, asking them whether they had ever strayed, and whether they suspected or knew their partner had strayed.
The results, published in New Scientist magazine, show 29 per cent of men admitted they had cheated compared with 18.5 per cent of women.
Lead researcher Paul Andrews said the men were better at judging fidelity than women.
"Eighty per cent of women's inferences about fidelity or infidelity were correct, but men were even better, accurate 94 per cent of the time," Dr Andrews said.
Men were also more likely to catch out a cheating partner, picking up on 75 per cent of the reported infidelities compared with 41 per cent discovered by women.
Men were also more likely to suspect infidelity when there was none.
The researchers said this high level of suspicion was helpful in an evolutionary sense, because men have more at stake from a women straying.
"When a female partner is unfaithful, a man may himself lose the opportunity to reproduce, and find himself investing his resources in raising the offspring of another man," Dr Andrews told the magazine.
Dr King said she believed men had heightened suspicions simply because they were the bigger cheaters and were more aware of the temptations.
"They're getting very busy seeking outside sexual activity so they're more likely to suspect their partner is doing the same."
She said Australian research had found men were not naturally intuitive, making it "doubtful" they could detect infidelity in women.
"Men are not good at reading body language or picking up non-verbal cues in the way that women are," Dr King said. |
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