A new scientific study, aimed at finding out exactly how relationship dynamics work when it comes to cheating, has revealed that men are better than women at detecting when they are cheated on, while women don't figure this out that often, but, instead, are better at hiding their infidelities. The survey was conducted on over 200 young couples, which were handed personal questionnaires on their love life.
A whooping 94 percent of all males were correct in figuring out if their partner had ever deceived them. Also, they proved to be more "paranoid" about relationships, as the study showed that most men suspected their girlfriends were having an affair even when that was not the case. This lack of confidence can be biologically justifiable, say the authors of the study.
Women on the other hand were able to detect some 80 percent of cases when their partners had deceived them. Only 41 percent of the female test subjects caught out a cheating partner, as opposed to 75 percent in male cases. The authors of the study said that 18.5 percent of women in the study reported they had cheated, with an additional 10 percent who believed to have concealed their "escapades."
From an evolutionary perspective, male jealousy and suspicion are well founded, study author Paul Andrews says, because primordial males never knew if the baby they were looking after as their own was actually theirs or not. These traits remained imprinted in the subconscious mind and act as a defense mechanism against losing their ability to pass on their genetic information.
"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. This adds to the evidence that men have evolved defenses to detect their partner's infidelity. [This shows a] fascinating cognitive bias that leads men to err on the side of caution by overestimating a partner's infidelity," David Buss at the University of Texas, in Austin, concluded.
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