Scientists reveal the shocking reason behind why women cheat
Topics: Psychology, Science, Sex and Relationships
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Topics: Psychology, Science, Sex and Relationships
It seems rather harsh delving into the reasons behind why women cheat, especially because countless studies have found that men cheat more.
But that is exactly what we're going to do.
Researchers from the prestigious Oxford University in England and Melbourne University in Australia conducted a pre-registered survey of 254 individuals from 19 countries across six continents who were previously, or currently, engaged in infidelity.
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There were 116 women and 138 men, all of who were in hetrosexual relationships.
The women were each asked to measure their partner's attraction through whether they believe they would make a good parent, how attracted they were to their personality and how physically attractive they are.
Next, they were asked to rate the person whom they had an affair with in the exact same way, and then their scores were compared.
Authors of the study, Macken Murphy, Caroline A. Phillips, and Khandis R. Blake, decided on the questions to seek out answers to their hypotheses.
They wrote: "While scholars largely agree men's infidelity evolved by increasing offspring quantity, the evolutionary drivers of women's infidelity remain debated.
"The 'good genes' (dual mating strategy) hypothesis posits infidelity allows women to pair the preferred genes of an affair partner with the preferred investment of their primary partner (Gangstad & Thornhill, 1998).
"The mate-switching hypothesis instead argues infidelity helps women obtain a new mate without a period of deprivation."
The questionnaire was multiple-choice for the questions of attractiveness.
For an example of what they were ticking off, the responses for the physical attraction question were: 'He was very sexy looking', 'I didn't like the way he looked', 'He was somewhat ugly, 'I thought he was quite handsome', and 'I found him very attractive physically'.
Most of the participants came from three countries - South Africa, with 104, the UK, 40, and 35 from Mexico.
What the researchers discovered, they claim proved the 'good genes' hypothesis to be true.
They concluded: "In support of the 'good genes' hypothesis (Hypothesis 1C), our pre-registered analyses found that women rated their affair partners as significantly more physically attractive but significantly less parentally attractive (i.e., as less desirable to co-parent with).
"Affair partners' average physical attraction score was 1.93 points higher than that of primary partners, while their parental attraction score was 3.33 points lower.
"We found no support for the mate-switching hypothesis, there was no effect of partner type on mate value ratings (counter to Hypothesis 1 A) or personal attraction."
Speaking to Psypost, Murphy, one of the researchers, said: "It might sound funny, but the evolutionary drivers of female infidelity in humans is an area of vigorous debate in my part of academia."
He added: "In a way, there are too many good explanations for it!'