UNFAITHFUL women beware. Chances are your male partner is on your case. In fact, he is likely to suspect infidelities even when you have kept to the straight and narrow. The flip side is that to counter this constant vigilance, women may be better than men at concealing illicit liaisons.
Paul Andrews at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and colleagues gave 203 young heterosexual couples confidential questionnaires asking them whether they had ever strayed, and whether they suspected or knew their partner had strayed. In this, 29 per cent of men said they had cheated, compared with 18.5 per cent of women.
The men were better than women at judging fidelity. 鈥淓ighty per cent of women鈥檚 inferences about fidelity or infidelity were correct, but men were even better, accurate 94 per cent of the time,鈥� says Andrews. They were also more likely to catch out a cheating partner, detecting 75 per cent of the reported infidelities compared with 41 per cent discovered by women . However, men were also more likely to suspect infidelity when there was none.
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鈥淢en were more likely to catch out a cheating partner 鈥� and also to suspect infidelity when there was none鈥�
Andrews says this makes evolutionary sense because unlike women, men can never be certain a baby is theirs. 鈥淢en have far more at stake,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen 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.鈥�
鈥淭his adds to the evidence that men have evolved defences to detect their partner鈥檚 infidelity,鈥� says David Buss at the University of Texas, Austin. He adds that it demonstrates a 鈥渇ascinating cognitive bias that leads men to err on the side of caution by overestimating a partner鈥檚 infidelity鈥�.
Andrews suggests that women have countered this by becoming better at covering up affairs. Complex statistical analysis of the data hinted that a further 10 per cent of the women in the study had cheated on top of the 18.5 per cent who admitted to it in the questionnaires, whereas the men had been honest about their philandering.
