Friend vs. Self: Memories of Discovering Infidelity

Indianapolis, IN

When discovering that a romantic partner is cheating, varying levels of arousal result depending on whether the male or female was sexually, or emotionally cheating. According to Schützwhol (2005), an evolved jealousy mechanism is a plausible psychological adaptation to infidelity. As a result, different types of infidelity affect genders differently – men recall more about a partner's sexual infidelity and women recall more about a partner's emotional infidelity. If as Fisher, et al, (2013) claimed, this effect was due to an evolutionary mechanism then when infidelity did not threaten their own fitness, then the effect should disappear. This study tested the memories of two different victim groups (self vs. friend) on their discovery of infidelity, either sexual or emotional.Subjects recalled being a victim of infidelity (n_self=149) or a friend's victimization by infidelity ( n_friend=71) . Participants recalled the discovery of their partner's cheating better than a friend's victimization. Males recalled discovering their partner's sexual infidelity best whereas females recalled emotional infidelity best only when they were the victim.