Why Men Cheat More Than Women
Apparently,
it’s not just the stuff of movies and political scandals. It seems that
men really do earn their reputation for infidelity.
But
what no one has bothered to figure out is why so many men have such a
tough time keeping it in their pants. Are cheaters like Tiger Woods
lacking in self-discipline—or so highly arouséd
they can’t help but give in to temptation? Well, at long last,
researchers have tackled this issue and have come up with some answers.
According to a study just published in Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, men cheat more often than women, not because they have less
self-control, but because their séxual urges are just too strong to resist.
The
researchers conducted two different experiments before reaching this
conclusion. In the first, 70 male and 148 female participants were asked
to recall and describe an attraction to a tempting, but forbidden,
potential partner. Then they answered a series of questions that
measured the strength of their séxual
impulse, attempts to control those impulses and the resulting behavior.
Not surprisingly, the men not only experienced stronger impulses, but
also acted on them more often than the women.
In the second experiment, 600 participants (326 men, 274 women) were shown a series of images of the opposite séx
that were labeled either “good for you” or “bad for you,” with
instructions to accept or reject them. Some trials asked them to accept
the desirable images, but in others, subjects were asked to go against
their inclinations and accept the undesirable ones. But regardless of
the instructions, men exhibited a much stronger impulse to accept the
desirable partners—and overall performed worse on the task than did the
women in the study.
According
to the study authors, men and women do not really differ in their
levels of self control. When the men bothered to exert their self
control, they were no more prone to inappropriate séxual behavior than the women. But they did exhibit stronger séxual impulses. “Overall, these studies suggest that men are more likely to give in to séxual temptations because they tend to have stronger séxual impulse strength than women do,” wrote study co-author Natasha Tidwell.
In other words, guys apparently now have scientific validation for the old excuse, “I just couldn’t help myself.”
Source: MSN
