Third-Party Perceptions of Infidelity Based on Gender and Type of Infidelity: Using Same-Sex Couples, Poster 25

Regarding infidelity, general conclusions align with the evolutionary perspective, where men find sexual infidelity more distressing in comparison to women, and women find emotional infidelity more distressing in comparison to... [ view full abstract ]

Regarding infidelity, general conclusions align with the evolutionary perspective, where men find sexual infidelity more distressing in comparison to women, and women find emotional infidelity more distressing in comparison to men. Research on third-party perceptions of infidelity is limited, which is relevant to consider because third-party conclusions are more broadly transferable to clinical application. In this study, third-party perceptions of infidelity are considered to explore whether perceptions change based on the gender of the partner engaging in infidelity and the type of infidelity. The study will be conducted using exclusively same-sex infidelity to provide a more inclusive data set to existing research on heterosexual infidelity. Six possible vignettes are presented to 600 participants (300 men, 300 women) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourced platform for collecting survey data. The vignettes are written in a 2x3 design with one variable being the gender of the partner engaging in the infidelity (male or female partner) and the other variable being the type of infidelity (emotional, sexual or both). The questions following will gauge the participant’s sexual judgment, forgiveness tendencies, and aggression towards the same-sex infidelity. The expected results are male participants will care more about sexual infidelity and female participants will care more about emotional infidelity, compared to each other; sexual judgment will be harsher on female partners engaging in infidelity; male participants will be less forgiving of sexual infidelity and female participants will be less forgiving of emotional infidelity; and female participants will express more anger towards infidelity than male participants.