Those who are cheated on experience a great amount of anxiety, stress and depression. Shrout was among researchers who conducted a study based on the hypothesis that people experiencing those emotions because of an infidelity are more likely to engage in activities that are a health risk.
The experiment Shrout and her colleagues conducted validated their hypothesis, showing a direct link between emotions caused by infidelity and an increase in dangerous behaviors.
Being cheated on seems to not only to have mental health consequences, but also increases risky behaviors. The study examined the link between the emotional distress caused by infidelity and health-compromising behaviors, perception of blame and self-esteem, and the differences in the reactions of men and women. Not only did they prove the connection between the distress and risky behavior, but they also found that those who blamed themselves for their partners unfaithfulness were also more like to participate in risky behavior.
The researchers proved the more distress you feel the more likely the individual is to take part in unhealthy acts and the more the victim blamed themselves the more distress they experienced. Shrout's study concluded that women who experienced negative appraisals, like self-blame and causal attribution, led to emotional distress and increased health-compromising behavior. However, women are more affected than men.
This is due perception; women perceive relationships as more of a priority and are usually more emotionally attached. Shrout and her team in Reno's initial hypothesis was proven: In addition to the behaviors first examined, such as depriving themselves of food and nutrients, consuming alcohol or using drugs more often, increased sexual activity, having sex under the influence of drugs or alcohol or over-exercising, people also felt a loss of trust that expands beyond romantic relationships. Victims can become strained from their family members. Several emotions are present after the act of infidelity.
Jealousy is a common emotion after infidelity. The definition of jealousy is the feeling or showing suspicion of someone's unfaithfulness in a relationship or losing something or someone's attention. Individual differences were predictors of jealousy, which differed for men and women. Predictors for men were sex drive, attachment avoidance and previous acts of infidelity. Predictors for women were sex drive and relationship status. Attachment and sexual motivations likely influence the evolved jealousy mechanism. Men responded with greater self-reported jealousy and psychological distress when imagining their partner in Extra-pair copulation , whereas, women were more upset by the thoughts of an emotionally unfaithful partner.
Group differences were also found, with women responding with stronger emotions to emotional and sexual infidelity than men. Heterosexuals valued emotional and sexual infidelity as more emotionally draining than homosexuals individuals did. Summarizing the findings from studies, heterosexual men seem to be more distressed by sexual infidelity than heterosexual women, lesbian women, and gay men.
After infidelity stress was present.
The imbalance causes jealousy in unfaithful relationships and jealousy remained after the relationship concluded. Women displayed an insecure long-term mating response. Lack of self-worth is evident after the infidelity in the daily life and involvement. Studies have found that men are more likely to engage in extramarital sex if they are unsatisfied sexually, while women are more likely to engage in extramarital sex if they are unsatisfied emotionally.
Anthropologists tend to believe humans are neither completely monogamous nor completely polygamous. Anthropologist Bobbi Low says we are "slightly polygamous"; while Deborah Blum believes we are "ambiguously monogamous," and slowly moving away from the polygamous habits of our evolutionary ancestors. According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, there are numerous psychological reasons for adultery.
Some people may want to supplement a marriage, solve a sex problem, gather more attention, seek revenge, or have more excitement in the marriage. But based on Fisher's research, there also is a biological side to adultery. Often, gender differences in both jealousy and infidelity are attributable to cultural factors. This variation stems from the fact that societies differ in how they view extramarital affairs and jealousy.
Therefore, when an individual feels jealousy towards another, it is usually because they are now sharing their primary source of attention and satisfaction. However, variation can be seen when identifying the behaviors and actions that betray the role of primary attention satisfaction giver. For instance, in certain cultures if an individual goes out with another of the opposite gender, emotions of intense jealousy can result; however, in other cultures, this behavior is perfectly acceptable and is not given much thought.
It is important to understand where these cultural variations come from and how they root themselves into differing perceptions of infidelity. While many cultures report infidelity as wrong and admonish it, some are more tolerant of such behaviour. These views are generally linked to the overall liberal nature of the society. For instance, Danish society is viewed as more liberal than many other cultures, and as such, have correlating liberal views on infidelity and extramarital affairs.
In Danish society, having sex does not necessarily imply a deep emotional attachment. As a result, infidelity does not carry such a severe negative connotation. The cultural difference is most likely due to the more restrictive nature of Chinese society, thus, making infidelity a more salient concern. Sexual promiscuity is more prominent in the United States, thus it follows that American society is more preoccupied with infidelity than Chinese society.
Even within Christianity in the United States , there are discrepancies as to how extramarital affairs are viewed. For instance, Protestants and Catholics do not view infidelity with equal severity.
The conception of marriage is also markedly different; while in Roman Catholicism marriage is seen as an indissoluble sacramental bond and does not permit divorce even in cases of infidelity, most Protestant denominations allow for divorce and remarriage for infidelity or other reasons. Ultimately, it was seen that adults that associated with a religion any denomination were found to view infidelity as much more distressing than those who were not affiliated with a religion.
Those that participated more heavily in their religions were even more conservative in their views on infidelity. Some research has also suggested that being African American has a positive correlation to infidelity, even when education attainment is controlled for. For example, Schmitt discusses how tribal cultures with higher pathogen stress are more likely to have polygynous marriage systems; whereas monogamous mating systems usually have relatively lower high-pathogen environments. Strategic pluralism is a theory that focuses on how environmental factors influence mating strategies.
According to this theory, when people live within environments that are demanding and stressful, the need for bi-parental care is greater for increasing the survival of offspring. Correspondingly, monogamy and commitment are more commonplace. On the other hand, when people live within environments that encompass little stress and threats to the viability of offspring, the need for serious and committed relations is lowered, and therefore promiscuity and infidelity are more common.
Sex-ratio theory is a theory that explains the relationship and sexual dynamics within different areas of the world based on the ratio of the number of marriage-aged men to marriage-aged women. According to this theory, an area has a high sex ratio when there is a higher number of marriage-aged women to marriage-aged men and an area has a low sex ratio when there are more marriage-aged men. On the other hand, when sex ratios are low, promiscuity is less common because women are in demand and since they desire monogamy and commitment, in order for men to remain competitive in the pool of mates, they must respond to these desires.
Support for this theory comes from evidence showing higher divorce rates in countries with higher sex ratios and higher monogamy rates in countries with lower sex ratios. While infidelity is by no means exclusive to certain groups of people, its perception can be influenced by other factors. Furthermore, within a "homogeneous culture," like that in the United States, factors like community size can be strong predictors of how infidelity is perceived.
Larger communities tend to care less about infidelity whereas small towns are much more concerned with such issues. For example, a cantina in a small, rural Mexican community is often viewed as a place where "decent" or "married" women do not go because of its semi-private nature. Conversely, public spaces like the market or plaza are acceptable areas for heterosexual interaction. A smaller population size presents the threat of being publicly recognized for infidelity.
However, within a larger community of the same Mexican society, entering a bar or watering hole would garner a different view. It would be deemed perfectly acceptable for both married and unmarried individuals to drink at a bar in a large city. These observations can be paralleled to rural and urban societies in the United States as well. According to a survey of 16, individuals in 53 countries by David Schmitt , mate poaching happens significantly more frequently in Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey and Lebanon , and less frequently in East Asian countries such as China and Japan.
The parental investment theory is used to explain evolutionary pressures that can account for sex differences in infidelity. This theory states that the sex that invests less in the offspring has more to gain from indiscriminate sexual behaviour. This means that women, who typically invest more time and energy into raising their offspring 9 months of carrying offspring, breast feeding etc.
Men on the other hand, have less parental investment and so they are driven towards indiscriminate sexual activity with multiple partners as such activity increases the likelihood of their reproduction. It can however, still account for the occurrence of extradyadic sexual relationships among women. For example, a woman whose husband has fertilization difficulties can benefit from engaging in sexual activity outside of her relationship.
She can gain access to high-quality genes and still derive the benefit of parental investment from her husband or partner who is unknowingly investing in their illegitimate child. One defense mechanism that some researchers believe is effective at preventing infidelity is jealousy. Jealousy is an emotion that can elicit strong responses. Cases have been commonly documented where sexual jealousy was a direct cause of murders and morbid jealousy.
Looking at jealousy's physiological mechanism offers support for this idea. Jealousy is a form of stress response which has been shown to activate the sympathetic nervous system by increasing heart rate , blood pressure , and respiration. Because infidelity imposed such a fitness cost, those who had the jealous emotional response, improved their fitness, and could pass down the jealousy module to the next generation. Another defense mechanism for preventing infidelity is by social monitoring and acting on any violation of expectations.
Researchers in favor of this defense mechanism speculate that in our ancestor's times, the act of sex or emotional infidelity is what triggered jealousy and therefore the signal detection would have happened only after infidelity had occurred, making jealousy an emotional by-product with no selective function. A more recently suggested defense mechanism of infidelity attracting more attention is that a particular social group will punish cheaters by damaging their reputation.