تسکین بیش از حد عدم تایید چشم انداز خیانت جنسی و عاطفی

Two studies tested the predictions that the disconfirmation of the prospect of a mate’s sexual infidelity generates more intense relief in men than in women, whereas the disconfirmation of the prospect of a mate’s emotional infidelity generates more intense relief in women than in men. Additionally, the intensity of relief was predicted to increase with the likelihood of infidelity. The participants indicated their relief over the disconfirmation of the prospect of sexual and emotional infidelity in a forced-choice response format and on separate rating scales. As predicted, more women than men indicated that they would be more relieved about the disconfirmation of the prospect of emotional infidelity. Ratings of the intensity of relief consistently confirmed the prediction that men are more relieved than women about the disconfirmation of the prospect of sexual infidelity. Additionally, women consistently reported more relief about the disconfirmation of emotional than of sexual infidelity. The impact of the likelihood of infidelity on relief was negligible. Limitations and implications of the present study are discussed.

Evolutionary psychologists view jealousy as a psychological mechanism that evolved because it recurrently solved an essential problem of individual reproduction in our evolutionary history: infidelity in reproductive relationships (Buss et al., 1992, Daly et al., 1982 and Symons, 1979). A distinctive feature of the evolutionary view is the assumption that men’s and women’s jealousy mechanisms differ because they evolved to solve different adaptive problems. More precisely, according to the evolutionary view the male adaptive problem originates from internal female fertilization and post-zygotic biparental investment (e.g., Buss, 2004 and Trivers, 1972). As a consequence of internal female fertilization, men are confronted with paternity uncertainty. Hence, a woman’s sexual infidelity could reduce a man’s reproductive success because it deprives him of a reproductive opportunity and he risks investing limited paternal resources for the benefit of genetically unrelated offspring. This risk may be signaled by cues to her sexual infidelity. Women, in contrast, could always be certain of their maternity, thus eliminating the risk of inadvertently investing resources in another woman’s offspring. However, a woman’s reproductive success is endangered if she loses her mate’s resources and assistance in raising her offspring. A man’s mere sexual infidelity does not necessarily imply a risk in terms of the woman losing his resources and assistance. Rather, women risked losing a man’s investment if he developed a deep emotional attachment to another mate to whom his resources could be channeled on a long-term basis. This resource threat may be signaled by his level of emotional attachment to the other female. To ward off these sex-specific threats to individual reproduction, jealousy can be viewed as an evolved predisposition that in men, more than in women, is particularly concerned with sexual infidelity and a corresponding evolved predisposition that in women, more than in men, is particularly concerned with emotional infidelity (e.g., Buss & Haselton, 2005). The evolutionary view of a sex-specific evolved jealousy mechanism spawned an impressive body of research during the past 15 years that has been primarily devoted to testing the hypothesis that women respond with stronger negative emotions than men to a mate’s emotional infidelity whereas men respond with stronger negative emotions than women to a mate’s sexual infidelity. This hypothesis was primarily tested by men’s and women’s self-reports about the strength of the jealousy response elicited by a mate’s sexual and emotional infidelity. Basically, two response formats have been used to assess these self-reports. The most widely used response format is a forced-choice between two response alternatives (e.g., Buss et al., 1992, Buss et al., 1999, Buunk et al., 1996, DeSteno and Salovey, 1996, Harris and Christenfeld, 1996, Pietrzak et al., 2002, Sagarin et al., 2003, Schützwohl, 2004 and Wiederman and Kendall, 1999). More precisely, in each of these studies, the participants had to indicate whether a mate’s sexual or emotional infidelity would cause more intense negative emotional reactions. Across different cultures, a vast majority of women consistently chose emotional infidelity as more distressing or upsetting. In addition, men more often than women chose sexual infidelity as the infidelity type that would distress or upset them more. However, unlike women‘s preference, the men‘s preference for the predicted infidelity event (a) was less pronounced, (b) varied across cultures (e.g., Buunk et al., 1996 and Geary et al., 1995), and (c) increased with the experience of a committed sexual relationship (Buss et al., 1992, Study 3) and infidelity experience (Sagarin et al., 2003; for reviews see Harris, 2003, Hofhansl et al., 2004 and Penke and Asendorpf, in press). The second response format used are continuous ratings of emotion intensity elicited by sexual and emotional infidelity. In contrast to the forced-choice response format, continuous ratings yielded less consistent results (Harris, 2003 and Sagarin, 2005). To illustrate, Pietrzak et al., 2002, Sagarin et al., 2003 and Bohner and Wänke, 2004 as well as Edlund, Heider, Scherer, Farc, and Sagarin (2006) reported the sex differences predicted by the evolutionary view of jealousy with respect to a mate‘s hypothetical infidelity. In contrast, DeSteno, Bartlett, Braverman, and Salovey (2002, Study 1) using multiple continuous response formats consistently found that both men and women reported more intense negative emotions in response to a mate‘s hypothetical sexual infidelity. Similarly, Sabini and Green, 2004 and Sabini and Green, 2006 reported that both men and women rated the emotional impact of sexual infidelity greater than the import of emotional infidelity for being upset, angry and hurt. However, a peculiarity of the Sabini and Green (2004) study is that their participants had to first rate how blameworthy the partner was for his (her) sexual or emotional infidelity, respectively. As the authors convincingly argue, a partner is to blame for an action for which he or she is responsible (like having sexual intercourse with another person), but not for an emotion that comes upon us unbidden (like falling in love with another person; see also Weiner (1995)). Thus, ratings of blameworthiness might have set an anchor for the immediately following ratings of upset, angry and hurt. Interestingly, however, explicit ratings of jealousy (Sabini & Green, 2004, Study 3) marginally produced the interaction between sex and infidelity type predicted by the evolutionary view. Similar reservations also apply to Sabini and Green (2006) in which they again asked for ratings of upset, angry, hurt and blame but omitted explicit ratings of jealousy. Moreover, Edlund et al. (2006) point out that these failures to support the evolutionary view of jealousy might be attributable to a ceiling effect because these studies were using narrow rating scales, thus artificially confining the participants’ response options. In contrast to the research reviewed above, the present study focuses not on the emotional responses to infidelity, but on the emotional responses to the disconfirmation of the prospect of a mate’s infidelity. The predominant emotional response to the disconfirmation of the prospect of a mate’s infidelity consists of relief. I argue that the emotional response of relief is an important aspect of the proper functioning of the jealousy mechanism. If the jealousy mechanism would exclusively detect and respond to cues signaling a mate’s infidelity and at the same time would fail to detect and respond adequately to cues disconfirming the prospect of a mate’s infidelity (e.g., cues to fidelity) then the jealousy mechanism would most likely promote a distorted assessment of a mate’s infidelity, resulting in inadequate cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses. These inadequate responses would of course only unnecessarily strain the relationship and much time and energy might be wasted in attempting to eliminate a false threat (Kingham & Gordon, 2004). Thus, for a balanced estimate of a partner’s (in)fidelity and adequate regulatory processes, the jealousy mechanism needs to detect and respond to cues disconfirming the prospect of a mate’s infidelity and respond to them with relief. Two major determinants of the intensity of relief are (a) the degree to which the event is undesirable and (b) the likelihood of the event (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988). Specifically, relief is assumed to increase with both the undesirability and the likelihood of the event. Because a mate’s sexual infidelity is more undesirable for men than for women, the disconfirmation of the prospect of a mate’s sexual infidelity is predicted to generate more intense relief in men than in women. Conversely, because a mate’s emotional infidelity is more undesirable for women than for men, the disconfirmation of the prospect of a mate’s emotional infidelity is predicted to generate more intense relief in women than in men. Finally, the intensity of relief is predicted to increase with the likelihood of a mate’s infidelity. These predictions were tested in two studies. In Study 1, the participants had to indicate whether they would be more relieved to find out that their partner had not been sexually but emotionally unfaithful or vice versa while the likelihood of the two infidelity types was held constant. Additionally, the intensity of relief had to be rated on separate rating scales for both response options. Study 2 additionally tested the impact of a high versus low likelihood of both infidelity types on the intensity of relief.