GENDER, JEALOUSY, AND REASON

Research has suggested that men are especially bothered by evidence of their partner's sexual infidelity, whereas women are troubled more by evidence of emotional infidelity. One evolutionary account (Buss, Lar sen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992) argues that this is an innate differe nce, arising from men's need for paternity certainty and women's need for male investment in their offspring. We suggest that the difference may instead be based on reasonable differences between the sexes in h ow they interpret evidence of infidelity. A man, thinking that women h ave sex only when in love, has reason to believe that if his male has sex with another man, she is in love with that other. A,woman, thinkin g that men can have sex without love, should still be bother ed by sex ual infidelity, but less so because it does not imply that her mate ha s fallen in love as well. A survey of 137 subjects confirmed that men and women do differ in the predicted direction in how much they think each form of infidelity implies the other; proposing innate emotional differences may, therefore, be gratuitous.