Sex differences in subjective distress to violations of trust: Extending an evolutionary perspective

Sex differences in subjective distress were observed when men and women wer e asked to imagine their partners being emotionally or sexually unfaithful. Additional sex-linked "violations of trust," such as threats to the couple s' economic security or threats to a partner's attractiveness, also were in vestigated. In Study 1 (60 men, 60 women) and Study 2 (45 men, 43 women), w omen were more distressed than men by emotional infidelity and by other fem ale-linked violations (e.g., partner losing a job), and men were more distr essed than women by sexual infidelity and by other male-linked violations ( e.g., partner gaining a considerable amount of weight). Study 3 (30 men, 30 women) examined the possibility that the sex differences in distress refle cted within-sex learned relationships among the violations rather than evol ved sexual strategies. An evolutionary perspective, in contrast to the alte rnative analysis, provided parsimonious explanations of the sex differences in subjective distress to emotional and sexual infidelity, and to the othe r sex-linked violations of trust.