Men cheat on their partners more than women because they experience a stronger sexual impulse, according to a new study.
Playing the blame game is common in relationships when it comes to cheating. However, previous studies have proven that men cheat more than women. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin conducted a study to analyze why this is so. The researchers concluded that there could be two possibilities. The first one was that men experienced stronger sexual impulses than women and the second that women had stronger self-control than men. After conducting the study, researchers found the former one to be true.
In the study, researchers examined 70 male and 148 female participants from the United States. All participants were asked to recall and narrate an incident where they felt an attraction to an unavailable or incompatible member of the opposite sex. They were then asked to answer a questionnaire, which measured sexual impulse, attempts to intentionally control the sexual impulse, and resultant behaviors.
"When men reflected on their past sexual behavior, they reported experiencing relatively stronger impulses and acting on those impulses more than women did," Natasha Tidwell, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Texas A&M University said in a press release.
Men and women showed the same results when they exerted self-control.
"When men and women said they actually did exert self-control in sexual situations, impulse strength didn't predict how much either sex would actually engage in 'off-limits' sex," added Tidwell. "Men have plenty of self-control - just as much as women. However, if men fail to use self-control, their sexual impulses can be quite strong. This is often the situation when cheating occurs."
Researchers conducted a further experiment to determine the relationship between the strength of sexual impulse relative to the strength of impulse control. For this, they examined 326 undergraduate men and 274 undergraduate women.
All participants were shown pictures of the opposite sex. Each picture was tagged with a computer generated prompt that either said "good for you" or "bad for you" desirable and non-desirable images. In one part of the experiment, all participants were asked to accept desirable and reject non-desirable pictures. In the second part of the experiment, they were asked to reject desirable and accept non-desirable images.
Researchers observed that men had a tougher time rejecting desirable images of the opposite sex than women.
