Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Slutology.*

A drop in the usual tone of this blog.

The science of Slutology continues to advance and here I present another interesting paper worth perusing.

Attractiveness and Spousal Infidelity as Predictors of Infidelity in Couples from Five Cultures.

Nothing here that's new under the sun but it's nice to see science proving what common sense asserts. Some choice quotes from the paper:
This  wide  variation  in  reports  of  frequency  of  infidelity  and  non-paternity  may reflect differences in  reporting  accuracy  regarding  these  delicate matters.  In  a  US  study, women  (but  not  men)  tended  to  underreport  their  number  of  sex  partners  unless  they believed  lying could be detected (Alexander  & Fisher, 2003). Another  study of American women  found  that  when  asked  face-to-face about  number  of sexual  intercourse  partners in  the  past  year,  1.08%  of  married  women  reported infidelity  whereas  when  the  same question  was  asked  through  a  computer  questionnaire,  6.13%  of  the  married  women reported  having sexual  intercourse with  more than  one man  (Whisman  & Snyder, 2007). [Ed: Ouch! That's almost a sixfold increase!]
Values: Smith (1994)   found  permissive  sexual   values  to   be  associated   with infidelity.   Over   three-quarters   of   Americans  who   did   not   think  extramarital   sexual relations  are  “always  wrong”  reported  engaging  in  infidelity,  whereas  those  who  said  it was  “always  wrong”  reported  a  10%  rate.  Being  politically  liberal,  highly  educated,  and sexually  permissive  before  marriage  was  related  to  casual  sexual  mores.  At  least  two studies  have discovered  that  the more  religious  people were, the less likely  they reported engaging in  extramarital sexual relations (Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Whisman  &  Snyder,  2007)
Physical attractiveness, as determined by independent raters, was not a predictor of the number of times US college women engaged in extra-pair sex [ED](Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997). In fact, women with low self-esteem tended to have had more sex partners and one-night stands (Mikach & Bailey, 1999). Similarly, adolescent girls who had had many sex partners rather than few or none tended to have lower self-esteem and more depression (Spencer et al., 2002). 
One factor that seems to affect infidelity across cultures is low paternal investment. For example, in matrilineal societies paternal investment typically is low, often giving rise to the  avunculate, and infidelity and divorce tend to be common (Daly, Wilson, 1983; van den Berghe, 1979). Similarly, where the wife is relatively independent economically of the husband, marital bonds tend to be weak (Friedl, 1975; Goode, 1993; Seccombe & Lee, 1987) and infidelity by the wife is relatively common (van den Berghe, 1979).
Nothing is certain in life and picking a good partner is hard but an attractive girl, who loves her daddy, and is from a good, stable, conservative-religous family is a pretty safe bet.

*Hat Tip to Randall Parker for the term. Though he uses tt". i.e. Sluttology