imagine you learned your romantic partner was unfaithful to you. would you be more upset if he or she had sex with someone else, or if they had fallen in love with someone else? several studies have found that the answer to that question depends on the your gender. women say they would be more upset if their partner was in love with someone else, but men say they would be more upset if their partner was having sex with someone else.
why the difference? there are a couple explanations. one relies on natural selection: it's important to men to know their genes are being passed on, so sexual infidelity is a bigger problem than romantic infidelity. women, this explanation argues, are certain their children possess their genes, so they are more concerned that a man will use his resources to support the child of another woman. so sleeping with other women is not as bad as falling in love with them.
a second explanation suggests that there's no practical difference between romantic and sexual infidelity. women assume that if a man loves another woman, he's also slept with her. men assume that if a woman has slept with another man, she loves him. this was backed up by a 1996 study by christine harris and nicholas christenfeld. so what's different for men and women is what's implied by "sexual intercourse" and "love," not their level of offense at their partner's behavior. (few of these explanations, by the way, account for same-sex relationships)
more recently, monica whitty and laura-lee quigly wanted to see if similar principles held up cyberspace. does cybersex and cyber-romance show the same gender difference? whitty and quigly surveyed 112 undergraduates with the same questions about sexual and emotional infidelity, but also asked cyber-versions of the same question. so respondents were given four choices to the question of what bothered them the most: a partner in love with someone else, having sex with someone else, in a cyber-romance with someone else, or having cybersex with someone else.
then, for each possible relationship, they also asked whether love implied sex or vice-versa:
* imagine you discover your partner is engaging in sexual intercourse with someone else. how likely do you think it is that your partner is in love with that person?
* imagine you discover your partner has met someone else online and is engaging in cybersex with that person. how likely do you think it is that your partner is in love with that person?
* imagine you discover your partner is in love with someone else. how likely do you think it is that your partner engaging in sexual intercourse with that person?
* imagine you discover your partner is in love with someone else that they have met online, and have never met face-to-face. how likely do you think it is that your partner is engaging in cybersex with that person?
perhaps not surprisingly, not one respondent said that cybersex or cyber-love was the worst type of infidelity. for physical sex and love, the responses broke down as follows:
these results matched the earlier studies: women are more bothered by their male partners' romantic infidelity, and men are more bothered by their female partners' sexual infidelity (all respondents said they were heterosexual).
but when they were asked whether love implies sex and vice versa, the responses differed from earlier studies:
in this study, men's ratings of whether sex implied love were significantly higher than women's ratings, but there was no gender difference in any of the other ratings. that's a sharply different result from harris and christenfeld, who also found that women were more likely to say that love implied sex.
this finding could reveal a flaw in both possible explanations of the gender difference in attitudes toward infidelity. if attitudes toward infidelity are a product of evolution, why would they be different in the two studies? if gender differences in whether sex implies love and vice versa are behind the original result, then why would whitty and quigley find different results than harris and christenfeld?
the results for cyberspace again don't tell us much. there's no significant difference between male and female responses, and it's clear that everyone believes physical infidelity, whether romantic or sexual, is much more serious than the online equivalent.
试想一下如果你的伴侣背叛了你，你是会因为他或她与他人发生了性关系而更加烦扰，还是会因为他或她爱上了其他的某人而更烦扰。一些研究已经发现对这个问题的答案取决于性别。女性说她们更受不了她们的伴侣爱上其他的人，而男性则相反。
为什么会有不同呢？对此有两种解释。第一种基于自然选择：对男人来说，知道他们的基因是否得到传承是非常重要的，所以性的背叛要远比心灵的背叛严重。女性呢，按照这种解释，确定她们的孩子拥有自己的基因，因而更为关心的是男人是否拿了他们的财力去供养了其他女人的孩子。所以说，男性爱上了其他女性要远比跟她们睡觉严重。
第二种解释认为在心灵的背叛与性的背叛之间并没有实际上的区别。女性会假定一个爱上了其他女人的男人一定会跟她睡觉，男人则会假定一个跟其他男人睡觉的女人一定是爱上了这个男人。这一解释是基于1996年克里斯汀·哈里斯与尼古拉斯·克里斯坦菲尔的研究基础之上的。所以，男人与女人在这一问题上的不同在于“性交”和“恋爱”所暗示的内容，而不是自己伴侣的行为对感情伤害的程度。（需要补充的是，这些解释不能用来说明同性关系）
最近，莫妮卡·惠蒂与李·劳拉·奎丽想要知道是否相似的原理在网络世界也行的通，对网络性爱与网恋态度也显示出相同的性别差异。惠蒂与奎丽调查了112名大学生，问了与文章开头相同的问题，并增加了网络版本。这样，回答者就关于什么最让他们头疼面临4种选择：心灵的背叛，性的背叛，网恋的背叛，网络性爱的背叛。
然后，对上述的每一种关系，他们还需要回答是否爱情就意味着性，反之亦然：
* 试想你发现自己的伴侣与他人发生性关系，你是否就认为他（她）爱上了对方。
* 试想你发现你的伴侣在网上认识了某人，并发生了网络性爱，你是否认为他（她）爱上了对方。
* 试想你发现你的伴侣爱上了别人，你是否就认为他（她）与对方发生了性关系。
* 试想你发现你的伴侣在网络与人相恋，但从没当面约会，你是否就认为他（她）与对方发生了网络性爱。
或许大家都能猜到的是，没人认为网恋或网络性爱是最让人难以接受的。而对于现实生活当中的性与爱，回答结果如下所示：
这些结果印证了先前的研究成果：女性更加接受不了男方的心灵背叛，男性反之（所有的回答者都声称自己是异性恋）。
但当他们回答是否性意味着爱抑或反之亦然时，答案就与之前的有所不同了：
在这次研究当中，关于性是否意味着爱时，男性的评定等级要远远高于女性，但在其他任何的评定当中并没有性别的差异。这与哈里斯与克里斯坦菲尔的研究结果大相径庭，而他们的结果中还包括女性更倾向于认为爱意味着性，这在本次研究中并无体现。
这一结果或许揭示了之前可能的两种解释的不足。如果对背叛行为所持有的态度是进化的产物，那么为什么结果在两份研究当中会不同。如果对性与爱的关系看法中存在的性别差异隐藏在最初的结果当中，那么为什么惠蒂与奎丽发现的结果会与哈里斯与克里斯坦菲尔的不同。
而另一方面，对网络的调查结果也没有告诉我们太多的东西。在男性与女性之间并没有太明显的区别，同时很明显的是，每个人都认为现实生活当中的背叛，无论是心灵上的还是肉体上的，都要比网络上的严重得多。