Reactions to and Forgiveness of Infidelity: Exploring Severity, Length of Relationship, Sex, and Previous Experience Effects

Reactions to and Forgiveness of Infidelity: Exploring Severity, Length of Relationship, Sex, and Previous Experience Effects. Menelaos Apostolou, Anna Aristidou, Christina Eraclide. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, November 26 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-019-00119-y

Abstract
Objectives: Infidelity, actual or suspected, can trigger strong emotional reactions, such as jealousy, which could lead to the dissolution of the relationship. These reactions were predicted to vary with the severity of the infidelity, with the sex of the participant, with previous experience with unfaithful partners, and with the length of the relationship.

Method: We employed a sample of 447 Greek-speaking participants who were asked to indicate their reactions in different scenarios of infidelity.

Results: We found that more severe acts of infidelity were associated with higher emotional upset and jealousy and lower probability of forgiveness. Moreover, women indicated stronger emotional upset and jealousy than men, but they were more likely to forgive their partners. Furthermore, participants indicated more emotional upset and jealousy if they were in a long-term than in an early-stage relationship. Finally, participants who were older and who had experienced infidelity from their previous partners were more likely to forgive their partners’ infidelity than participants who were younger and who did not have such experience.

Conclusions: Our results indicated that several factors determined the severityof the reactions to infidelity.

Keywords: Infidelity Cheating Forgiveness Mating Jealousy


Discussion
Our findings indicated that more severe acts of infidelity were associated with higher
emotional upset and jealousy and lower probability of forgiveness. Moreover, women
indicated stronger emotional upset and jealousy than men, but higher willingness to
forgive their partners. In addition, participants indicated more emotional upset and
jealousy in a long-length than in a short-length relationship scenario. Participants who
were older and who had experienced infidelity from their previous partners were more
likely to forgive their partners’ infidelity than participants who were younger and who
did not have such past experience.
As it was originally predicted, people’s negative reactions were contingent on the
severity of the act of infidelity. Acts which involved prolonged emotional and sexual
infidelity, such as having an emotional and sexual extra-pair relationship, were associated
with the most upset and jealousy, and were the least likely to be forgiven. On the
other hand, acts that did not involve emotional infidelity and were less likely to lead to
sexual infidelity, such as visiting a strip club, were associated with lower upset and
jealousy, and were more likely to be forgiven. Nevertheless, participants gave very
similar scores for the scenarios of their partner having feelings for or sexual contact
with another individual, and with the scenarios of their partner having an emotional or
sexual relationship with another individual. We expected the latter scenarios to trigger
more negative responses than the former ones as they indicated more involvement.
Future research needs to investigate why participants did not differentiate between the
two scenarios. Moreover, our findings indicated that sexual infidelity was associated
with more negative reactions and a lower probability of being forgiven than emotional
infidelity. One reason is that sexual infidelity may lead to pregnancy and, thus,
potentially have more severe negative consequences than emotional infidelity.
Our findings suggest that individuals can more easily get away if they employ sex
services, such as prostitution or a strip club or have a one-night stand, than if they
engage in romantic and sexual relationships with extra-pair partners. If people are
aware of this effect, they may employ specific manipulation tactics in order to increase
the probability of being forgiven. For instance, if they are caught having an extra-pair
affair, they may attempt to present it as a one-night stand, in order to reduce their
partners’ negative reactions and increase the probability of being forgiven. We also
need to note that the means we found for each act were associated with large standard
deviations. Therefore, considerable differences are expected in the reactions to each act.
For instance, a one-night stand may be easily forgiven by some people, but could result
to severe negative reactions by others.
Part of the variation in responses is explained by sex, with women indicating more
severe reactions to infidelity. Furthermore, the predicted sex difference was not found;
that is, men did not become more upset by the sexual infidelity of their partners than
women. One possible explanation is that specific cultural factors result in women
exhibiting considerable more negative reactions to infidelity than men, which masks
this sex difference. Moreover, even if women were more upset and more jealous than
men about their partners’ infidelity, they were also more likely to forgive them. One
possible reason why is that women are more emotionally involved in a relationship that
men, which in turn, makes them more likely to forgive their partners. Future research
needs to investigate further the reasons behind this sex difference.
It needs to be said that DeSteno and Salovey (1996) have argued that sex differences
in jealousy may not be the result of evolved psychological adaptations and they simply
reflect the conditional probability that one type of infidelity implies the other type. In
particular, some individuals may not perceive emotional and sexual infidelity as
independent events. For example, if a man has sex with a woman, what is probability
he is in love with her—vs. if a woman has sex with a man, what is the probability she is
in love with him. These two probabilities may be very different. In order to address this
concern, Buss et al. (1999) completely separated the two types of infidelity so that one
type does not imply the existence of the other.
Moving on, in early-stage relationships, people have not yet made considerable
commitment, so the infidelity of their partners has less severe consequences than the
infidelity of their partners in a long-term relationship and, as a consequence, their
reactions were less severe. However, in contrast to our original prediction, the seriousness
of the relationship did not appear to predict the probability of forgiveness, as
people were equally likely to forgive their partners in both an early-stage and a longterm
relationship. One possible reason is that, in both cases, people assess whether their
partners have the potential to remain in a committed relationship. Furthermore, having
partners who were unfaithful in the past did not predict upset and jealousy, but
predicted the probability of forgiveness. People who had unfaithful partners in the past
were more likely to forgive their current partners than people who did not have such
experience, with the effect size indicating that this difference was considerable.
As discussed in the introduction, one possible reason is that people who had
unfaithful partners in the past may be more likely than those who did not to consider
that infidelity is common, expecting in effect their partners to be unfaithful and being,
thus, more likely to forgive them. Yet, if this was the correct explanation, then these
participants would also be less upset and jealous than the rest, which was not the case.
Another possibility is that some people have traits which make them more likely to
forgive infidelity than others. Their partners could detect this high propensity for
forgiveness, and may thus, be more likely to be unfaithful as they know that they will
be forgiven. If this was the case, past experiences did not make people more forgiving
of infidelity, but people who were more forgiving of infidelity were also more likely to
have partners who were unfaithful. Future research needs to investigate this effect
further. Age had also a substantial effect on forgiveness, with older individuals being
more likely to forgive their unfaithful partners than younger individuals. One possible
explanation is that older individuals may have fewer options in attracting partners,
which makes them more reluctant to terminate their current relationship.
The present research had a number of limitations. To begin with, it was based on selfreport
data, and participants may respond differently when they are actually confronted with
the infidelity of their partners than the way they have indicated here. In addition, our research
was based on a non-probability sample, so our findings may not apply to the general
population.Moreover, as discussed above, specific cultural variablesmay affect participants’
reactions to infidelity, so our results may not readily apply to other cultural contexts. Thus,
cross-cultural replication is necessary in order to understand how cultural factors could
potentially affect reactions to infidelity. Also, infidelity may be associated with several
negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, despair). In order to keep our survey at a reasonable
length, we did not examine each possible emotional reaction, and future research needs to do
so. Moreover, we have measured the effect of infidelity of one’s partner, but, as discussed
above, this variable can be confounded by other factors such as one’s own infidelity. For
instance, participants who were unfaithful may have been more likely than participants who
were faithful to have partners who were also unfaithful.
In addition, the current study gave to participants’ scenarios of varying relationship
duration. These scenarios were hypothetical, so participants may have failed to provide
accurate answers. Future studies may address this limitation by measuring how long
participants had been in a relationship. Furthermore, the current study did not measure
hormonal birth control usage among women. Prior research shows that women who
were using hormonal birth control responded differently to questions regarding jealousy
and infidelity than women who were not using hormonal birth control (Cobey et al.
2011; Geary et al. 2001; Wade and Fowler 2006; Welling et al. 2012). Similarly,
women’s ovulatory status can affect women’s jealousy responses (Cobey et al. 2012),
but it was not measured in the present research. Last but not least, in our research, we
included several acts of infidelity of varying severity; however, additional acts could be
included, such as cheating with an ex-partner and with a same-sex individual.
In conclusion, infidelity is a common phenomenon and the current study has
provided evidence from the Greek cultural context that upset, jealousy, and the
probability of forgiveness are contingent on the severity of an act of infidelity. Sex
differences, age, length of the relationship, and experience with unfaithful partner
effects were also found, but more research is necessary in order to better understand
reactions to and forgiveness of infidelity.