I think that from a scientific point of view, apart from the question of whether men or women cheat more often, the question concerning jealousy is a more interesting and enlightening one. Why? Because it reaches at the basic heart and core workings of the strategies men and women use in their mating dance.

More interestingly, even though one might conclude that the question of whether men are more jealous than women is in direct relation with the question of whether women cheat more than men, we will approach the issue separately. Let’s analyze it from the cost effectiveness point of view.

That is what Aaron T. Goetz from The Department of Psychology at California State University and Kayla Causey from The Department of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University did in a study that tried to answer the question of whether there are any sex biased differences in perceptions of infidelity. Do really men often assume the worst?

       What were the risks of not being able to detect your partner’s infidelity in the early days of our ancestors? Either if you were a man or a woman you risked losing your reputation, contacting sexually transmitted diseases or terminating the relationship. But more than that, if you were a man you were never sure if you were rearing the offspring that shared half of your genes! A woman always knew that of course, because she was the one giving birth to the child. So the risk of cuckoldry to which a man was exposed to, that is the risk which he was subjected at in investing his time, resources and even his life to rear a child that was not even his, plus the time, effort and resources spent attracting his partner, represented an evolutionary driving force that has not left its effects expected.

       Over the course of our evolutionary history both men and women were equipped by evolution with psychological/behavioral/cognitive mechanisms that even though do not reflect reality at its core, because of their biased nature they help the brain take the proper decisions and help the individual escape possible life threatening situations. These so called cognitive biases or judgments made under uncertainty are of two types. The false positives (Type I errors) and the false negatives (Type II errors). False positives are judgments that the individual thinks they are true but in reality they are false. False negatives are judgments that the individual thinks they are false but in reality they are true. Sometimes the costs of one error, that being not behaving in the right way which would save your life, because your brain doesn’t use the “false positives behavioral routines”, may cost you more than using those behavioral routines all the time. One mistake and your gone!

Several studies showed evidence for these kind of evolutionary adaptations in both men and women. For example in a study on motion detection, both males and females perceived male point-like figures walking in place as approaching rather than leaving suggesting a cognitive adaptation towards false positives; better watch out for the possible stranger approaching from the horizon that may hurt you and your family!

Another study, concerning predator avoidance, showed that children looking at a dead animal often assume that the animal is sleeping rather than assuming its lifelessness, suggesting again a cognitive adaptation towards false positives. In the matters concerning sex and mating, studies have shown these kind of cognitive biases in both genders. Thus, men often overestimate the body-language signaling of potential female mates like for example a simple smile by considering it an indicator of sexual interest). This kind of cognitive bias has more likely been favored by evolution because it is less costly than a false negative behavior that would in consequence lead to men losing potential sexual partners.

       In the same order of ideas, because the cost a man would pay for not detecting the cheating of his partner would be bigger than the cost a female mate would pay, evolution must have implemented behavioral psychological mechanisms in men’s brains that resemble cognitive biases of the false positive kind. For a man it is more cost effective to suspect infidelity when none has occurred (false positive) then to not suspect infidelity when it has occurred (false negative). And that is exactly what the scientists have shown in this study. Thus, men are more suspicious of their partner’s future infidelity than women. One might logically deduce from this might that men are more suspicious of their partner’s present state in infidelity too.

       Concluding this article we say : YES, Men experience more jealousy and uneasiness due to potential infidelity of their partner’s. These mechanisms work because they were needed to protect the male genetic line from being cuckolded by adaptive mating strategies that the female partner’s genetic line might adopt.

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References:
- EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL 2009 (www.epjournal.net) -> Sex Differences in Perceptions of Infidelity: Men Often Assume the Worst