When opportunity knocks, who answers? Infidelity, gender, race, and occupational sex composition

To date, the prevailing explanation for gender differences in infidelity has been evolutionary. Adaptive pressures lead men to seek sexual variety and, consequently, take advantage of opportunities for extramarital sex more than women. However, an often‐overlooked component of the evolutionary persp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personal relationships 2018-12, Vol.25 (4), p.581-595
Main Authors: Munsch, Christin L., Yorks, Jessica
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Gender
infidelity
occupational sex composition
opportunity
Personal relationships
Race
Sexes
White male effect
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Summary:To date, the prevailing explanation for gender differences in infidelity has been evolutionary. Adaptive pressures lead men to seek sexual variety and, consequently, take advantage of opportunities for extramarital sex more than women. However, an often‐overlooked component of the evolutionary perspective is the way in which social context influences behavior. Thus, we extend previous theoretical accounts by examining the ways in which opportunity is facilitated or constrained by experiences of tokenism. The authors find, for White men, who tend to report favorable treatment in female‐dominated work, opportunity is positively associated with infidelity. For non‐White men, who report poor treatment in female‐dominated work, occupational sex composition and infidelity are negatively associated. For White and non‐White women, occupational sex composition is unrelated to infidelity.
ISSN:1350-4126
1475-6811
DOI:10.1111/pere.12261