The Study Of Evolutionary Psychology About The Sex Difference In The Free Recall Of Infidelity Cues

There are plenty of evolutionary psychology studies on jealousy overseas. However, no empirical study has carried out in China. Evolutionary psychologists acclaim that jealousy is a sex-specific evolved psychological mechanism. The aim of which is to solve different adaptive problems. For men, it is " paternal uncertainty",so they are more sensitive to cues signaling their mates' sexual infidelity. For women, it is "scarcity of resources", so they are more sensitive to cues signaling their mates' emotional infidelity.We assume that when rate the likelihood of infidelity, compare to women, men will provide higher overall diagnosticity ratings for cues to a partner's sexual infidelity,while compare to men, women's diagnosticity ratings for the cues to emotional infidelity will higher. By using free recall method, we want to find out men will recall more sexual infidelity, while women will recall more emotional infidelity.To validate those hypotheses, we design 3 questionnaires and 1 experiment. The aim of questionnaire 1 is to collect cues to infidelity. The aim of the questionnaire 2 is to validate hypotheses posed by evolutionary psychology by letting subjects rate the likelihood of their mates or imagine mates' infidelity. The aim of questionnaire 3 is to investigate the rating differences between questionnaire 2 and questionnaire 3 by letting subjects provide diagnosticity ratings for cues to an unrelated people's infidelity.The experiment consisted of a 2×4×2 mixed factorial design to exam the sex differences between cues to sexual infidelity,cues to emotional infidelity, overseas betrayal cues and national betrayal cues.The results: when rated the likelihood of their own mate's infidelity, men were more sensitive to cues to sexual infidelity, while women were more sensitive to cues to emotional infidelity. When rated an unrelated people's likelihood of infidelity, things were different, unpredictably, both sexes provided higher overall diagnosticity ratings for cues to sexual infidelity of the same sex. Men recalled more cues to sexual infidelity compared to themselves. Compared to themselves, women recalled more cues to emotional infidelity. The study support evolutionary psychology hypotheses in some extent.