Are Sexual and Emotional Infidelity Equally Upsetting to Men and Women? Making Sense of Forced-Choice Responses

Abstract

Forced-choice measures that assess reactions to imagined sexual and emotional infidelity are ubiquitous in studies testing the Jealousy as a Specific Innate Module (JSIM) model. One potential problem with such measures is that they fail to identify respondents who find both forms of infidelity equally upsetting. To examine this issue, an experiment was conducted in which two groups of participants imagined a romantic infidelity after which participants in the first group used a traditional forced-choice measure to indicate whether they found sexual or emotional infidelity more upsetting. Participants in the second group instead used a modified forced-choice measure that allowed them also to indicate whether they found both forms of infidelity equally upsetting. Consistent with previous research, those given the traditional forced-choice measure tended to respond in a manner that supported the JSIM model. However, the majority of participants given the modified measure indicated that both forms of infidelity were equally upsetting.