Why Men Cheat More Than Women

Apparently, it’s not just the stuff of movies and political scandals. It seems that men really do earn their reputation for infidelity. But what no one has bothered to figure out is why so many men have such a tough time keeping it in their pants. Are cheaters like Tiger Woods lacking in self-discipline—or so highly arouséd they can’t help but give in to temptation? Well, at long last, researchers have tackled this issue and have come up with some answers.

According to a study just published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, men cheat more often than women, not because they have less self-control, but because their séxual urges are just too strong to resist.

The researchers conducted two different experiments before reaching this conclusion. In the first, 70 male and 148 female participants were asked to recall and describe an attraction to a tempting, but forbidden, potential partner. Then they answered a series of questions that measured the strength of their séxual impulse, attempts to control those impulses and the resulting behavior. Not surprisingly, the men not only experienced stronger impulses, but also acted on them more often than the women.

In the second experiment, 600 participants (326 men, 274 women) were shown a series of images of the opposite séx that were labeled either “good for you” or “bad for you,” with instructions to accept or reject them. Some trials asked them to accept the desirable images, but in others, subjects were asked to go against their inclinations and accept the undesirable ones. But regardless of the instructions, men exhibited a much stronger impulse to accept the desirable partners—and overall performed worse on the task than did the women in the study.

According to the study authors, men and women do not really differ in their levels of self control. When the men bothered to exert their self control, they were no more prone to inappropriate séxual behavior than the women. But they did exhibit stronger séxual impulses. “Overall, these studies suggest that men are more likely to give in to séxual temptations because they tend to have stronger séxual impulse strength than women do,” wrote study co-author Natasha Tidwell. 

In other words, guys apparently now have scientific validation for the old excuse, “I just couldn’t help myself.”