Some women may have a ‘cheating gene’

May 26, 2015  20:30

It’s a common defence of men caught cheating that they’re ‘wired’ to do so. But if this research is anything to go by, some women may also have a genetic impulse to be unfaithful.

In a study published in Evolution and Human Behaviour, 7,400 sets of twins in Finland who were in long-term relationships and aged between 18 and 49 were looked at by researchers, who found nearly 10 percent of the male participants and 6.4 percent of the female participants had had at least one affair in the past year.

The researchers were interested in the rate of cheating between non-identical twins (who don’t share all their genes) and identical twins (who do) and found that 63 percent of the variation of infidelity in men and 40 percent in women could be down to genetics.

 ‘Isolating specific genes is more difficult because thousands of genes influence any behaviour and the effect of any individual gene is tiny,’ said Brendan Zietsch, a lead researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia.

‘But we did find tentative evidence for a specific gene influencing infidelity in women.’

The so-called ‘cheating gene’ is the vasopressin receptor gene, which is responsible for empathy and sexual bonding in animals. In men, this gene had no influence on promiscuity.

In the New York Times, psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman argues that the female drive to cheat may be down to simple pleasure-seeking.

While there is an evolutionary advantage to men cheating, he says, there is no obvious reason for women to be unfaithful, other than the search for novelty and sensation seeking.

‘There may be no clear evolutionary advantage to female infidelity, but sex has never just been about procreation,’ he said.

‘Cheating can be intensely pleasurable because, among other things, it involves novelty and a degree of sensation seeking, behaviours that activate the brain’s reward circuit… which conveys not just a sense of pleasure but tells your brain this is an important experience worth remembering and repeating.’

 

 

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