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Abstract
The primary purpose of this study was to determine predictors of how permissive or prohibitive gay men and lesbian women are towards sexual infidelity. In so doing, it explored if attitudes towards infidelity correlated with individuals' attachment styles, narcissism, sociosexuality and jealousy. Additionally, this study explored whether or not situational variables that activate either sexual or emotional infidelity can influence attitudes towards infidelity. Previous research shows that amongst heterosexual individuals, individuals with high levels of narcissism, sociosexuality, jealousy, and insecure attachment were found to possess more permissive attitudes towards infidelity. In this study those findings were replicated, and those same characteristics were found to be valid predictors of an increased incidence of committing infidelity. Sex differences in personality variables were found to be slight to non-existent in this study except in the realm of emotional jealousy, wherein lesbian women reported experiencing greater levels than gay men. Sex differences in narcissism and attachment style were not found to be significant here, replicating more recent findings that these sex differences are evaporating or simply not consistently found. According to evolutionary psychology theory, men seem to become more upset by sexual infidelity whereas women seem more upset by emotional infidelity. Utilizing a mindset priming technique, this theory was explored, as was whether encouraging empathic identification with the victim of sexual betrayal or romantic rejection impacted the views of infidelity of gay men and lesbian women. Replicating previous findings, this study demonstrated that gay men are more permissive than lesbian women towards sexual infidelity except when they have been exposed to a betrayal prime, and that women were more responsive to the emotional infidelity prime than men. The implications of these findings are discussed.
