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Men only cheat where women are abundant: Study

By AFP January 19th, 2015 2 min read

Women want to settle down while men prefer to play the field, right? Not quite, says a study that challenged long-held views of sexual selection.

It turns out the dynamics of sex are partly driven by the law of supply and demand: a man’s fidelity depends to a large degree on the number of available women.

“When women are rare, men respond by desiring long-term committed relationships with a single partner,” University of Utah anthropologist and study lead author Ryan Schacht told AFP.

“When women are hard to find, the best strategy is to find one and stick with her.”

SKIRT – CHASING

Men who continue skirt-chasing when competition among men is high, essentially risk losing out altogether, said Schacht: “If a man were not to live up to a woman’s expectations, she has plenty other options to choose from!”

The findings, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, are based on a 16-month study of members of the 13,000-strong Makushi tribal community of hunters, fishermen and farmers in southwest Guyana.

Extended families live in villages of 160 to 750 people and premarital sex is seen as a normal part of partner-finding before settling down in a monogamous marriage.

Makushi gender relations are egalitarian, according to the study authors.

During 2010-2011, Schacht and his wife Jacque spent months building a rapport with the tribe before doing confidential interviews with 300 men and women, aged 18 to 45, in eight communities with sex ratios ranging from 90 to 140 men for every 100 women.

Questions included:

– How many sexual partners have you had in the past year?

– How many do you expect to have in the coming five years?

– Do you enjoy casual sex?

– Is sex without love acceptable and enjoyable?

The Makushi were chosen because they form a homogenous group that shares a belief system and socio-economic circumstances, which meant religious and cultural differences would not colour the results.

SEX RATIO

“In general, Makushi men show a greater willingness to engage in uncommitted sex than do women, as the stereotype predicts,” said Schacht.

“Men, when women were abundant, were the cads we often expect them to be. They had many sexual partners, and yet still wanted more!”

But this changed in areas where men were in the majority.

“As the sex ratio became more male-biased, men’s interest in short-term relationships waned,” said Schacht.

“In fact, in the communities with the most surplus men, men’s and women’s preferences were indistinguishable — both men and women desired long-term, committed relationships with a single partner.”