What drives women to cheat on their partners?
Although there are a couple of possible reasons excuses for women to be unfaithful to their partners, scientists have discovered variations of a gene that is linked to “extra pair mating” among women.
Dubbed as the “infidelity gene”, the vasopressin receptor gene, which influences empathy and sexual bonding among animals, has been found to be linked to promiscuity among women. Women who carry a variant of this gene have a greater tendency to take participate in extra pair mating.
Among men, this gene has no influence on promiscuity.
A team of geneticists and neuroscientists from the University of Queensland in Australia studied the DNA and lifestyle of 7,400 sets of twins in Finland. The participants are in long-term relationships and aged between 18 and 49.
Their findings showed that 6.4% of women who cheated have a large amount of the specific variant of the infidelity gene.
Lead researcher Brendan Zietsch said: “Isolating specific genes is more difficult because thousands of genes influence any behaviour and the effect of any individual gene is tiny.”
“But we did find tentative evidence for a specific gene influencing infidelity in women,” he added.
Meanwhile, psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman believes that a woman’s urge to cheat may be influenced by a woman’s drive to seek for “novelty and sensation”.
In an interview with New York Times, Friedman explained that there is no lucid evolutionary reason for women to be unfaithful.
“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.”
