Cuckoldry and Sexual Jealousy

Cuckoldry and sexual jealousy: * Cuckoldry occurs when a woman deceives her male partner into investing in offspring conceived with another male. Risks for cuckoldry are high for women (loss of partner death etc) the risks are even higher for men. Cuckolded men lose both invested resources and reproductive opportunity (Platek and Shackelford 2006) * According to the evolutionary approach, all such mate-retention strategies are driven by sexual jealousy: an adaption that evolved in males as a way of dealing with paternal uncertainty. Males could never be 100% that the offspring is their own. One consequence is that a male may invest his resources in offspring that are not his own. * Sexual jealousy serves to help prevent the female mating with other males outside the pair bond, and so it can be seen as an adaptive response. * Sexual coercion (forcing an unwilling partner to have sex) is a tactic used by some males to reduce the risk of cuckoldry. ‘The cuckoldry risk hypothesis’ (Camilleri 2004) predicts that males will be more willing to use sexually coercion tactics such as partner rape when the risk of cuckoldry is high. * According to Lalumiere et al (2005) some men carry out partner rape in order to decrease paternity uncertainty. Thornhill and Thornhill (1992) argue that a woman who resists having sex with her partner signals that she has been unfaithful, thus increases the risk of sexual jealousy and fear of cuckoldry.
Mate retention and violence: * Buss and Shackelford (1997) examined mate-retention tactics in married couples. They studied 214 individuals and found that, compared to women; men reported a significantly higher use of debasement (giving into her every wish) and intra-sexual threats (threating to beat up the other man). Women on the other hand, reported a greater use of verbal possession signals (indicating to other women that he is taken) and threats of punishing infidelity (threating to leave him is he is unfaithful). They also found compared to men married to older women, men married to younger women reported devoting greater effort in mate-retention tactics including commitment manipulation (professing love and commitment into the relationship), violence against rival men and threats against the female partner.
Evaluation:
* Use of mate-retention tactics: Claim of sexual jealousy is a major cause of violence against women, is supported by studies of battered women where victims frequently cute extreme sexual jealousy on the part of male partners as the major cause of violence against them (Dobash and Dobash 1984). Wilson et al (1995) found that among women who report the use of direct guarding as a mate retention tactic by their male partners, 72% had required medical attention following an adult by their male partner. * Research on sexual coercion: Research tends to support the idea that sexual coercion of females by their male partners is an adaptive response to their threat of infidelity. Camilleri (2004) found that the risk of partner’s infidelity predicted the likelihood of sexual coercion in men but not women, important for adaptive explanation, as men are those at risk of cuckoldry not women. Goetz and Shackelford (2006) found that a man who has sexually coerced their partners were more likely to report that they thought their partners were being unfaithful. Women who reported their partners had sexually coerced them were more likely to admit to have being unfaithful. * Practical applications of research: An important implication of research in this area is that mate-retention may be seen as early indicators of potential violence against a female partner. The use of mate-retention tactics can alert friends and family members to the danger signs that might lead to future relationships. Relationship counselling may then be used before the situation escalates into the type of domestic violence reported in the Dobash Study.