Gender differences in defining infidelity

The purpose of this study was to examine gender difference in determination of infidelity behaviors. Nine hundred sixty-seven participants completed an online survey in which they were given a list of 21 behaviors and asked if they would consider their partner "unfaithful" if they engaged in such behaviors with another person. Three categories of hypothetical behavior were presented: sexual contact, online interaction, and emotional/romantic interaction. I tested the hypotheses that women define emotional behaviors as infidelity more than men and that women define online behaviors as infidelity more than men. Overall, women did classify more online and emotional behaviors as infidelity than men. However, in an item-by-item analysis, 15 items showed no difference by gender. The four emotional infidelity items and two online infidelity items that did demonstrate significant differences showed small effect sizes. Additionally, sexual orientation had a small effect on both emotional and online infidelity identification, as well as an interaction with gender on emotional infidelity. Relationship status also had a small effect on the number of items identified as emotional and online infidelity. There were no differences with regard to physical/sexual infidelity. The findings are useful for clinicians as they illustrate the number of online and emotional behaviors that lack a clear consensus to their designation as infidelity.