Sex Differences in Subjective Estimates of Non-Paternity Rates in Austria

Abstract

The determination of paternity is important due to the possibility of cuckoldry and the subsequent squandering of male reproductive effort. Men may be attuned to prevalence rates of cuckoldry in the local environment to assess risk. However, women may have an enhanced ability to assess paternity and may have superior insight into women's sexual infidelity. Accordingly, this study examined subjective estimates of human non-paternity (HNP), the discrepancy between social/legal versus genetic paternity. The hypothesis was that women would provide higher estimates of HNP than men. A sex difference in the hypothesized direction was observed across four community samples of Austrian adults (totalling 763 men and 795 women), with women overall providing higher HNP estimates than men (14.5% versus 9.1%). Furthermore, key demographic variables impacted HNP estimates for both sexes: individuals who were unmarried, childless, currently unpartnered, or currently in a romantic relationship of a shorter duration provided higher HNP estimates than their counterparts, thus suggesting that such estimates might be attuned to mating effort and strategies, as well as relationship quality and investment.

Strategic impression management: Audience sex and response anonymity affect sex differences in perceived extra-pair paternity

“…The main effect of participant gender was significant, F (1, 217) = 4.67, MS = 1084.39, p < .05. Similar to prior research (VORACEK et al 2002), women's nonpaternity estimates (M = 27.53%, SD = 15.20%) were higher than men's estimates (M = 23.12%, SD = 15.62%). No significant main effects were found for either the anonymity manipulation, F (1, 217) = 0.55, MS = 128.38, p = .46, or for the audience manipulation, F (1, 217) = 1.66, MS = 385.37, p = .20.…”

“…Namely, prior research has shown that women tend to report higher nonpaternity rates than men, and this difference has been explained in terms of lower male awareness (i.e., VORACEK et al 2002). The present research enhances prior interpretation of this effect by suggesting that lower male estimates also may reflect the use of strategic impression management.…”

“…Perhaps most well known are lay descriptions of nonpaternity -the occasional discrepancy between social/legal paternity and biological paternity (e.g., RUSSELL and WELLS 1987;VORACEK et al 2002). In human mating systems, males compete for mates and male fitness goals are served by attempting to mate with more than one female (e.g., BUSS and KENRICK 1998;DRIGOTAS and BARTA 2001).…”

Three hundred years of low non-paternity in a human population

“…The fact that questionnaire based studies on females' behaviour and perceptions frequently calculate higher non-paternity rates (Bellis and Baker, 1990;Koehler and Chisholm, 2007;Voracek et al, 2009;Scelza, 2011) suggests that females may overestimate their success in extramarital affairs or at least confuse extra-pair copulations with cuckoldry (Simmons et al, 2004). Another factor that can substantially reduce the effectiveness of extra-pair copulations in humans is humans' relatively low fecundability in combination with concealed ovulation Gomendio et al, 1998).…”

Do mothers also “manipulate” grandparental care?

“…Most likely caused by the advent of modern contraceptive methods and the acceptance of hygienic selective abortions, the non-paternity rates have declined from approximately to 10 % in the 1930es to about 1 to 3 % in modern industrialized western populations [22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Yet, as our mental concepts of non-paternity due to infidelity are not updated to the current reproductive environment, subjective rates of non-paternity among males in the same modern populations are as high as 10% [29,30]; a number corresponding to that of non-paternity observed within present hunter-gatherer societies [31]. Thus, old mental adaptions from our past evolutionary reproductive environment, i.e., the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (EEA), still evoke relatively high sensitivity to possible cuckoldry and consequently non-paternity among putative fathers and may similarly also influence grandparental motives.…”