Research explores the importance of fidelity in both short and long-term relationships

Dr. Lisa Welling and Justin Mogilski are working on a variety of psychology research.  Participate in a study What motivates people to stay friends after a break up? Help researchers answer this question by filling out the questionnaire.

Oakland University researchers find that when looking for a mate — be it for the long haul or just the night — sexual fidelity is a priority trait.

Doctoral candidate and first author on the study, Justin Mogilski, says this is the first to examine how knowledge of a potential partner's history of sexual infidelity affects mate choice decisions while being forced to make trade-offs among partners with various traits..

Assistant professor of psychology, Dr. Lisa Welling, says a trade-off is something you might find yourself having to do at a speed-dating event, for example, where your candidate pool is limited. In a perfect world, you would find a mate who meets all of your criteria. But when that person is not available, what are people willing to sacrifice

Using a method common in marketing research, participants ranked profiles of potential mates with various iterations of each attribute.

"In getting them to rank profiles, it tells us which attributes are more important," Dr. Welling explains.

Interestingly, sexual fidelity was ranked as equally important as physical attractiveness for short-term partner  (more important when ranking profiles of potential long-term mates), which is still quite surprising.

"They're willing to compromise on physical attractiveness, but if they're sexually unfaithful, that's a deal breaker," Dr. Welling said.

The reasons why — be it moral disgust or a fear of sexually transmitted diseases — will require further research.

More findings: 

• When sexual fidelity was taken out of the mix, both men and women said that financial stability was more important than emotional investment and similarity. 
• Both men's and women's importance values for financial stability were higher than those for emotional investment and similarity, but not for physical attractiveness.

View online version of study, which was be published in the July Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.