How Women and Men Respond Differently to Temptation

by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen

Here’s a significant gender difference: Psychologists from McGill University found that women tend to strengthen their relationships with their partners after meeting attractive, flirtatious men, while men tend to look at their partners in a more negative light after meeting attractive, flirtatious women.

These researchers conducted seven experiments with 724 heterosexual men and women. In one study, roughly 35 male participants met flirtatious women, and 35 male participants met women who ignored them. After meeting the single, flirtatious women, men were less likely to forgive their partners for doing something irritating, such as telling a white lie or revealing embarrassing information. In contrast, female participants, after meeting an available, flirtatious man, were more likely to forgive their partners’ “bad behavior.”

Are men unable to ward off temptation? Lead author John E. Lydon, Ph.D., says, “We do not subscribe to this. Instead, we believe men simply interpret these interactions differently than women do. We think that if men believed an attractive, available woman was a threat to their relationship, they might try to protect that relationship.”
In a second study to test whether men could learn not to flirt with attractive women, men wrote down a “strategy to protect their relationship.” Results: They were more likely to distance themselves from flirtatious, single women.

Lydon believes that women don’t need such strategies because they have been socialized to be wary of the advances of attractive men. The new findings show that even if a man is committed to his relationship, he may still need to formulate strategies to protect it. Says Lydon, “The success rate of such strategies may not be 100 percent, but it is likely to be significantly higher than if the man was not made aware of the specific consequences of his actions.” (See Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2008.)