“经济弱势男”更容易出轨？

爱思英语编者按：据报道，本周一公布的一项研究表明收入低于女伴的男性在感情上出轨的可能性更大。这一研究还发现，即便是男性在经济上处于主导地位，他们对伴侣不忠的可能性还是更大，这让女性面临两难境地。然而女性的情况则有所不同。研究发现，总体来看，无论比伴侣挣得多还是少，女性出轨的可能性为男性的一半。

Men who earn less than their female partners are more likely to cheat on them, a study published on Monday found.

Cheating may be a man's way of trying to restore his gender identity when he feels it is under threat, Christin Munsch, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell University, says in the study, which she authored and presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

"Making less money than a female partner may threaten men's gender identity by calling into question the traditional notion of men as breadwinners," Munsch said.

Indeed, the study found that infidelity dramatically increased when the man earning less than his female partner is Latino, probably because breadwinner status is "one of the defining features of Hispanic masculinity."

Then again, the same study found that men whose partners were more dependent on them were also more likely to cheat, making it a lose-lose situation for women.

It's different for girls, though. Overall, women are half as likely to cheat as men anyway, whatever the circumstances, the study found.

"Women's femininity is not defined by their breadwinner status, nor is it defined by sexual conquest. Therefore, economic dependency does not serve as a threat to women," Munsch says.

The study indicates ways to prevent one's partner cheating without giving up the well-paid day job. Both sides being satisfied in a relationship is a sure-fire way to make infidelity disappear, and getting your partner to go to church or the mosque or temple regularly is another: the more regularly an individual attends a religious service, the less likely he or she is to cheat, the study says.

Looking for a partner in a university library, lab or lecture might also be an idea because, the study says, "the more education one reports, the less likely he or she is to engage in infidelity."