Fair but Irresponsible: How Moral Senses Affect Young Males' Attitudes Toward Extramarital Affairs.

Extramarital affairs can be detrimental to family stability and individual happiness. Existing literature on the issue suggests that gender and moral qualities can be major influencing factors. Particularly, it is suggested that males are more likely to have affairs compared to females. In this study, we explore deeper possible gender differences together with the sense of responsibility and fairness in young people's attitudes toward extramarital affairs from the perspective of information processing. Following the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), we conducted Bayesian analyses on 493 university students from Germany, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Our analysis results show that males are more likely than females to think that extramarital affairs can be justified, but this gender difference is small in magnitude. In linear relationships, importance perceptions of fairness and responsibility do not have any clear effect on attitudes toward affairs. However, when considering the interactions between gender and these moral factors, we found that among males, those who put more importance on responsibility are less likely to think that extramarital affairs are justifiable, but those who put more importance on fairness are more likely to think that extramarital affairs are justifiable. These patterns may be due to how men interpret moral values in their subjective cost-benefit judgments toward marital relationships involving social expectations and personal preferences. Plain language summary: This research examined how gender and moral values affect young people's views on extramarital affairs. The study used a survey on 493 college students from five countries about whether affairs could ever be justified. The study also probed how important they felt responsibility and fairness are to see if gender or morals predicted attitudes on affairs. The study found that men were a bit more likely than women to say affairs could sometimes be justified, but the difference was small. More interestingly, men who valued responsibility more were less likely to justify affairs. But men who valued fairness more were more likely to justify affairs. This suggests men may think about responsibility and fairness differently when evaluating affairs. Responsibility may connect more to social norms against affairs for men. But some men may see affairs as personally fair, even if norms suggest it's wrong. Their own sense of fairness may justify affairs, despite social disapproval. In contrast, women's views were less affected by their senses of responsibility and fairness. This implies men do complex moral calculations about affairs weighing social norms versus personal preferences. Their interpretations of morals like fairness shape their attitudes. More research on this gender difference is needed. The study has limitations as it relied on students, not actual married people. The study also focused only on heterosexual relationships in a few countries, so the relationships in LGBTQ communities are not included in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]