We can pick up a surprising amount of information about others from small clues, even if we aren’t fully aware of it. We can tell if a person is trustworthy within seconds, and we can empathize with someone within minutes. This is due to an ancient mechanism that allows us to form “first impressions.”
The first impression is a very useful mechanism that helps us navigate the social network, even if we have little information about the person in front of us. Therefore, when we lack information, we quickly scan the person in search of any kind of clues that can guide us and allow us to assess in a matter of seconds whether we should move away or it is safe to approach.
Now researchers at Brigham Young University have gone a step further, claiming that we all have an “Infidelity Radar,” an ability that not only kicks in during our relationship but also allows us to detect clues to cheating in other partners.
A couple, a common task and an external observer
Psychologists recruited 51 people, some of whom were in a relationship. Each partner was asked to answer a survey that asked about their infidelity toward their current partner. Each couple was then filmed for five minutes while they performed a drawing task. The trick was that one person was blindfolded and the other had to guide them and tell them how to draw. The roles were then reversed.
Later, other people were asked to watch the videos and say whether they thought any of the participants had shown romantic interest in someone else, had been flirting with someone else, or had had sex outside of a relationship.
Interestingly, many of these people were able to spot the unfaithful.
Not satisfied with these results, the psychologists repeated the experiment again, this time with 43 people. However, this time they asked the observers not only to detect the unfaithful, but also to evaluate certain values of each member of the couple, such as the degree of commitment and trust.
Once again, the observers were right on target. The researchers found that these people’s judgments were based on the level of trust and the degree of commitment each partner displayed. In other words, the observers were drawing inferences based on small details that surfaced as the couple interacted that let them know whether one of them was being unfaithful.
Where does this “Infidelity Radar” come from?
According to these researchers, we are all equipped with a kind of radar for detecting infidelity, a skill that helped our ancestors prosper, especially considering the adverse consequences of infidelity in those times, when the resources available to a family were very limited. This evolutionary mechanism allowed men to detect unfaithful women so they would not have to invest in the education of children who were not their own and, in the case of women, it alerted them to men who might abandon them to their fate.
These problems do not exist nowadays, but the “Infidelity Radar” continues to be activated, especially because most people are looking for a long-term relationship that gives them security. Thus, unconsciously, it is very useful for us to pick up on the small clues that indicate that a person is not trustworthy. In this way, we can think twice before making a commitment. In practice, thanks to this mechanism, we can identify the signs that can be devastating for the relationship.
Reference:
Lambert, N. et. Al. (2014). Thin slices of infidelity: Determining whether observers can pick out cheaters from a video clip interaction and what tips them off. Personal Relationships; 21(4): 612-619.
