A new study gives an insight on whether someone can tell whether his or her partner is loyal or not. Men and women are genetically inclined to either be loyal and faithful or promiscuous, according to the research from Northumbria and Oxford Universities.
The study, published in the journal Biology Letters, is from a joint study conducted by Professor Robin Dunbar of Oxford University's Department of Experimental Psychology and Professor John Manning of Northumbria University.
They analyzed individual attitudes related to non-committed sex and the length of the ring finger compared to the index finger or the digit ratio. They also found out that either men or women can have tendencies to become unfaithful to their partners.
To come up with their findings, they studied the responses of 575 North American and British people regarding their thoughts and feelings towards non-committed sex. Aside from that, they measured photocopies of the fingers of 1,314 men and women.
The results have shown that the respondents were more likely to be promiscuous and others were more likely to value faithfulness and sexual fidelity. With regards to their attitude towards sex, the researchers discovered that both men and women would be classified into two groups: low or restricted sociosexuality and high or unrestricted sociosexuality.
Those with restricted sexuality, they are more exclusive with a partner and they want to have a deep emotional bond before engaging in any sexual relationship. The opposite applies to the latter. The unrestricted ones are those engaging in promiscuous activities.
They also provided a link between the loyalty and fidelity of a person with the length of their index and ring fingers. Long ring fingers would entail that a person was exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb. When compared to women, men tend to experience more testosterone in the womb and hence, have longer ring fingers relative to their index finger.
Professor Manning reiterated that it is important to note that cultural and environmental factors can influence these underlying genetic strategies. He has analyzed finger length ratios for almost two decades. Another study used this ratio in their purpose to analyze attitude of men towards women.