Same-Sex Affairs: Men More Forgiving than Women, Study Says

(CBS) No one likes being cheated on, but guys are more willing to forgive and forget when their girlfriend cheats with a woman than with another man.

In fact, guys are more than twice as likely to continue to date a woman who strays with a woman than one who has a heterosexual affair, according to a new study.

What about women who've been cheated on? They show the opposite pattern, saying they're more likely to continue dating a man who has had a heterosexual affair than one who has had a homosexual affair.

Confused? It all makes evolutionary sense, researchers say.

"A robust jealousy mechanism is activated in men and women by different types of cues - those that threaten paternity in men and those that threaten abandonment in women," the study's lead author, Jaime C. Confer, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a written statement.

In other words, guys don't want any uncertainty about who daddy is, while women just don't want to be abandoned.

The researchers asked 700 college students to imagine they were in a committed relationship with someone they had been dating for three months - and then finding out their partner had been unfaithful. Some students were asked to imagine a single episode of infidelity, others multiple episodes. Some were told the cheater had been with a woman, others with a man.

Half of the male students said they would continue to date a woman who had a homosexual affair, but only 22 percent said they would continue to date a woman who had slept with another man.

Among female students, 28 percent said they would continue to date a guy who had slept with another women. Twenty-one percent said they would stick with a guy who had slept with another man.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.