Happy wife, happy life.
A new study has found men let their female partners win when they’re competing against one another in games and challenges.
The surprise finding was uncovered by researchers at the North China University of Science and Technology, who asserted that men may go easy on their wives and girlfriends in order to avoid conflict and “prevent them from leaving or being poached” by another male.
“Male partners may be adopting a ‘happy wife, happy life’ mentality, avoiding potential relationship conflict by allowing their spouse to win,” lead author Shuyu Jia, concluded in the study, published in the December issue of the academic journal, Neuroscience.
However, despite men appearing to let their partners win, the study also found that women were less competitive when playing against their paramours than they were when playing against male strangers.
That may be because women feel more relaxed when competing against their partner, or because they are similarly trying to avoid any conflict in a relationship.
For the study, the researchers enlisted 52 women aged between 18 and 25 and had them compete against a man to solve a visual cue task.
The female participants were first required to compete against male strangers while having their brain activity monitored by electroencephalogram (EEG).
Then, the women were asked to complete another visual cue task, this time playing against their husbands or boyfriends.
The results showed that, in general, women showed higher levels of concentration while competing against strangers than they did against their partners.
However, the women won more frequently against their partners than they did against strangers.
Thus, the researchers concluded that the male partners were simply letting the women win the majority of the time.
“Women had a higher winning rate when competing with their romantic partners, which may be the result of men adopting spouse retention strategies to maintain their romantic relationships when competing with their romantic partners to prevent the partners from leaving or being poached by other competitors,” the academic experts wrote.
Further, the researchers claimed that the study “suggests that intimate relationship weakens women’s competitiveness, which is of significant importance for understanding high-quality intimate relationship and promoting the development of healthy competition.”
The study involved participants from China, so it remains to be seen whether the same behavior patterns between men and women would occur across different cultures.
