this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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My quick skim seems to suggest that this is a correlative study, so the way that this title is phrased is misleading, I think. A major alternative explanation that's completely not mentioned is that people who produce more sperm are also more likely to suspect their partners were not faithful.
For instance, perhaps baseline stress or paranoia induces sperm maturation through some sort of hormonal signaling, and it also causes people to be more suspicious of other people.
Right. It’s an obvious control metric they ignored, since abstinence is strongly correlated with both phenomena.
It’s part of sperm bank donation protocols (to increase sperm count) for example, and couples’ therapy often treats it as a common precursor for ideations relating to infidelity.
I get that it might be difficult to reliably gather the information. But just the question “so… you guys fuckin?” could spare us all these bizarre theories.
Yep.