Men who earn less than their female partners are more likely to cheat on them, a study published on Monday found.

本周一公布的一项研究发现，收入低于女伴的男性在感情上出轨的可能性更大。

Cheating may be a man's way of trying to restore（恢复，修复） his gender¹ identity when he feels it is under threat, Christin Munsch, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell University, says in the study, which she authored and presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

"Making less money than a female partner may threaten men's gender identity by calling into question（对……表示怀疑） the traditional notion of men as breadwinners," Munsch said.

Indeed, the study found that infidelity dramatically increased when the man earning less than his female partner is Latino, probably because breadwinner status is "one of the defining features of Hispanic masculinity（男性，男子气） ."

Then again, the same study found that men whose partners were more dependent on them were also more likely to cheat, making it a lose-lose situation for women.

It's different for girls, though. Overall, women are half as likely to cheat as men anyway, whatever the circumstances, the study found.

"Women's femininity（温柔，柔弱性） is not defined by their breadwinner status, nor is it defined by sexual conquest（政府，战胜） . Therefore, economic dependency does not serve as a threat to women," Munsch says.

The study indicates ways to prevent one's partner cheating without giving up the well-paid day job. Both sides being satisfied in a relationship is a sure-fire way to make infidelity（背信，无信仰） disappear, and getting your partner to go to church or the mosque² or temple regularly is another: the more regularly an individual attends a religious service, the less likely he or she is to cheat, the study says.

Looking for a partner in a university library, lab or lecture might also be an idea because, the study says, "the more education one reports, the less likely he or she is to engage in infidelity."