Latest / Art of the Question / Why Do People Cheat on Someone They Love? - Prof. Dylan Selterman - #64

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Why Do People Cheat on Someone They Love? - Prof. Dylan Selterman - #64 · Art of the Question

• Julius Moorman: Dylan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Today we're going to be talking about cheating, quite a controversial but yeah, quite interesting topic as well. I think we're going to learn, first of all, why people cheat, why we despise people who cheat, even though we are not part of that particular relationship. And yeah, I think it would also be interested to understand. why some people don't seem to have much regret when they cheat. I mean, at least the category of people doesn't seem to have it based on the science. But I think a good starting point would be to kind of understand the definition of cheating. I mean everyone knows what cheating is, but in order to study a certain topic, you need to work from a baseline definition. So I was curious to know what that would be. Sure, sure. Well, one one thing that I'll say about the definition is that sometimes researchers will ask participants themselves to define infidelity. In other words, infidelity has happened if people say it has happened. That being said, I think one objective definition that we can use as researchers and as journalists who are covering this is that people in romantic and sexual relationships will Have, you know, often some kind of normative boundary. And that is, you know, in in a society like in America or in, you know, a a lot of other places around the world, it's a a a a notion of exclusivity with regards to romance and sex. So you're you're with somebody else, either as a a significant other, spouse, partner, and the notion is you're only romantically and sexually involved with that one person. So infidelity is a violation of that. It is some some kind of romantic or sexual behavior with another person outside of the primary relationship. And this is in contrast to some kind of consensual form of non-monogamy, like an open relationship, where that is explicitly allowed. So the behavior itself is the same. It's considered extra dyadic, meaning you it's it's beyond just two people involved with each other. You're involved with some other person or people and with infidelity, that is seen as a violation. It's seen as a a breaking of the rule. Yeah, no, that seems like a logical definition to work with. And you mentioned open relationship there. I can imagine that usually open relationships do have some sort of rules. For example, a rule could be, yeah, you can sleep with other people. However, you should always tell me up front when you are going to, or yes, you can sleep with other people, but don't but make sure it isn't one of my friends, for example. And then violating one of those rules could be considered cheating as well, even though the relationship is considered to be open. Correct. Infidelity can still happen in the context of open relationships. That's right. Yeah, interesting. So you've written a lot of papers about infidelity and I would love to get into a couple of those. one that really springs out for me is is one of your I wouldn't say earlier ones, but at least from a few years back from twenty nineteen, which is about the motivations behind cheating. So so why we cheat essentially. you've recognized a bunch of motives there of categories, if you will. could you maybe explain what you did with that study and what some of the interesting findings were there? Sure. So I I will say from the outset that for that study and shout outs to my awesome colleagues, Justin Garcia and Irene Sapelis. they're they're they were my co-authors on on two papers involving this this topic. and and we wanted to know in a broad sense, are there motivations for infidelity that extend beyond feeling dissatisfied or somehow unhappy in one's primary relationship? Because that was the predominant idea in the literature for the psychology of infidelity is that people cheat when there's something dissatisfying or unhappy with their you know, their their spousal relationship or their committed relationship. And I was very skeptical about that. I thought, you know, there well, okay, that that explains some of the reasons why people cheat, but certainly not all of them, right? And so I put together this big questionnaire that tapped into lots of different reasons why people might want to cheat on their partners. And the questionnaire that I came up with had items that were inspired by some of the other studies measuring people's motivations for having sex in general. So I figured, you know, if this is a motivation for sex in a general sense, it could be a motivation for infidelity. And there were dozens and dozens of items on this big questionnaire, but then we ran what's called a factor analysis to kind of pare it down and come up with a more manageable grouping. And we discovered in this sample eight separate factors that predicted, you know, people wanting to commit infidelity. now I I will also say that I'm not you know, very, very confident that these are like the eight factors. Like this is an exhaustive list of things that would motivate people to cheat. But this is just, you know, probably eight eight of some possible number of motivations. There could be more. And they are anger at one's partner, feeling neglected, feeling lack of love, feeling low commitment, and sexual desire. Those are, you know, I I guess the the deficits factors. So these are things that could go wrong with a relationship. if if you're feeling like things are bad in the relationship somehow, maybe you're feeling angry, maybe you're feeling neglected, that kind of thing. And then we have three additional factors which do not pertain to the primary relationship. And those are situational factors. So feeling like you're stressed out or you're in a moment in your life where you're just kind of out of it. feeling intoxicated was one of those situational factors. The second one is esteem building. So wanting to be autonomous, wanting to feel good about yourself. And then the last one there is a desire for sexual variety. So just wanting lots and lots of sexual partners. And one one thing that we thought was interesting in our research was that the Non-dietic factors, that is the last three that I mentioned that are not relevant to people's primary relationships, those were endorsed at a higher level than the others. So what that means is that the the scores on those in general were higher. So people were more likely to say that they had some kind of, you know, other reason for wanting to cheat besides, my primary relationship was unhappy for some reason. That doesn't mean that the, you know, the the relationship motivations were zero. Some of them were quite high. The highest in that bucket was lack of love and feeling neglected. So those are definitely salient factors for people, but the others are pretty salient for people as well. Yeah, and did that kinda did that align with your intuition there? Because you said that a lot of times People assume not only in the lit literature, but I think if you just ask a person on the street why do you think it is that people cheat, I think probably the most common answer is yeah, they're probably unhappy with their relationship. They must be, otherwise they wouldn't do it. However, if we establish that a motive could also be a desire for sexual variety, for example, that could also just be a mismatch Between two people where one person in the relationship is happy with just having sex maybe once every two weeks and another person in the relationship would likely want it daily, but of course you're not going to for hopefully not force your partner into having sex with you i if they don't want it, and therefore they look elsewhere. Yeah. I it's a good question. I I didn't have necessarily an intuition about which ones would be more frequently endorsed as motivations, although, you know, it's it's a little bit easier to see with hindsight. So with this sample, we had participants who are mostly young adults in dating relationships. And this was one of the I think critiques of my, you know, earlier pieces of research that I think were very fair and very valid, which is okay. If you've got lots of, you know, a especially college students, but even still like broader broader speaking, young adults who are not married, then you might get some higher scores on sexual variety and you know, these other kind of situational factors like f the situation they were in is is maybe being endorsed more than let's say lack of love because or or anger. Because maybe those are just not salient factors for unmarried people. That being said, I think, and we'll we'll get to this some of the other studies that I've done, including the Ashley Madison one, we'll talk about that. I think that actually provides more support for the the the sexual variety piece. but yeah, I I I didn't have a a lot of intuition there about which would be the the highest scoring factors, only that there would be a lot of different factors that people would feel motivated to cheat. Yeah, and are any were any of these motivations surprising to you? Well, originally we had some items that tapped into things like sexual orientation and other aspects of one's identity. And I had thought that those would be a separate factor, but they weren't. They kind of just had to do more with the general like sexual desire factors that we had in the sample. And and that could shake out differently with a with a different population. I I think certainly there's some folks out there who would endorse those items more than the other items relevant to sex. But that was one thing that surprised me. Yeah. No, I can I can imagine. And d y one of the categories or or motives rather was intoxication or or being drunk. Is Is there also a lot of I I also assume that a lot of these motives are are in most cases not singular. So it could be, they could be. So someone could be really angry, but I think at least it makes sense to me that it is usually a combination of things, especially with the intoxication part that yeah, perhaps you are a bit angry at your partner and you you don't feel as loved as as much. And maybe you do also have some desires for a sexual variety, but normally in in day-to-day life, those desires don't get strong enough. However, given the opportunity, in this intoxicated state, all of a sudden shields are down and then bad stuff can happen. Is is is that correct? Yeah, that's that that's certainly a useful way of putting it. Th these Factors are not completely independent of each other. And someone might have, I mean, this is this is the thing that you would hear from a scientist who just believes very strongly in the relationship deficit theory. And they'll say, well, okay, maybe they said they were intoxicated or there was something about a situation they were in. Maybe they were not thinking clearly, they were on vacation, they were not feeling like themselves. But there was some underlying neglect or anger that was really going along with that. And that certainly, you know, can happen. But the thing that makes me feel a little bit skeptical about that is the differences that we saw in the behaviors and the outcomes from these affairs as a function of those different motivations. So this was something that we published in a second paper that came out a couple of years after the the 2019 one. And what we found is that there were different breakup rates, there were different rates of keeping the affair a secret versus confessing. There were different kind of outcomes as a function of these underlying motivations. So I don't think it's merely the case that you can fold all these together and say, well, if there was one motivation, then there had to be another motivation, because I think if that were the case, the outcomes would look very similar across those two different kinds of motivations. But that's not what we found in the data. Yeah, and you mentioned the the second study there, which is one of the ones I wanted to cover as well, which focused more on on the kinds of affairs and the conclusions people draw from those affairs or or the effects they may have on the relationship, meaning that and this is one was one of the findings I I believe, but please elaborate on it, of course. was that for example, the drunk one-time affair was less likely to cause in a breakup than perhaps someone who they met at work and this was something that was going on for for months, for example. Correct. Yes. And I I I will say before we get into those associations, just looking at the the raw numbers, there's a bunch of different outcomes that we observed, all with, you know, some some, you know, decent amounts of frequency. So in terms of things like breaking up after the affair, that only happened about in in in about twenty percent of participants who reported having an affair in our sample. And a lot of participants in the in this case it was over twenty five percent said they broke up for some other kind of reason. So it could be that the affair was kind of coinciding with other stuff that was bad in the relationship. And that would support the kind of relationship deficit theory that, you know, there's this there's bad stuff happening. There's dissatisfaction or conflict or lack of love. but yeah, some you know, some people said that they stayed together almost almost a a comparable amount. So 28% in our sample said that they stayed together and kept the affair a secret. They wanted to maintain the relationship. And then almost as as many people said they stayed together even though their partner found out about the affair. So there's a lot of different things that can happen. And to your point from just a minute ago, yeah, a l a lot of people who felt angry initially who were motivated by these kind of relationship deficit theory the relationship deficit variables. they were more likely to confess and end the relationship. And the confessing, you know, I I would put that in air quotes because it's not so much that they're confessing as much as they were maybe motivated to just make their partner feel bad, like I cheated on you and then and then break up as as a result because, you know, they're thinking, well, I want to end this relationship anyway, and I'm really upset at my partner. In some cases, people said they were motivated to cheat, out of anger because their partner had cheated on them. And so it would make sense to kind of throw that in their face if they're feeling really upset. And same thing for lack of love. So when people reported this motivation, they also reported more kind of intimacy with their affair partners. And those deficit motivations are associated with ending the relationship after an affair, whereas, like you said, the people who were more I motivated by situational factors or variety, were more likely to not tell their partners and also more likely to try to maintain the relationship over time. Of course, you know, this was a while ago. Those relationships may not have lasted. We if we did a longer follow up, then may maybe we would have of you know better data on the on the long term outcomes there. But it it does seem like people in those situations are motivated to maintain their relationships despite the affair. There are people who do everything they can in order not to be found out by their partner after they've cheated. so that kind of aligns with the assumption that there are more motives to why people cheat. Because if it is true that people only cheat when they are unhappy with their relationship, why would they then Cheat and also try to hide the fact that they have cheated, meaning they still wanna they wanna remain in that relationship even though they've cheated, which is something you wouldn't do if you were super unhappy with sad relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I think that's an interesting way of putting it. I there could also be scenarios where people are still motivated to maintain the relationship and nonetheless disclose what they have done because they see it as a symptom of a problem or because, you know, they're motivated to kind of make their partner aware of their dissatisfaction rather than just wanting to end the relationship in bail. But I think overall that tends to not be the case, especially for young adults who are using the infidelity as an exit ramp. In fact, many people are, you know, when when when you look at the trajectories of breakup, want to test the waters a bit, even if they're not going to cheat. We'll kind of like, you know, maybe download an app and see if they can get some likes. And, you know, they're, they're trying to see what else, what other options are out there before completely disengaging from the relationship. And so that that kind of fits with the data that we've seen here. but I mean to your point, there could always be some who have an affair, they're dissatisfied and they share it with their partner specifically because they want to repair the relationship. that that tends to be less common in the the data that I've seen, but it is possible. That's an interesting motive you mentioned there. So similar to why people look for new jobs before they quit their old job. They want to see like, hey, I don't wanna I w still want to be able to pay the mortgage. I don't wanna Live on the streets, so let's do some research how I'm actually marketable. There's a saying in Dutch that you shouldn't throw away your old shoes before you've bought new ones. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So that that kind of aligns with it there. So which which type of affairs did you distinguish between And what were some of the results of those affairs? And I'm I'm pointing towards the perhaps the the the shorter form ones, the drunk ones we've identified and then the more longer going like like really affairs where where people were were seeing each other for for longer periods of time. Yeah. How do they how do they relate to each other and and the result they they have on on those relationships? Yeah, yeah. Well, with with the the length of the affair, the data we have suggest a wide array of time spans. So they they ranged from one day to five years. The five years tends to be less common, but but but it it does happen sometimes. And the the the modal length was one day. So I think you know, if if if you're looking at what is the most common frequency in terms of time spent with an affair partner. Especially in young adults who might just say, you know what, I I hooked up with this person one time, you know, we we we had an affair that lasted just a day. And then you had but the the the median length was fourteen days. So there's, you know, some some people who are having an affair that lasts for, you know, a couple of weeks, but in in most cases the affair tends to not last that long. That being said, There are a few different factors that predicted length of the affair. And one was a feeling of lack of love. So that fits with the relationship deficit idea that if you're if you're feeling like you don't have a lot of love in your relationship, you might seek more time and affection and attention with the affair partner. And and that also coincided with more kind of intimate conversations. More likely to say, I love you, more public affection, more, you know, going out on kind of traditional dates. So the longer the the affair, the more likely they were kind of doing things that go with a long-term relationship, even though it's their affair partner. Whereas the, you know, situational factors. That kind of showed the opposite association. So the situational factors were associated with much shorter affairs and less of the intimacy, less of the kind of going out on dates together and having public displays of affection, that kind of thing. Interestingly, we also found that wanting more sexual variety and wanting to boost one's self esteem or feeling of autonomy was also associated with the length of the affair. So these are motivations that do not have to do with some kind of deficit or dissatisfaction in the primary relationship, but are nonetheless associated with spending more time and doing more kind of relationship-oriented things with affair partners. I would be curious to follow up on that. I'm not really sure exactly why those would would be there, but it it could be that. You know, people are seeking some kind of either validation or some kind of excitement. Maybe, you know, they're having even multiple affairs and this is kind of just making them feel in better in a sense about themselves. And that is if if you know, if if they feel good about themselves, they'll keep doing it, that kind of thing. So it's not just one day, it's not just a one night stand, it's you know, keeping keeping it going for a longer length of time. Yeah, that's very interesting. And I was curious, we haven't touched on this, but is there any difference between why men tend to cheat and why women tend to cheat? Because I can imagine in general, of course there are examples to be named for each of the sexes, so I wanna be specific there. But I can underst I I would imagine that in general perhaps women would be more likely to cheat because they feel a lack of love, for example. Whereas some men would desire more sexual variety. I believe there's a bunch of data that supports that on average men would want twice as much sex as they're currently having in the relationship, whereas women find the amount of sex they're having in their relationship perfectly fine, I believe. Yeah. So given that data from from a different study, that would also I I would find it understandable that you would also see the differences between the sexes there when it comes to cheating. Sure. Yeah. So with the with with the differences between men and women, I I I share your intuition. And we did find that men were significantly more likely to endorse the sexual items, both in terms of sexual variety and in terms of sexual dissatisfaction. So men were twice as likely as women in our sample to say that they were motivated to have an affair because the sex with their primary partner was not as fulfilling or because they just wanted lots of sexual partners. Although, I will say for the sexual variety variable was still highly endorsed by women. So they they we we had 60 roughly 63% of women in the sample agreeing with the sexual variety variable items and then 87% with the the men in our sample. So though that that was maybe even the highest rated factor out of any of them. men were also more likely to agree and endorse the situation focused items. So feeling drunk or intoxicated, feeling like they're not themselves or they're stressed out. with The neglect item, so feeling neglected by one's partner, this was the one where we found that women endorsed this more than men. There were no significant differences between men and women for anger, lack of love, low commitment, or esteem or autonomy. So all of those variables were you know, statistically similar for men and women. Interesting. That's that's yeah. I mean it it makes a lot of sense when when i when I hear those numbers. And let's let's talk about regret because that ties into the Ashley Madison study. before we look at some of the results there, can you maybe explain what you did with that study, what it what it looked like? Yeah, yeah. Well, that study was fulfilling You know, some important limitations from the previous research that we talked about, because those studies were cross-sectional, meaning we only surveyed people one time. And like I said, they were predominantly young adults in dating relationships. And we had an opportunity to collaborate with the folks who run the Ashley Madison website, which for those of you who are not familiar, it's a it's basically a kind of dating app for people who are married and want to have affairs. So it's kind of like, you know, Tinder or OK Cupid, except you know, people are committed and they don't want their partners to well, I I shouldn't say not always wanting to their partners to find out. We did we did find in that particular sample that between fifteen and twenty percent of participants said their partners knew that they were on the website. So there's some some degree of consensual or open arrangements. in in in the samples that we collected. But overall that was not the norm. So you're still left with, you know, 80 to 85% of people are doing this in secret. But and and we were also able to survey our participants at two points in time, although we only had a few hundred that we were able to survey at both those time points. And so and and so most of them we do were able to only survey once. But those are primarily middle aged adults and primarily men. So and then this is an interesting feature of I guess the the the population that Ashley Madison is geared toward perhaps that's 87% of the people in our sample were men. That doesn't mean that eighty per 87% of Ashley Madison users are men. We don't have those data because it could be that women were less likely to agree to participate in our study. But we we have basically designed a survey and the Ashley Madison team distributed it to their members. And all of this was anonymous, of course. But these are primarily married and middle-aged men. And we found something that I thought was kind of interesting just at baseline, which again kind of goes against the relationship deficit idea, which is that overall. The measures of relationship quality were not low. they weren't very high. that but they but they weren't low either. So in terms of things like how much conflict do you have with your partner, how much closeness do you feel, how much satisfaction. They were about the mid re midpoint of the scale. So not not too high, not too low. The one that we the that really surprised me was people's feelings of love. Feelings of love were actually high. So we we had on on a five point scale, the average was about a four out of five in terms of feelings of love. And then you also mentioned regret. So we asked people, you know, how much how how bad do you feel? You know, how much regret do you have about having this affair? And also how much emotional and sexual satisfaction do you have as a, you know, as a function of having the affair? And satisfaction was high and regret was low. So regret was below two on a five point scale. So on average, people are not feeling like they did something bad or did something wrong. And, you know, a lot of them, I think, you know, if if if if we're looking at the motivations here, the one that stood out as pretty high was sexual dissatisfaction in the primary relationship. And and and that that was something that appeared to be really strongly motivating our the the participants in our sample. we had I I think fifty percent of participants in our sample, yeah, it's it it's exactly fifty, said that they were not sexually active with their partners at all. So there's a lot of dead bedrooms here. And people were like, well, you know what? I I I love my partner, I want to maintain my marriage, but I want to have sex too. And you know, for whatever reason they're not having sex with their partners. I I will add another feature of this that maybe coincides and explains somewhat of the low regret finding was that people said they, you know, they they they put some effort or investment into improving their relationships. More than a quarter of people in our sample said that they had tried couples therapy. So they they had done s you know something to try to make things better in their relationship. And maybe they felt like that gave them some kind of license to go and have an affair and not feel terrible about it. Because the, you know, the the idea That is the kind of conventional wisdom here among relationships researchers is if relationships, if relationship dissatisfaction or deficit is motivating people to have affairs, then they're gonna regret it because they're going to think, well, my relationship is is is is worse now, or they'll feel bad about themselves because they feel like they've done something that's ethically bad. And we're just not finding a lot of that in the data. That that being said, you know, one one caveat here. is that, you know, the there could be something different about the population of people who are using Ashley Madison. Like maybe they're special in a way and and and we're just not picking up on that in the data in terms of how they think about relationships and ethics. Yeah. It sounds pretty harsh, right? When you just hear that number alone, like like fifty fifty percent of people don't regret it. What was that the finding? Fifty percent exactly. Well, the the regret is not measured that way exactly. the the fifty percent was for the people who said that they're not having sex at all with their partners. Right. Okay, yeah. The regret number is not a percentage. It's just on a scale of one to five. Like how much do you regret the affair? And the average was below a two. So regret overall is low in the sample. Right. Okay. No, but to to someone who just Here's that number, that sounds like, okay, that seems kinda cruel. But when you think about the motive, and that the majority of these people that were questioned, that one of the motives was or the predominant motive was the the lack of of sex in their own relationship. That's also something that goes that just ha doesn't happen overnight. It's just like, I didn't have sex yesterday evening, that number doesn't come out of nowhere. It is probably something that builds up over years. Therefore, it is something that you've been walking with for many years a longer period of time. Therefore I can understand why if you do something to solve quote unquote your your problem, you might feel less regret than if you got hammered at the Christmas party and hook up with a colleague. Yeah, that's that's a great point. And in hindsight, it would have been nice to ask that question, how long have you not been having sex with your partner? Because there would I I I share your intuition that if it's only, let's say, a few weeks or maybe even a few months, the regret might be a lot higher than if it's, I haven't had sex in like over a year or multiple years. And in that case, people might just be feeling desperate. You know, I think people forget it we we have strong, very strong motivations for sex all throughout our lifespan, even when we're not procreating, even when, you know, we're we're postmenopausal. People, you know, they they crave sex. And I think that's a very natural motivation. It doesn't, you know, excuse the infidelity, but I think it's it's understandable that you know, people would want to have sex and if they're not having sex with their partners for a very long period of time. that they would want to seek that fulfillment elsewhere. Yeah, no, I I agree. And yeah, that's again, and to be precise, not to agree with D D infidelity. Were there w did some of the findings from those Ashley Madison co questions surprising to you? And by the way, I just wanna I just wanna say that it's incredible that you got to ask these Ashley Madison users that that must be Yeah, I I don't wanna speak about this in like a funny way, but it's almost like the holy holy grill of research participants, if you will. I agree. We got we got we got very lucky that we were able to, you know, collect such a a large sample of data from Ashley Madison users. And I I I will say that a lot of what we've discovered in this study was very surprising to me. we found no and I think the the the things that were the most surprising to me were the null findings. In other words, the fact that we did not find an association between a lot of these variables. I had expected that people, because you know, so many other studies have found this, that people who have lower relationship satisfaction would have been more likely to follow through with having an affair. But we we did not find that. We found no evidence that affairs were linked with worse relationship quality or breakups. We found no evidence for something else called derogation of alternatives. This is the idea that the more satisfied you are, the less attracted you feel to other people who are not your partner. This is again a very well-established finding. We did not see that association in our data. We found no evidence for declining psychological well-being, in other words, happiness or self-esteem after having an affair. So all of those things that other studies have found, we did not observe in our data. But we did find, and this was kind of you know consistent with some of the results in the other studies we talked about, that the initial motivations matter. So when people are motivated to cheat because they're angry or feel neglected. They have a low relationship quality. And when they are sexually dissatisfied, they're more likely to break up. interestingly, we also found that when people are motivated to have affairs in this sample because they wanted to seek autonomy or higher self-esteem, they actually had better relationship quality. and and I'm not again, I'm not really sure why that is, but it just goes to show you how much these initial motivations matter in terms of seeking affairs. And this is my big take-home point to anyone who's interested in this topic is that we have for a long time considered infidelity to be this kind of big monolithic thing. Like if you're cheating, it's it means this. And it and it's this one specific thing. And it it's the same for everyone. And I think, you know, especially in light of these data, I'm seriously questioning that idea. I think there's an array of different motivations. underlying infidelity for lots of different people. It can be, you know, sexual variables. It can be feeling emotional variables relevant to the relationship or just wanting to feel better about themselves. you know, commitment and love and satisfaction and neglect and anger. These are all very different things. And they have very different consequences for how people behave in their relationship and outside of their relationship. Yeah. And I I want to talk about How we view people who cheat, right? Because of course we, at least in the Western world, we think of cheaters as as bad people. Someone who is known to be a notorious cheater. We generally don't really consider them to be good people. It isn't a a trait that we aspire to see in a lot of people. Part of it might also be when we When we say something about another person, there is the identification of it, but also the implicit what you're implicitly also doing is hey, I don't agree with this, meaning I would never engage in such behavior. So there's definitely something to be said there as well. But I'm just curious to understand why we get angry at cheaters even though we are not involved in that particular relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great point. I wrote about this in a a a a chapter and an an entry for in a a psychology encyclopedia. Like why is it that people are angry and upset, not just when their partners cheat, but when other people in society cheat? Like there's this kind of third party judgment and and condemnation. So a as for the the Kind of specific reason why people might be, you know, upset or angry at other people when they commit infidelity. Some might think that it's a threat to their own relationship, even if their partner's not involved. They might think, well, if there's a society that we live in that condones this kind of behavior, maybe that makes it more likely that my partner will at one point cheat on me. So there could be a kind of selfish, you know, reason for that, a a a self-oriented reason. I I haven't found evidence for that specifically in my research. but it's you know certainly a possibility. Another possibility is that people are upset because they perceive there to be some kind of contamination from that behavior that is, you know, relevant to moral foundations of loyalty and purity, and people see those as important kind of variables for the ethical foundations of society. So this we're we're getting into some new territory here and and theories of of moral psychology and the and the psychology of ethics. And there's a lot of debate of you know between different scholars who have views on you know what what really drives people to have moral judgments and condemnation of others' behavior. Certainly it is the case that you know we we judge other people's behavior to be wrong when someone is harmed. So if somebody assaults or kills someone, we condemn that because the victim has been harmed. And this is part of one of the biggest theories in moral psychology, the idea of dyadic morality. This is championed by Kurt Gray and his colleagues. And then there's other theories that suggest it's not all about harm. There's other moral variables that are important in society. And I've found some evidence for this in my own research. where we give people some scenarios depicting characters who are committing infidelity where there is not a clear evidence of harm. So in one study, we had participants fill out a survey where they were evaluating a fictional character who cheats on their partner. And in one condition, they they they they cheated on their partner and then immediately broke up and the partner never finds out. So there's really no harm consequence for the partner. In the other condition, the part the the character breaks up first. So there's no infidelity. And what we find is that people, you know, when we ask them how much harm was caused, they rate them about the same. But which is more ethical, they think it's much more ethical to break up first. So why is that? Well, they view the act of breaking up first and then having sex to be more pure and more loyal. So there's these other moral factors that seem to be playing a role here. And the the moral factors of loyalty and purity are, I think, more relevant to the construction of a well-functioning society than just whether someone is harmed. Because I think we would avoid we would want to be avoidant of harm regardless of what's happening in society. Like we would all want to avoid you know, non-consensual harm. but but loyalty is also about kind of loyalty to one's group, loyalty to one's, you know, community or nation or social group, in addition to loyalty to one's partner. And purity is about many different things. It's about physical purity, it's about spiritual purity, and people tend to think about that very, very strongly connected to sexual purity. So when when people are doing sexual kinky things, when they're having open relationships, peep people who score high on purity concerns tend to be more condemning of that as well. So all of that is to say, I think there are ethical standards that people have for affairs. And when they see affairs, they tend to condemn them, not necessarily because they think someone is being harmed, although that is certainly the case in a lot of the time. but they also feel like there's some there's something bad that might be related to these other ethical concerns. And I I think that has been, you know, definitely neglected in the research on infidelity. And I was happy to kind of, you know, put a couple of studies together that shed light on that. We'll go back to the conversation in just a second, but first I have an important announcement to make. If you've made it this far, I'm going to assume that you're enjoying the show. If you want to support the show, you can do so by leaving a like or a comment if you're watching on YouTube, or by rating the episode if you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. However, the single biggest thing you can do to support the show is by sharing it with someone you think might enjoy this episode. This could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be a colleague. It doesn't really matter. If everyone who's currently listening to this episode would share it with just one person, the show would blow up in no time. Which also means that I could go full time. That means more episodes, it means better episodes, and it also means a happy host. So Please consider sharing the episode. It really helps me a lot. And I thank you. Now let's get back to talking. Yeah, it's incredibly interesting. And what I'm also curious about is in at least in Western society, monogamy is the norm. There are, however, some societies where it isn't, at least where some men are allowed to have multiple women. But is monogamy something that is biologically imprinted in? in humanity or is this more like a cultural thing that we have established after the fact? It could be neither of those things. I I I I I would I would I would give a third possibility, okay, which is that societies tend to be somewhere on a spectrum of monogamy where some some type of you know a a non consensual or I I would say extraditic relationship. So some something is tolerated, and then it's just a question of what. the boundaries are. So you're right that in a lot of, you know, Western cultures, what we would think of as sexual exclusivity is the norm, but there might still be some degree of tolerance for things like watching pornography or fantasizing about other people, or maybe even flirting or kissing someone as long as there's no sex or deep emotional attachment. A lot of people, even in Western Societies have said they've experimented with an open relationship at some point in their lives, even if they're not currently doing that. you know, if you do a national poll of people in America, the rate of open relationships is not very high, but lifetime prevalence of, you know, some kind of open relationship. Maybe it's, you know, you're you're young and you're with someone and one of you goes off to college and it's like you have this understanding that you might hook up, but then when you come back and and you're both home, you're together. And it's like not exactly it's kind of like a don't ask, don't tell s situation. So if if we combine all that stuff together, I think the lifetime prevalence of some kind of open relationship is higher than we might assume, even if it's not necessarily the norm for these long term marital relationships. That being said, you asked about, you know, whether whether monogamy is imprinted on us. And in this case, I would say it's i i if if you mean monogamy in the context of long-term pair bonding, then I would say yes, but not sexual exclusivity. So in general, adults across most societies around the world, it we we tend to form pair bonds, we tend to form deep emotional attachments to, you know, I guess what we would what we would call a spouse in our culture, but you know, other some other kind of partnership, certainly. and that that tends to be very strong over and above the relationships we might have with other people. But as you said, there's lots of societies where people might have kind of secondary relationships or sexual partnerships. with others, maybe even, you know, some kind of bonds that's there, but it's not as strong as the primary bond. And then even in the societies where the expectation is both emotional and bonding exclusivity and sexual exclusivity, it's still really common for people to have affairs. Like the the the baseline rates of infidelity in America are, you know, probably around 20 to 25%. In some studies on young adults, it's even higher to than that. I've I've seen some samples, and I I would admit this is less common, but some samples I've seen the rates of infidelity are around 50%. even in societies like you're describing, where it's the kind of openly stated norm and expectation to be monogamous, we're not very good at doing that. so so I I you know it's it's it's tough to say, but I I wouldn't I wouldn't say that monogamy is something that we're kind of biologically predisposed to do, but it can work. I think, you know, some people look at this at this research and they say, well this means that humans are not really meant to be monogamous and it's foolish to strive for that and we should just be, you know, have open relationships. And to that I would say, well, not necessarily. Monogamy can work for people. it's it takes a little bit more effort, maybe it for for some, especially if you're prone to be more promiscuous. And some individuals are very you know, they're they're sensation seeking and they want a lot of sexual partners. So for those folks it might be a bit more of a challenge. But I think it's something that Every couple needs to work for if you're committing to have sex with only one person for decades of your life, you know, in for for a lot of people, most of their adult life, you're gonna need to deal with feelings of, you know, sexual frustration at some point. You're gonna probably gonna need to deal with, you know, having desire or fantasies about having sex with other people. And some people deal with that just fine. Other people don't. But I think. There's this assumption that if you're not dealing with it well, that means there's some underlying problem in the relationship. And I would question that too. I think it's just an, you know, in some case, a natural human motivation to want to have lots of sex, including with multiple partners. I I don't think there's that that says anything bad about a person for having those desires. I don't think there's anything bad about a relationship in which people want to have sex with other people who are not their partner. You just have to deal with it in a healthy way. Yeah, no, I I completely agree. I I recently did an episode about the the science of cuckolding with Professor Todd Shekleford, which was an amazing episode, basically about why some people have the desire to be cuckolded, but also a lot of the mechanisms that nature has implemented in order to prevent one from being cuckolded. So there's a lot of evidence that this happens in animals, but of course also in humans. And we've talked a lot about the costs about raising an offspring that isn't yours. For for example, when a woman gets pregnant it takes nine months for the pregnancy and then before the child is well is able to vent for themselves. it it takes fifteen to to eighteen years probably if we if we go back in in age. So there's an extremely long runway which creates the desire in in women to find a partner if we if we look back at at historical times to to find someone that can protect them for this entire period of time. but then it also creates desires because men obviously only men are at risk of raising another one's offspring. that is quite difficult for for women to to happen to since they give birth to the child. So there's also all these mechanisms that we have developed to to prevent another person from from yeah g getting with your wife basically and and and raising another one's kid which to me seems to imply like Obviously, this is these are mechanisms that have evolved in order to prevent infidelity from happening, which then means infidelity happens. So therefore you could argue monogamy isn't biologically imprinted in us because we do tend to to show infidelity. However, that also means that the baseline or at least the situation nature d so desires from us is is that we indeed find one partner that goes through the cycle of giving birth and and raising children together as a team, if you will. does does that make sense? It it makes sense. I'm not I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with that. I mean f in in our world now, we have lots of very effective methods of birth control. And you could argue that that has, you know, increased The tendency for people to commit affairs if they feel like, well, there's there's not going to be a lot of offspring repercussions of the affair. So it it could be that people are just kind of responsive to the environmental conditions that they're in, which is actually consistent with evolutionary theory. And with regards to people's motivations to avoid affairs, I think people place a lot of emphasis on paternity. And you know, to to your point, they po they they'll they'll look at things like wanting to ensure that people are raising offspring that are their own and there are these mechanisms to avoid infidelity. But I think the strongest biological reasons why people might want to avoid infidelity in society has more to do with the spread of sexually transmitted infections than it does for unwanted offspring. And that is, I think You know, also true to some extent now, even with contraception, it's certainly not perfect. And you know, we we have seen across the past half century the spread of, you know, very deadly diseases. I mean, now HIV is is more under control than it was, but I think that was certainly a f a a big factor in the late 20th century in terms of making people more reticent to have unprotected sex and to have sex with multiple partners. so, you know, medical advances aside, I think, you know, people are not only concerned about paternity, they're not only concerned about raising offspring that are their own, but are also concerned with their their physical health and just wanting to you know, I guess stop the spread of germs, so to speak. Yeah, no, that make that makes a lot of that makes a lot of sense. We've we've mainly talked about the the people who cheat, not n not so much about the people who get cheated on, but of course there's alwa also always has to be one that is cheated on, unfortunately. w what can we what can we say about that? Wha why is it first of all, apart from the obvious that someone broke your trust, but why is it so incredibly painful when that happened? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, there there's a lot we can say about this. And I I remember when some of the Some of the studies that we've talked about when they were published, some journalists would ask me, well, you know, what is the the take-home message for people who get cheated on? Is it the case that people are thinking, well, I did everything right and my partner was satisfied, but they still cheated on me, and that's horrible. And so I think you can kind of look at it in the glass half full of the glass half empty way. The glass half empty way is I did everything right, but my partner still cheated and I'm miserable because of that. On the flip side, you could say, well, my partner cheated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't love me. It doesn't necessarily mean that there, you know, some that there's a deep problem in the relationship. It could be that there's this other factor. One thing that I would advise people who have been in this situation, and I and I I I know how painful it it can be. sometimes this is a matter of communication, especially because lots of people will just kind of assume monogamy. And if you don't want to be in that position, if you don't want to be cheated on, then I think having more explicit conversations with your partner is going to go a long way. I I remember this this there was another study. I didn't do this one, but my colleagues did in the early 2010s. And they showed that in a surprisingly high percentage of couples who are surveyed, Some, you know, said they they they disagreed about whether there even was a monogamous arrangement at all. And some of them disagreed about whether there was an infidelity. So one person said, you know, my partner cheated on me, but the partner says, No, I didn't. And, you know, but par part of that is a you know, be because when when people enter into relationships, they say they they have the talk and they say, We're in a relationship now. But there's no discussion of monogamy. There's no discussion of what that means. There's no discussion of what it means to be exclusive. So I think having those conversations early is a great way to prevent unwanted behaviors going forward and a great way to prevent kind of being in that position where you feel awful because your partner cheated on you. Now that doesn't exactly answer your question because you were like, you know, why, why is it that it hurts so much? And yeah, it's a violation of trust, but I think also it's because people assume that, you know, their partner doesn't love them or that, you know, there there's something terrible that happened that their relationship can't continue. Some people do, you know, break up with their their their partners or spouses even just after one instance of infidelity. I would also caution against that. I think in the moment it can feel really, really terrible, but You know, I I've heard relationship advice columnists, people like Dan Savage for for instance will say, you know, are you really gonna end you're gonna dissolve your 20 year marriage because they had one or they had sex with one person one time, that that wasn't you? and you know, I I've seen some interesting pop culture examples of this, like in the before midnight movie, the Richard Link later film that was the third of the trilogy. They have, you know, Jesse and Celine, who are these kind of, you know, they they're we're rooting for them. They're the protagonist. They have this relationship built on a lot of passion and love for over the span of years. And yet there's infidelity. And you know, the the j the Jesse character says, I d I don't think that people, you know, should be monogamous for their entire lives. So you just have to have that conversation at the beginning and and say, like, okay. you know, maybe we will tolerate some degree of non-monogamy throughout our lives. And when that happens, I think people feel much better about their partners actually doing it because they feel like they're in control. They feel like they're they're on board. They've had a consensual agreement and you're kind of, you know, preempting a lot of those negative feelings. I think, you know, when when people feel when they when they have been cheated on, They feel like they're out of their their relationship is out of their control now. And there's lots of uncertainty. There's, you know, sometimes people in will interrogate their partners about their affairs. There's like, you know, you know, tell me tell me everything. Tell me the details. What was her name? What did you do exactly? Because they want to know, because they feel like they're left in the dark. They feel like they don't know what's happening. And that can be very, very distressing. Yeah, no, that that that can be very disp distressing. I I think there's also data that That shows that of course men and women don't like to be cheated on. but this is what Professor Todd Sh Shekleford brought up is that when men are asked what they found the worst about being cheated on, it was the the physical act of having sex, the idea that their partner was having sex with an with another man, whereas women found it the the worst the the intimacy part of it. So was there were there feelings involved? was it love? and again both aspects of it, neither of of sexes really liked of course, but there does seem to be yeah a difference in in in the things that we find the absolute worst about it one thing you you mentioned there about s setting definitions when you enter into a relationship, it reminds me of a Dutch TV show. I believe they have an American version as well, but I might be wrong, which is called Temptation Island. And it's yeah, it's for the for the people who don't know, it's a TV show where they put people who are in a relationship, they put the man on an island with single women and they put their girlfriends on a different island. with a single man and they try to make them cheat and if they withstand this test then of all if they are able to stay loyal on Temptation Island then the relationship must be perfect because there's no worse situation to be in. But I it reminded me of that because they start the show with asking the couples what do you consider cheating? Right. Is is it cheating if the if it's kissing, if it's dancing, obviously like having sex with another person, I think most people would agree on was considered to be cheating. But for some people it it was less than that. It could could even be an an intimate relationship. So of course they start the show with those definitions because then they can show the footage after if if one person is is breaking the rules and they can overlay the footage perfectly and it makes for for better TV. but I think outside of a TV show it it makes a lot of sense as well. Yeah. Well, couple a couple of things about that. First of all, if you are looking to, you know, stay exclusive or monogamous, best to not put yourself on Temptation Islands. Like not surround yourself with lots of attractive people who might want to have sex with you. But the the other thing, so you you mentioned this research on you know, emotional involvement and you mentioned, you know, the aspects that people might find upsetting in the context of the show. And I I think one one issue that I have with that is that it kind of positions emotional exclusivity in a way that might not be very healthy for people. So if someone is, let's say, in a you know, monogamous relationship and they don't want their partner to have sex, but they also don't want their partner to fall in love with somebody else. You know, I think it's it's tricky because a lot of that deep emotional intimacy and connection is good to have with, you know, your friends, with, you know, good pe good to have with people who are not your primary partner. I think in some sense, we might place Too much weight, too much emphasis on one person to kind of fulfill all of our needs. And this is also unhealthy for relationships. Eli Finkel has talked about this in the in the in the work he's done in his book, The All or Nothing Marriage, where he talks about how as time has gone on, people expect more of their spouses. So it used to be that. Marriages were kind of oriented around logistical stuff, basically keeping a home and procuring food and raising kids. And then we gravitated more towards wanting deep romantic intimacy and passion and romantic love, and then even self-fulfillment. So wanting your partner to help you become a better person. And these there's all these roles that we want our partners to play. We want them to be a co-parent, we want them to be a therapist, we want them to be a provider, we want them to be you know, a a a a sexy partner for us, like all these different things all all in one package. And that's a lot of burden. It's a lot of weight and and responsibility to put on one person and one relationship. So in in the context of emotional engagement and in I I I want to say love, maybe that's the wrong word, but You know, feeling deeply connected to other people, feeling like you can confide in them, that you can trust them, that's really, really important. And I would I would caution people against feeling like, you know, you need to have all of those emotional eggs in one basket, so to speak. that being said, some people might say, well, it's fine if my partner has a you know deep connection with other people, so long as it's not a romantic emotional connection. And I would say, okay, well, then, you know, tell me, tell me what the difference is. Like what it what is the what is the difference? If you have affection, you have caring, you have you know, the the this feeling of emotional depth in your relationship. Maybe you're even saying, I love you to this person. And you know, if if there's not a a sexual component, but there is some kind of you know deep emotional feeling. That that and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Be we we don't we don't tend to think about love in the same way with our siblings or our family members. You know, when and when you have a a younger sibling that's born, sometimes people might you know, kids especially might get a a little a little jealous, a little possessive and Parents say, well, I we we have enough love for everyone. Like it's it's not it's not an exclusive arrangement. And people don't feel that way about their friendships either. So it's it's interesting that we have this idea that romantic love needs to be kind of, you know, exclusive to to one person. anyway, I I'm not saying it can't work. I'm not saying it's it's bad to do that. I would just suggest that people be a little thoughtful about that and and consider the ways in which it might be beneficial. To have lots of people that you're emotionally connected to. I agree. I agree. And and thank you for for that addition and and specification because I think that's very, very important indeed. we've we've talked a lot about your your previous research, but I was curious, are you are you currently working on anything exciting that we can be on the lookout for? Good question. Well, I I haven't been working on infidelity projects these days. Now my work focuses on research that's relevant to higher education, especially in my current role at HeteroDox Academy. maybe someday I'll pick up the thread on infidelity research. I am also doing a project on ideal preferences and how they matter for relationship outcomes. That has been a pretty big meta-analysis projects that I'm in the middle of now and and hopefully that will be done soon. so folks can keep an eye out for that. My colleagues and I are looking to see whether people's initial kind of preferences for partners actually impact how they feel in terms of attraction and relationship satisfaction down the line. And I think I think those findings are pretty interesting and we'll we'll see, you know, how how everything shakes out with our final analyses. and and I would say look forward to that probably within the next year in terms of that th those data getting published. Interesting. Well, I'll I'll be on the lookout because that that does sound very, very interesting. Who wh where can people go if they wanna stay up with your work? Yeah. well I have a website, Dylan Selterman dot com where I kind of keep all of my publications and the work that I'm doing. especially media appearances is all there. I'm not very active on social media. I would say most of the time I'm on Substack. so you can look for me there. My Substack newsletter is called Sharing a Brain. And I just started it a month or yeah, I would say I I started it in in the summer. So there it's it's relatively new, but I hope to post more there and and share some thoughts both on my own research and and other people's research as well. Awesome. Well I may I'll make sure to to put it in the in the show notes. thank you so much for for today Dylan. This was incredibly interesting and yeah the work that you do is phenomenal so I really appreciate it that you could make the time to come on the show and have a discussion with me. It was a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.