People who commit sexual infidelity judge other scammers harder than they do themselves, according to a study published in the Bulletin of Personality and Social Psychology.
With regard to relationship conflicts, studies have found that conflict perpetrators tend to display what is termed a selfish tendency. The selfish tendency describes the tendency of individuals to acknowledge their successes and to minimize the blame for their failures. This means that unfaithful partners tend to downplay their role in the conflict and are more likely to blame external factors than betrayed partners.
The researchers conducted two different studies to examine the selfish tendency associated with sexual infidelity. They also wanted to investigate whether people with experience as perpetrators and victims of infidelity would show hypocrisy if asked about these experiences.
The first study involved 325 participants who were instructed to read a hypothetical scenario in which they were either perpetrators or victims of sexual infidelity. After reading the text, participants were asked to evaluate the extent to which the perpetrator, victim or external circumstances were responsible for the fraud. It is not surprising that those who read the text as an unfaithful partner reproach the perpetrators less than those who read the exact same text, but rather as a betrayed partner.
The second study aimed to examine hypocrisy in the context of real experiences of infidelity. The study enrolled 352 participants who were either infidelity, victims of infidelity, or both. Participants were asked about their previous experience of fraud and one group in particular produced fascinating results.
Those who had experiences both as perpetrators and victims of infidelity revealed what researchers call “sexual hypocrisy”. If they remembered situations in which they were the unfaithful partner, they blamed the victim or the situation factors more than if they were betrayed. They also downplayed the emotional damage the betrayed partner had suffered when they were cheaters rather than victims.
The researchers were also interested in how certain personality traits might influence selfish tendencies. In both studies, participants completed personality scales, which measured traits associated with narcissism, sexual narcissism, attachment anxiety, and psychopathy. The results showed that those who scored high on sexual narcissism and psychopathy showed more evidence of the selfish tendency than those who scored low on these traits.
The results have important implications for couples hoping to get well after infidelity. The tendency of the unfaithful partner to blame and downplay the emotional impact of cheating on the betrayed partner would likely hinder reconciliation between the partners. Couples may need to overcome these prejudices in order to reconcile, which can be more difficult for people with narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies.
The study “Are Fraudsters Sexual Hypocrites? Sexual hypocrisy, selfish inclination and personality style ”, written by Benjamin Warach, Lawrence Josephs and Bernard S. Gorman.
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