Brent Mattingly – Science of Relationships articles | Website/CVĭr. Sociosexual orientation, commitment, and infidelity: A mediation analysis. J., Bullock, M., Hackathorn, J., & Blankmeyer, K. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 870-883.ĤMattingly, B. Individual differences in sociosexuality: Evidence for convergent and discriminate validity. Foggy faithfulness: Relationship quality, religiosity, and the Perceptions of Dating Infidelity Scale in an adult sample. Journal of Social Psychology, 151, 63-86.ĢMattingly, B. The gray area: Exploring attitudes toward infidelity and the development of the Perceptions of Dating Infidelity Scale. Interested in learning more about relationships? Click here for other topics on Science of Relationships. Like us on Facebook to get our articles delivered directly to your NewsFeed.ġWilson, K., Mattingly, B. That being said, if you have someone sexting you before your first date or a President who is quite permissive in his/her beliefs about what is acceptable behavior outside of marriage, it’s probably a good bet that they have an unrestricted sociosexual orientation and thus are more likely to have a wandering eye.Ĭlick here for our previous article on what constitutes infidelity. 4Ĭlearly, we don’t all see eye-to-eye on what counts as cheating. 1 Even more, unrestricted individuals were more willing to engage in any type of these cheating behaviors, primarily because they were less committed to their romantic relationship. People who are very religious tend to believe that everything is cheating, 2 whereas individuals with unrestricted sociosexual orientations (those who view love and sex as separate from one another and do not need to be in a committed relationship to have sex) 3 were willing to cut people slack if they “accidentally” engaged in explicit behaviors with someone else. We also examined what factors influenced individuals’ views of these cheating behaviors. These behaviors – such as “feeling up” someone, oral sex, or sexual intercourse – are essentially “slam-dunk cheating.” You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks that bumping uglies isn’t cheating. At the far end of the spectrum are “explicit” behaviors. If you’re deceiving your partner about your interactions with another person, then it seems that you know what you’re doing is wrong. These behaviors are considerably more questionable. Further down the cheating spectrum are “deceptive” behaviors, such as lying to or withholding information from your partner. You could be doing these acts because you plan on being unfaithful, or you could engage in these behaviors because you’re a good friend. My colleagues and I coined these behaviors as “ambiguous” because it is unclear whether individuals have any true intent to cheat. Cheating may take the form of relatively innocuous behaviors with someone who is not your partner, such as talking on the phone, having lunch/dinner, or hugging. In other words, there are various degrees of cheating. Individuals don’t view infidelity solely in terms of black and white, but rather cheating is viewed in 50 shades of grey (sorry, I couldn’t resist!). I don’t like to shamelessly self-promote, but the Science of Relationships team has been bugging me to write about research several colleagues and I conducted to explore what individuals consider to be “cheating.” What we found was quite interesting. People wondered how the American President, the leader of the free world, did not know whether he cheated or not? Well, it turns out that identifying what “counts” as cheating is more complicated than it seems. The affair was the topic of many water cooler talks. Not that you need reminding, but nearly 15 years ago then-President Bill Clinton was immersed in a saucy sex scandal.
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