Many Parents Have Experienced This Firsthand

In pinpointing the source of betrayal, they suggest we start by examining not our spouses, lovers, and family but, rather, our neighbors. It’s important, though, to keep these findings in perspective. It overstates the case to argue that if a person is highly committed to a relationship, in the investment model sense of the phrase, he or she won’t engage in adultery. In some ways, dating college students are probably more prone to infidelity but in others, it could be argued, less. Furthermore, the logistical constraints of carrying out an affair are very different for dating college students living in separate residence halls and for married couples who share the same bed every night. Regardless, though, the predictive capacity of the investment model, even if limited, remains instructive. It demonstrates that the popular Madison County model for understanding infidelity has some empirical validity. There do seem to be dimensions to relationships that encourage or discourage their members from cheating. What is frustrating, though, is the fact that it remains difficult for psychologists to pinpoint what exactly is at work in successfully monogamous relationships. Terms such as satisfaction and commitment are vague and, ultimately, subjective. Further, one could fairly criticize a theory that posits commitment as the key to avoiding infidelity, since avoiding infidelity is itself an indication of commitment. We may be only a step away from saying that the best way to ensure monogamy is to remain monogamous.

From A Distance

Moreover, looking at betrayal more broadly, the fact that your partner is committed to you doesn’t exactly guarantee that you won’t be lied to by him or her. Sometimes, betrayal occurs because of commitment. For over two years, a woman dated a man she’d first met in a bar. The lie had started when the couple met at the bar. Wanting to appear attractive to her, the man had shaved a decade off his age. As the relationship progressed, he’d felt he had to maintain the lie in order to maintain the relationship, and so employed further fabrication, digging himself deeper and deeper. When the truth was finally revealed, the relationship quickly ended. This is an example of serious and continued deception precisely because a member of the relationship was happy with it, invested in its continuation. On the other hand, I know several men and women who are desperately unhappy in their relationships yet who would never lie in a significant way to their partner. Their commitment to honesty trumps their relationship dissatisfaction. In a strange way, though, this can be reassuring. When we are stabbed in the back, we can at least spare ourselves the certainty that it is necessarily somehow our fault.

The Long and Winding Road

There is no evidence that a victim always plays a role in his or her victimization. Sometimes, we are just unlucky in the people we form relationships with or in the people we are bound to by blood. Some psychologists would add a corollary to this notion. They would suggest that we may sometimes be unlucky not in our own relationships but, more precisely in the relationships of everyone else. It’s hard to imagine an American president getting divorced and remarried in the space of his first year in office. Attitudes toward cheating are also different across the Atlantic. Infidelity is far from a given, many Europeans seem more broadly tolerant of, or at least resigned to, cheating than do their American counterparts. Social psychologists understand such differing cultural values in the context of social norms. Social norms are like this latter category. Social groups form and enact them outside of codified systems of behavior. When it comes to infidelity, social norms operate strongly. Outside the arena of politics, the penalties for violating the social norms against infidelity can include a loss of friends, estrangement from loved ones, castigation from the wronged party, and so forth.

Another Day

Yet while it may seem clear that social norms serve to discourage infidelity, things may not be quite so simple. Often in large and complex social groups multiple norms can exist, and these norms are not necessarily harmonious. Psychologists make a distinction between injunctive norms and descriptive norms. Injunctive norms are the more formal social laws of society, ones that are commonly known and largely obeyed. Descriptive norms operate more subtly. They are the norms we learn from the behavior we observe in those around us. If you want to see an example of descriptive norms at work, go to a baseball game and watch people during the playing of the national anthem. One fan taking off his hat can trigger a cascade of hat removals. You might see one section in which every hand is on a heart, and other sections in which all hands are clasped behind. Further, it’s possible for injunctive and descriptive norms to run counter to one another. This might happen if a pregnant woman finds herself in a Lamaze class full of smokers. What is surprising to anyone seeking to understand betrayal is that researchers have found evidence that descriptive norms with regard to infidelity are more powerful than injunctive norms. Studies have shown that individuals who know someone who has been unfaithful are more likely to be unfaithful themselves. It’s as if the same factors that make people take off their hats at baseball games also make them cheat on their partners. The New York of the show is depicted as one of nearly continuous hookups, liaisons, affairs, and trysts. Monogamy is depicted as a struggle, for both men and women. The most immediate social precedent is one of infidelity, and this is the one people follow. Many parents have experienced this firsthand when their children find a group of friends disinclined to obey the admonitions of adults. On the other hand, this model provides an important tool to those who want to make betrayal less likely in those around them, be it in their family or their social circle. Quite simply, if you don’t want to be betrayed, don’t betray anyone else.