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Pluralistic ignorance is this fun little term us psychology people love to use. It generally refers to people believing that others are engaging in a behaviour, while you are not. So for hooking up…one might think all of their friends are hooking up with different people every weekend while simultaneously feeling inadequate for not hooking up themselves.
So for cheating, this is a belief that cheating is very common and acceptable for others, but “not me.”
Researchers at the University of Calgary (98 women, 78 men, aged 17-30yrs) were surveyed about their feelings about cheating. 60% were in relationships, average duration a bit over a year.
Participants were asked the following questions (read carefully, they’re different!!):
A1: How acceptable do you think it is for University of Calgary students to be sexually unfaithful to their dating partners in a serious relationship?
A2: How acceptable do you think the average University of Calgary student thinks it is for students to be sexually unfaithful to their dating partners in a serious relationship?
And…
B1: How often have you been sexually and emotionally unfaithful (cheated) on a dating partner?
B2: How often do you think the average University of Calgary student has been sexually and emotionally unfaithful (cheated) to a dating partner?
And here is where the pluralistic ignorance kicks in…
Participants think it’s significantly less acceptable for themselves to cheat (versus what they think the average students think about cheating).
Also, people WAY overestimate how often they think other people cheat on partners (like try 3x) than what they do themselves.
Some other findings:
People judged emotional infidelity and emotional and sexual infidelity more common than just sexual infidelity on its own.
Women were slightly more likely to think that other people are cheating more than themselves.
Are people just assholes? We think that other people think it’s okay to cheat, but not us….we’re better than that. And maybe we feel less guilty if we cheat since everyone else does.
Ummm…happy new year? And ummm, don’t cheat?
