The Science of Online Infidelity
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Explore your deepest desires, if you dare. The Last Show with David Cooper. Ashley Madison, the dating website built for people who are already taken, which sounds either diabolical or extremely efficient. What does the research say about the people who use it, who cheat, justify it, and then feel totally fine about what they've done? Although some may not, some may feel guilty, but we'll get to that in a second. We're here to discuss all this with social psychology researcher at Heterodox Academy, Dylan Selterman. Dylan, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me.
So the very existence of a platform like Ashley Madison feels almost like a social experiment to me in human temptation.
What is Ashley Madison and why does it exist?
What does it say about us that millions of people are signing up for a service like this designed for affairs?
It means that a lot of people are cheating on their significant others. It means that infidelity and adultery are common. Certainly not everyone cheats, but, you know, a lot of people do.
I think a lot of us pretend that we don't, but throughout all of human history, cheating has not been an uncommon thing. But the data breach in 2015, for those who don't remember, many, if not all of the users who'd used the platform or ever signed up were posted online. And I think there was a lot of shocks there, right? Like a lot of people got looked up.
What does research reveal about infidelity and its justifications?
People respected in their communities were found on the website. Having that real data of millions of users, did scientists look into that so they could kind of study infidelity?
Yeah, I mean, people looked into what people were doing on Ashley Madison. That was part of my research as well, was trying to figure out what are people hoping to gain by signing up and looking for an affair partner on Ashley Madison. And we find that a lot of people are just... They're looking for a sex partner. They're, you know, dissatisfied with their primary relationships in a sense because they're not having sex. That was one of the key findings from our research was that I think about 50%, so like half of our participants said that they were not sexually active at all with their partners. But their relationships were otherwise at least decent, if not good. They expressed high levels of satisfaction, high levels of romantic love and intimacy with their partners.
So their relationships were otherwise, I think, at least moderately well-functioning, if not highly functioning. It was the sexual dissatisfaction that was a key factor for those folks.
There's a small fraction of relationships that report being happy, even though they know their partners are with other people. What do they call it? Like polyamory or open relationships. But I imagine those people aren't on Ashley Madison. This is a website for really finding a person in secrecy. How can someone say that, like, I love my partner and then sign up for an affair website when they know that their partner would be devastated if they found out?
Well, let me say something first about the people in polyamorous or open relationships. We did find some of those in our sample that signed up on Ashley Madison. So it was not very common, but I think between 15% and 20% of the participants in our sample told us that they knew or their partners knew that they were on the site. And so they had some kind of understanding with their partners that they were doing this.
I can see how someone like that could say that they love their partner if there's the communication. But I'm talking about the ones that don't. It's wild to me that you can report being in love and satisfied and happy and all that and still do this. Why would people do that?
Love is complicated and people are complicated. And in a sense, I think if you think about love as intimacy and connection and attachment, those things can be there, you know, especially for people who have spent the majority of their adult lives married to their spouse. And that doesn't go away just because you have an affair. It could be that the affair is just motivated by something different.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:43
2
What is Ashley Madison and why does it exist?
0:43–1:22
3
What does research reveal about infidelity and its justifications?
1:22–4:32
4
How do users of Ashley Madison perceive their relationships?
4:32–10:05
5
What role does sexual dissatisfaction play in infidelity?
10:05–10:27
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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