Priming the Primal Scene: Betrayal Trauma, Narcissism, and Attitudes Toward Sexual Infidelity

Abstract

We used mindset priming techniques to conduct an experimental study (N = 316) designed to assess ideas derived from psychoanalytic theory. Specifically, we investigated the possibility that the unconscious activation of the Oedipal situation would lead people—especially men and individuals who possess narcissistic personality features—to become more prohibitive toward sexual infidelity in romantic relationships. Results supported this hypothesis, which was tested using a new scale of attitudes toward sexual infidelity. Although men and narcissists tend to be more permissive towards sexual infidelity in general, when they are led to identify and empathize with the victim of betrayal, they become as disapproving of extra-dyadic sexual involvement as are women and low narcissists. Correlational evidence indicates that narcissism is positively associated with the likelihood of having affairs, the number of partners cheated on, and (for women but not men) the likelihood of being cheated on. In addition, the (self-reported) occurrence of parental cheating behavior is positively associated with one's eventual likelihood of cheating on others. Among daughters (but not sons), a history of parental cheating is associated with increased narcissism and the likelihood of being cheated on. Potential explanations and clinical implications of our findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• Infidelity
• Narcissism
• Oedipal conflicts
• Priming
• Psychoanalysis

Acknowledgments

This research was funded in part by Adelphi University, for which we are grateful.

We wish to thank Robert Bornstein, David DeSteno, Carolyn C. Morf, Joel Weinberger, and two anonymous reviewers for extremely useful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. There was no evidence that a history of parental separation was associated with the offspring's likelihood of cheating or being cheated on, which suggests that parental cheating may have unique effects that are independent of other types of marital problems.

2. We conducted additional analyses to determine whether assignment to specific experimental conditions affected participants' self-reported parental or personal relationship histories. For continuous dependent variables (self-reported jealousy and number of partners cheated on), we conducted univariate ANOVAs, and for categorical dependent variables (whether or not parents cheated, whether or not parents were still together, whether participants reported having affairs, and whether participants were cheated on), we conducted χ ² tests. Only one comparison, namely whether participants reported having been cheated on, was found to differ as a function of experimental condition, χ ² = 9.50, N = 295, df = 2, p < .01. Participants who were exposed to the spousal infidelity passage were more likely to report that they had been cheated on (50.5%) than were participants who were exposed to either the primal scene (31.0%) or control (33.3%) passages.

3. We also conducted a pair of regression analyses in which narcissism was treated as a continuous independent variable and experimental condition was either effects-coded or dummy-coded. The general pattern of results was similar to what is reported here, but the two-way interactions did not always attain statistical significance in the regression analyses.