Internet Infidelity: Double Standards and the Differing Views of Women and Men

Abstract

This exploratory study analyzed which types of acts involving the Internet are considered most severe, sex differences in the perceptions of infidelity, and the evaluation of infidelity when one commits it versus one's partner. Two-hundred and eight participants rated the severity of 44 specific acts (e.g., disclosing love to a person met in an Internet chat room) on either the self-infidelity or partner-infidelity questionnaire. The results indicated that involving/goal-directed acts were rated as more severe than superficial/informal acts, women viewed involving/goal-directed acts of Internet infidelity as more severe than did men, and partner-infidelity was perceived as more severe than self-infidelity. The severity of 44 specific acts are also provided, and this information advances our ability to describe infidelity on the Internet and predict if, and to what degree, others will consider particular actions as infidelity. The implications of these results, as well as future directions, are discussed.

Keywords:

• Internet Infidelity
• Interdependence Theory
• Sex Differences in Infidelity

The authors would like to thank Valerie Manusov, John Oetzel, Sara Docan-Morgan, Lisa Coutu, the editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their exceptionally helpful feedback on this article. A previous version of this manuscript was presented at the 2005 National Communication Association Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.

Notes

Note: Age was broken into ranges suggested by Levinson's (1978) theory of life stages (i.e., 18–22 constituting transition to adulthood, 23–44 constituting early adulthood). Only one participant was in middle adulthood (age = 50), and zero participants were in late adulthood.

∗n = 17 did not report their sex.

^†Mean = 21.23, SD = 4.00; n = 17 did not report their age.

^‡ n = 25 did not report their race/ethnicity.

^§ n = 16 did not report their relationship status.

Note: Participants were asked to assume that they/their partner did not know that they/their partner was engaging in these behaviors. They were also told to assume that the person they/their partner was interacting with online was someone to whom they/their partner could be romantically attracted. Questions were phrased in accordance with self infidelity (e.g., “Using flirtatious language with a person you met in an Internet chatroom”) and partner infidelity (e.g., “Your partner using flirtatious language with a person he/she met in an Internet chatroom”).

Early studies show that 50% of individuals in married relationships have engaged in some form of extramarital sexual involvement (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Tarvis & Sadd, 1975). Studies in the last two decades report that two-thirds of husbands and nearly half of wives have been involved in a sexual and emotional extramarital relationship (Gass & Nichols, 1988; Sheppard, Nelson, & Andreoli-Mathie, 1995), and 29% of non-married but committed intimate partners admitted to being unfaithful to their partner (Covel, 2003). Further, two national surveys report that 20–25% of married individuals have engaged in sexual infidelity at some point in their lives (Atkins, Baucom, & Jacobson, 2001; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994). It is difficult to determine whether infidelity is more common today than in the past because studies vary in many ways: the number of participants, demographics of participants, and how infidelity was conceived when questioning participants (e.g., many large-scale studies report only sexual infidelity; see Atkins et al., 2001; Blow & Hartnett, 2005). Regardless, infidelity has been and is a common occurrence, and may be more possible today as the proliferation of technology (e.g., Internet chat rooms, Instant Messaging programs, etc.) increases options for social interaction.

The Internet can also be defined as “an electronic communications system that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the globe” (Shedletsky & Aitken, 2004, p. 20).

Whitty (2003) constructed scenarios of Internet infidelity solely by considering past research on this topic, but did not provide any citations. Whitty mentions that “past research on offline infidelity was considered in the construction of this survey. In addition, seemingly equivalent online acts of infidelity were included in the study. These items were in part drawn from the literature on Internet sexual acts discussed to date” (p. 573).

As relationship status might also affect respondents' scores, t-tests were run to compare the scores of single participants and dating participants. Single participants' (not dating or married, etc.) ratings of superficial/informal acts of infidelity (M = 1.55) did not significantly differ compared to participants who were dating (M = 1.53), t(161) = .204, p = .84. Further, single participants' (not dating or married, etc.) ratings of involving/goal-directed acts of infidelity (M = 3.54) did not significantly differ compared to participants who were dating (M = 3.76), t(160) = − 1.65, p = .10. There were not enough respondents to include those who were engaged and married. These results indicate that status in terms of single or dating did not have an affect on ratings of infidelity.

The infidelity research cited in this paper attests to this.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tony Docan-Morgan

Tony Docan-Morgan (M.A., University of New Mexico, 2004) is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching associate at the University of Washington and an adjunct instructor at Los Angeles Pierce College

Carol A. Docan

Carol A. Docan (J.D., Loyola University, 1973) is a professor at California State University, Northridge