Chicago's GSS still steadies the cheating numbers
Infidelity breaks a couple's expected emotional or sexual exclusivity—cheating, affairs, adultery by other names. Kinsey-era work already treated extramarital sex as heavily regulated. The University of Chicago General Social Survey remains the steadiest U.S. monogamy interview series since the 1970s.
Kinsey's reports of the early 1950s found that roughly half the men and a quarter of the women studied had committed adultery, and the later Janus Report put the figures at a third of married men and a quarter of married women. Since 1972 the General Social Survey has found about 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women in monogamous relationships admitting an extramarital relationship. A University of Washington study following 19,065 people over 15 years saw men's rates climb from 20 to 28 percent and women's range from 5 to 15, with higher rates among those under 35 or over 60.
Timing patterns differ by sex. One study found women's likelihood of an affair peaked in the seventh year of marriage and then fell, while men's declined with time until about the eighteenth year and then rose again. Research in southern Spain estimated that one in ten expectant fathers strayed during a partner's pregnancy, more often as it advanced. In the National Health and Social Life Survey, women reported far lower rates than men across marriage, cohabitation and dating, at 1, 8 and 17 percent.
Claims that 30 percent of children are fathered by someone other than the presumed father trace, according to sociologist Michael Gilding, to an offhand remark at a 1972 conference. Genetic studies instead find rates generally of 1 to 2 percent in European samples, under 2 percent in a Middle Eastern sample, and under 10 percent in African samples.
Evolutionary psychologists debate whether men are more upset by sexual betrayal and women by emotional betrayal. Forced-choice questionnaires often show that gap, but C. F. Harris's meta-analysis found it almost only in that format, suggesting a measurement artifact. A 2015 study linked AVPR1A gene expression to extrapair mating in women but not men.
Source: Infidelity
