“Once a cheater, always a cheater”, study concludes

• A study has found that people who cheated in their first relationship are three times more likely to cheat in their next relationship.
• Researchers discovered that our emotional reaction is a powerful factor that prevents us from cheating.

Have you ever cheated on someone?

Science says you’re more likely to cheat again in your next relationship. In fact, the study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior  confirms the saying “Once a cheater, always a cheater” is true.

To arrive at this conclusion, researchers looked into 484 subjects in mind gender romantic relationships. Subjects were asked to report their own extra-dyadic sexual involvement”, which is defined as having sexual relations with someone other than their partner. They were also asked to disclose whether they suspected their partners of being unfaithful in each relationship they had been in.

Their findings suggests that people who have cheated during their first relationship are three times more likely to cheat again compared to those who are faithful.

Meanwhile, those who knew that their previous partners had cheated on them were twice as likely to be cheated on by their next partners.

Princeton Neuroscience and co-author of the study Neil Garrett  explained that our emotional reaction is a powerful factor that prevents us from cheating.

“With serial cheaters, it could be the case that they initially felt bad about cheating, but have cheated so much they’ve adapted to their ways and simply don’t feel bad about cheating any more,”Garrett said.

“Another possibility is that they never felt bad about cheating to begin with, so they didn’t need adaptation to occur, they were comfortable with it from the get-go,” he added.

Another possibility is that when we lie, our brain actually gets used to doing it. A previous study has shown that the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotions, weakens when lies are repeatedly told. Similarly, when somebody cheats on their partner, they will feel slightly less bad as they do it again.