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Pluralistic ignorance and misperception of social norms concerning cheating in dating relationships
Author(s) -
BOON SUSAN D.,
WATKINS SARAH J.,
SCIBAN ROWAN A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
personal relationships
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.81
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1475-6811
pISSN - 1350-4126
DOI - 10.1111/pere.12044
Subject(s) - cheating , psychology , ignorance , social psychology , dating violence , fidelity , developmental psychology , human factors and ergonomics , poison control , epistemology , domestic violence , medicine , philosophy , environmental health , electrical engineering , engineering
Two studies tested the hypothesis that beliefs about infidelity in dating relationships reflect pluralistic ignorance, a misperception in which people mistakenly believe that their own personal attitudes and behavior differ from others' when they do not. Consistent with pluralistic ignorance findings in other domains, undergraduates reported that the average university student (a) saw dating infidelity as more acceptable and (b) engaged in unfaithful acts more frequently than they themselves did. Neither type of infidelity (sexual, emotional, both sexual and emotional, or unspecified; Study 1, N = 176) nor motivated reasoning (i.e., defensiveness; Study 2, N = 359) moderated this pattern of results. Possible sources of misperceived norms concerning fidelity in dating relationships and the implications of such misperceptions are discussed.