Inductivist

This new, large meta-analysis of 761 effects sizes with a sample of over 400k people looks at the relationship between personality traits sand sexuality. 

People who score high on neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety) are less sexually satisfied (r = .18) and have more symptoms of sexual dysfunction (r = .16). 

Extraverts engage in more sexual activity (r = .17) and risky sexual behavior (r = .18) and have less sexual dysfunction (r = −.17). 

People who are open to experience are more likely to be homosexual (r = .16) and to have liberal attitudes toward sex (r = .19). 

Highly agreeable and conscientious (i.e., self-disciplined) people are less sexually aggressive (r = −.20; r = −.14) and are less like to be unfaithful (r+ = .18; r+ = .17). 

So, if you're looking for a trustworthy partner who enjoys sex, your best bet is to find a person who is even-keeled, cooperative, and diligent. 

By the way, these traits are highly influenced by genes, so don't assume you can change someone into a desirable partner. A major theme among people who take genes seriously is, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG).

What predicts infidelity?  Here are the results listed for men and women separately (GSS data):

Logistic regression coefficients--men (sample size = 2,379)

Age .01
Black .77
Other race .33
Education .01
Conservatism -.12
Church attendance -.08
IQ .09
Income -.01

All relationships are statistically significant except for Other Race and Education. Male cheaters tend to be: older, black, liberal, not religious, smart, and low-income.


Logistic regression coefficients--women (sample size = 3,315)


Age -.01
Black .77
Other race .09
Education -.05
Conservatism -.12
Church attendance -.11
IQ .19
Income -.01

Other Race is the only independent variable that is unrelated to cheating. Female cheaters are likely to be: young, black, less educated, liberal, not religious, smart, and low-income. The main difference between men and women is age: older men have higher rates of cheating than younger men, but younger women have a higher probability of infidelity than older women. Also--education predicts a faithful wife, but is unrelated to fidelity among husbands.

What's the underlying theme of these predictors? Unconventionality, perhaps? You might want to think twice about committing to an unconventional person.

Using General Social Survey data, I calculated the relationship between attending religious services and cheating on your spouse for people of various religions. (The sample is whites only, except in the case of Hindus).  

Logistic Regression Coefficients

Protestant -.12*
Catholic -.15*
Jewish -.21*
Buddhist .22
Hindu .26
Muslim -.10
No religion .04

*p < .05

More attendance of religious services predicts remaining faithful for the Abrahamic religions only, and the effect for Muslims is not statistically significant. Buddhists, Hindus, and people with no religion who are active in religious activities are just as likely to cheat as those who never attend. Being a religious Jew is the strongest predictor of fidelity.  

It's amusing how liberals like Rachel Maddow in this video are trying to make Christine O'Donnell look ridiculous by showing how she criticized masturbation on MTV in 1996. Right--if you really want to be cool, you need to jerk off. As often as possible. It's just about the coolest thing you can do.

But I see here a chance to weigh in with data. I can't find any raw data on "solo sex" but the General Social Survey does ask people if they have watched an X-rated movie in the past year.  Here are the percentages of men and women who have cheated on their spouse (sample size = 12,256):


Percent who ever cheated

White male
Watched movie 31.4
Did not watch 17.9

White female
Watched movie 24.6
Did not watch 11.7

Black male
Watched movie 47.8
Did not watch 31.3


Black female
Watched movie 25.6
Did not watch 16.4

For all demographic groups, those who watch porn are much more likely to have been unfaithful. There's a message there for guys looking for a wife: If she's into porn, there's a greater chance that she's not into monogamy.

Who knows the cause-effect relationship here--super-sexual folks are probably more likely to cheat and consume lots of porn--but, with respect to masturbation, Steven Pinker explains that there is a planning element to fantasizing. A sexual fantasizer gets aroused by asking himself, how would I get together with her?

The table shows that General Social Survey respondents who accept evolution are less likely to think cheating on your spouse is always wrong, and are more likely to have strayed.

We know that correlation does not prove causation, but it doesn't seem unlikely to me that acceptance of evolution might lead some to justify infidelity.  Arguments like the following are easily concocted: "If bonobos are close cousins, can I really expect myself and others to remain monogamous?"   

This is a potential problem for any theory of humans, even if it is true. A theory doesn't just simply stand outside human society, explaining how things work. Theories are brought into a person's worldview and can affect his behavior.  So theories don't merely explain; they influence.

The National Couples Survey asked 234 whites if they have had sex with someone other than their spouse. Here are the estimates by how religious the respondent is:

Percent
Not religious 14.3
Somewhat religious 3.3
Very religious 5.4

Those who are not religious are 4.3 times more likely to have strayed than the moderately religious and 2.6 times more likely than the very religious. (Differences are not statistically significant.)

The finding is consistent with my General Social Survey analyses showing a positive link between never going to church and infidelity, and atheism and cheating.

(These numbers might look low to you. Keep in mind that the age range for females is 20-35 and the males (their partners) are ages 18 and up, so this is a young group with fewer years of marriage than the general married population.)

The National Couples Survey asked 593 people if they've slept with someone else since being married. Here are the percentages answering yes by race/ethnicity:

Percent
Whites 6.2
Blacks 17.8*
Hispanics 9.1
Asians 15.4
Amerindians 10.0

* p < .05, two-tail test, compared with whites.


Samples sizes for minority groups are small--only blacks have significantly higher rates. (I know that someone having multiple partners in an open marriage would be included with the cheaters, but this type of arrangement is rare, I think.) 

Brit Hume's comment about Tiger Woods made me wonder who is more likely to cheat on a spouse: Christians or Buddhists. According to General Social Survey data, 15.7% of white ever-married Christians have strayed compared to 28.6% of their Buddhist counterparts. That's 1.8 times more likely. (The difference is not statistically significant, however, because there are only 21 Buddhists in the sample).

Of course, this link does not identify what is causing what.

Males, N = 1,172

Infidelity: Readers critical of marriage have focused on women being at fault for divorce. Let's take a second and look at infidelity, a common reason for divorce. I looked GSS data for the years 2000-2008 in order to get a large enough sample size (N = 10,871). The question is whether you have ever cheated on a spouse. For women, it's 11.1%, and it 16.6% for men. So men are 1.5 times more likely to have cheated. The helpless men among my readers will no doubt claim that guys can't be blamed because they are programmed to spread their seed around.

Worried that if you get married, she'll eventually leave you? The answer is simple: don't be a dick.

Whites N = 13,431

Whites, N = 24,684




People used to be more indulgent about affairs, at least for men, but now they are much more approving of sex before marriage. I'm not thrilled with either era, but if you're going to be free sexually, I would prefer that you do it before children are involved. We traditionally make a big deal about divorce, but it's breakup of any sort with children involved that's the problem.

People seem to put marriage on a high pedestal now. Higher status people are thinking about how it's the institution where our precious children are raised and how they will be ruined or saved depending on the parenting, while lower status folks will start families without marriage, but still see it as an ideal they hope to eventually have.

And once you finally get married, you've got to get it right (although our expressive individualism makes that difficult). Does Hollywood have something to do with the idealization of marriage? Sailer has writen about the pro-family messages found in some films.

Can we attribute the moral improvement to feminism, to a greater concern for the treatment of women, like we might with attitudes towards wife beating and rape? Damn, I hate giving fems credit for anything. Is it due to a greater desire for couples to have an authentic relationship; to have real honesty?

If you're inclination is not a moralistic one like mine, keep in mind that society's condemnation of cheating benefits us beta males by making it harder for the alphas to have multiple women. If you're an alpha, why are you reading this dumb blog when you could be out on the prowl?

Gay marriage and infidelity: People against gay marriage often make the argument that homosexuals have a real problem with fidelity, and admitting them to the club would not be good for children or the institution of marriage in general. I don't find this to be a particularly compelling argument since heteros have nothing to brag about on this score, but one contribution I can make is too see if there is any relevant, systematic evidence to help decide if the claim is true.

The General Social Survey asked 4,964 people about their sexual orientation and, "What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner?" Here are the percentages who answered that it is always wrong:


Percent thinking that marital infidelity is always wrong

Straight females 80.6
Straight males 75.2
Lesbians 65.4
Gay males 58.4
Bisexual females 48.7
Bisexual males 46.7

Even straight guys do better than all the non-hetero groups.

Based on this evidence, granting homosexuals access to marriage in contemporary America is a little like a NBA basketball team that has been on a losing streak for many years who decides to add some short pudgy white guys to the roster.

Married women who are very liberal are most likely to cheat or be in an open relationship: The General Social Survey asks participants their marital status and the number of sexual partners one has had in the past year (N=3,330). Here are the numbers for women:


Percent of married women who had more than one sex partner in the past year

Extremely liberal 9.6
Liberal 3.7
Slightly liberal 2.9
Moderate 1.7
Slightly conservative 1.7
Conservative 1.5
Extremely conservative 4.2

One out of ten extremely liberal married women had sex with someone other than their husband. So all you guys out their who like to sleep with married women, you now know where to focus your search. (If your town is short on radicals, the extreme Right seems to be the next best choice.)