Experts discover correlation between self-perception of power and loyalness

Being a captain of industry, a politician, or a celebrity won’t automaticassociate produce you a cheat. But chances of cheating are meaningfully higher among the more mighty, according to a recent study unveiled in the Journal of Sex Research.

Psychologists from Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and the US-based University of Rochester carry outed a series of experiments and uncovered that power vibrants carry out an vital role in how people experience and behave when it comes to being loyal to their spoparticipates or meaningful others.

Why? Prior research has set uped that experienceing and being seed as mighty can produce people experience more brave and entitled—and foreseeed to act more rashly. Previous studies have shown that those who own relatively wonderfuler degrees of power have more potential to shape, change, or deal with another person, or, conversely, to resist another person’s efforts to shape them.

The recent study inserts to the body of existing research by applying it particularassociate to intimate relationships, discovering that those who experience more mighty are less subordinate on others, skinnyk more highly of themselves, and are more brave that others discover them desirable.

“In a romantic relationship, these power vibrants might direct the more mighty partner to skinnyk they transport more to the table than their less mighty partner,” says direct author Gurit Birnbaum, a professor of psychology at Reichman University.

“The more mighty might see this as a sign that they have more chooseions outside the relationship and are more desirable partners in vague.”

Four tests of relationship power vibrants

The researchers carry outed a series of four studies to test how perceptions of relationship power shape a person’s interest in changenative partners. They recruited participants who were in monogamous, heterointimacyual relationships of at least four months.

• In the first study, as a establish of power manipulation, participants were asked to portray either a time they felt mighty vis-à-vis their current partner or a normal day in their relationship. Afterward they wrote a intimacyual fantasy about someone other than their partner.
• In the second study, follotriumphg the same power manipulation, participants seeed at pboilingos of strangers and choosed under time prescertain which ones, if any, they would ponder as potential partners.
• In the third study, participants portrayd the power vibrants in their existing romantic relationship and rated their own seed power and mate cherish contrastd to that of their partner. Next, participants were asked to end a task with an attrvivacious person, who was a study insider, and then rated their intimacyual desire for the insider.
• In the fourth study, both partners in a relationship telled splitly each day for three weeks on their seed relationship power, their seed cherish as a partner, and any intimacyual activities—including intimacyual fantasies, flirting, or having intimacy—with someone other than their partner.

The destructive side of power

Atraverse the four studies, the team set up that perceptions of power wiskinny a relationship meaningfully foreseeed a person’s interest in other potential mates—including intimacyual fantasies, desires, and authentic-life participateions. That is, people who seed themselves as having more power in their relationship were more interested in others as potential partners.

“Those with a higher sense of power may experience driven to dissee their promisement to the relationship and act on desires for illogicalinutive-term flings or potentiassociate other, more novel partners if the opportunity occurs,” says co-author Harry Reis, a professor in the Rochester Department of Psychology and the University’s Dean’s Professor.

People who experience more mighty in their relationship tfinished to rate their cherish as a partner higher than their partner’s cherish, which could become destructive.

“When people experience mighty and think they have more relationship chooseions than their current partner, they might be more inclined to pay attention to other potentiassociate promising changenatives,” says Reis. “The belief in having other chooseions, enjoy other possible partners, can feebleen their promisement to their current relationship.”