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Dominique Strauss-Kahn isn’t the first to receive a lot of attention over his infidelity. Silvio Berlusconi, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrish, Eliot Spitzer and many others have been the talk of the town when their extramarital affairs were made public.
According to Joris Lammers, that is no coincidence. Having authored a study on the link between sex and power, he affirms that the greater one’s power is, the more one’s propensity to infidelity rises – no matter the gender. The study was conducted by a poll among 1, 561 readers of a Dutch business review. Among the respondents, 58% did not have managerial duties, 22% had a few of them, 14% were middle-ranking executives, and 6% were senior management.
As for infidelity, several factors were taken into account and analyzed, such as self-confidence, frequent business trips and risk-taking.
“It is often believed that powerful men are more susceptible to being unfaithful because they enjoy the risk, or because of distance and business trips especially, says Joris Lammers. But we have found little evidence of correlation between these two presuppositions and infidelity.”
What the study points to is that the higher-up a person is in the hierarchy, the greater the chances are that he or she has cheated on his or her partner, or intends to. Infidelity would thus be tied to the self-assuredness brought on by power.
“My research, and that of my colleagues, shows that one of the strongest effects power has on the individual is a rise in confidence levels. To feel one’s power waning brings one to focus on threats and danger. But power leads to a lack of inhibitions, and the belief that one can obtain whatever they want and that risks ought to be taken to get it.”
As a follow-up: United States: When adultery and patriotism play in the same ballpark…
