If you don't want your partner to cheat, give him a spotlight
Well, maybe not a spotlight. But the Times of India provides a report on some interesting research on cheating that found that cheating is encouraged by darkness. They say that darkness gives the person a sense of anonymity and encourage them to cheat.
It's not exactly limited to having an affair, but stealing and other dishonest behavior as well.
Now you know why there are a lot of prowling gay, hetero and bisexual men in seedy theatres where it's dark!
I actually had to google this study and here's an excerpt from the Times of India Article:
Darkness - even wearing a pair of sunglasses - triggers the belief that you are not being watched by others, say researchers Chen-Bo Zhong, Vanessa K Bohns (from Toronto) and Francesca Gino (from North Carolina) in a Toronto university statement here Tuesday.
The researchers came to this conclusion on the basis of three experiments about the effect of darkness on people's behaviour.
In the first experiment, they put participants in a dimly to well-lit room and gave them a brown envelope containing $10 and an empty white envelope.
The participants were told to finish a worksheet with 20 matrices, each consisting of 12 three-digit numbers. They had five minutes to find two numbers in each matrix that added up to 10.
They were free to score their own work and for each pair of numbers correctly identified they could keep $0.50 from their supply of money.
At the end of the experiment, the participants were told to leave the remainder of their money in the white envelope on their way out.
The researchers found that participants in the slightly dim room cheated more and thus earned more undeserved money than those in a well-lit room.
In the second experiment, some participants wore a pair of sunglasses and others wore clear glasses while interacting with a stranger in a different room.
Each was given $6 to divide between himself or herself and the stranger and could keep what he or she didn't offer. Participants wearing sunglasses behaved more selfishly by giving significantly less than those wearing clear glasses, the researchers found.
In the third experiment, the scientists replicated the second experiment and then measured the extent to which participants felt anonymous during the experiment.
Those wearing sunglasses reported feeling more anonymous during the study.
This is not news at all. We all know this. We feel more uninhibited and free to do what we want when it's dark. We tend to be more bold at night rather than in the daylight hours where it is easier to get identified and get caught. They actually have to devise 3 experiments for that???
Amen to this. The very reason I'm thinking of starting an affair with a flirty barista is becasue my wife has forgotten all about me. Her attention is too focused on our newborn forgetting that I still exist.
