Catch me if you can: Strategies for hiding infidelity

Abstract

People employ different strategies in order to detect their partners' infidelities. In turn, culprits employ infidelity-hiding strategies in order to avoid detection, and the current research aimed to identify these strategies, and to examine whether they were predicted by the Dark Triad personality traits. More specifically, Study 1 employed qualitative research methods on a sample of 297 Greek-speaking participants, and identified 53 acts that people perform in order to hide their infidelity from their partners. Study 2 employed quantitative research methods on a sample of 300 Greek-speaking participants who had been unfaithful to their current or previous partners, and classified the identified acts into 11 broader infidelity-hiding strategies. The most likely to be used one was the “Be discreet,” followed by the “Eliminate digital evidence” and the “Keep the same behavior.” In addition, more than 70% of the participants indicated a willingness to use seven or more such strategies. It was also found that, participants who scored high in Machiavellianism, were more likely to employ the identified strategies than low scorers. The two sexes indicated a similar willingness to use most of the identified strategies, and for several strategies, significant age effects emerged.