Attitudes Toward Marital Infidelity: A Nine-Culture Sampling of University Student Opinion

Abstract

Cross-cultural comparisons of attitudes toward marital infidelity are based upon questionnaire data from nine colleges and universities located in parts of Asia, Europe, and United States. For the most part, the study was carried out in 1968. With three of the cultures this was a replication of a 1958 investigation, which made time comparisons also possible. Extramarital coitus was totally rejected by more than half of all respondents, but proportions taking this position varied across the cultures from less than onetenth to about nine-tenths. Rejection (the conservative or restrictive position) was disproportionately higher in the Asian and religious cultures, higher for females than males, higher with respondents who had not experienced premarital coitus, higher with each assumed increase in competing commitment, and higher in 1958 than in 1968. Furthermore, as a general rule, rejection of extramarital coitus and acceptance of the double sex standard were found to go together.