23rd November 1997

Adultery: The telltale signs...

Does your wife arrive late for dinner parties, dominate the conversation, preen herself in the hall mirror and then forget to thank the hosts? Beware: she could be cheating on you.

Sociologists have identified the key personality traits of adulterers and built up a profile of spouses most likely to be unfaithful. Women, however, are more easily identified as love cheats than men.

The research findings, which will be released in Britain next year, reveal the series of key indicators that also include leaving the door open and the lights blazing after going out of a room, playing practical jokes on friends and being in debt.

Any lingering doubts can be dispelled by driving a woman past an animal that has been killed in a road accident; an adulterer will be totally unsympathetic.

Dr. David Buss, a sociologist at the University of Texas who carried out the research, said the indicators should give people a good idea of whether their partner was likely to commit adultery.

"People with particular personalities are more likely to have affairs than others,'' he said. ''Those who have an affair have a lot more in common than just their infidelity."

Buss interviewed and correlated the educational and class backgrounds of 107 couples, who answered 40 questions to establish their personality traits. Spouses were then interviewed separately about the nature and history of their relationship and the likelihood of whether they would be unfaithful. Personality traits were found to be a more accurate way of predicting potential infidelity than social status or the nature of couples' sex lives.

The findings could help to explain the amorous wanderings of some famous adulterers. John F Kennedy, the American president, had a legendary sexual appetite that led him to cheat repeatedly on his wife Jackie. According to Nigel Hamilton, Kennedy's biographer and professor of history at the Royal Holloway, University of London, the president fitted the adulterer's profile perfectly.

"He was late for absolutely everything and regularly used to keep scheduled flights waiting for him,'' said Hamilton.

"He loved seeing his reflection so much that Jackie Kennedy filled the White House with antique gilded mirrors, and he was a prankster who loved embarrassing people.''

Kennedy took it for granted that other people would tidy up after him and delighted in seducing the wives and girlfriends of his best friends. "He just assumed that every woman he met was there for the taking, and although he was a Catholic he didn't care that adultery was a sin: he simply went to confession," said Hamilton.

The discovery that infidelity is more predictable in women than in men could come as a bitter blow to cuckolded husbands. Marilyn Monroe, one of Kennedy's conquests, was regarded as reckless, unreliable and ruthless by her friends; she was late for filming so often that the director Billy Wilder once threatened to strangle her. Perhaps Arthur Miller, one of her three husbands, should have known that she was cheating on him with Yves Montand, the French actor.

Peter Stringfellow, the twice-married nightclub owner, admits he was repeatedly unfaithful and also admits he fits the stereotype revealed by the research.

Stringfellow said he could readily believe that adultery was a product of character rather than circumstance.

"There might be something in the makeup of the personality of some people which makes them act this way," he said. ''But I don't get a kick out of people or animals being hurt. When my Great Dane was killed it took me a long while to get over it."

Infidelity is the biggest reason for divorce on both sides of the Atlantic and is often cited as the cause of domestic violence. International studies have suggested that in 50% of marriages one partner will be unfaithful.

Dr. Clifford Davies of the sociology department at Manchester University, said the research would carry weight among psychologists who sought to understand the nature of infidelity: ''A lot of current thinking regards infidelity as the norm and fidelity as the unusual condition that has to be explained."

– The Sunday Times (London)

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