- A scientific study from the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University found that male members of marriage infidelity site Ashley Madison were more than twice as likely to engage in misconduct at their workplace.
- "Our results show that personal sexual conduct is correlated with professional conduct," said Samuel Kruger, one of the authors of the study.
- Breakup recovery and dating coach Cherlyn Chong had long suspected this link. She told Insider this is the behavior of people she calls "self-gratifiers."
- Self-gratification is where you can't sit with an uncomfortable feeling without seeking out something to give you an immediate reward. For some people, this might mean cheating.
- Essentially, getting away with misconduct at work fuels their ego, so their behavior gets worse and worse.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
A scientific study released this summer showed there is a link between professional misconduct and cheating in relationships.
The research, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University, found that members of marriage infidelity site Ashley Madison were more than twice as likely as non-members to engage in misconduct at their workplace.
The team investigated the behavior of 11,235 participants from various regulatory and police archives then searched the Ashley Madison database, which was leaked in 2015. The vast majority of the sample was male, and all participants who were also Ashley Madison users were male.
Results showed that people with histories of misconduct were significantly more likely to use the site.
"Our results show that personal sexual conduct is correlated with professional conduct," said Samuel Kruger, one of the authors of the study. "Eliminating sexual misconduct in the workplace could have the extra benefit of contributing to more ethical corporate cultures in general."
Cheating is the behavior of 'self-gratifiers'
Breakup recovery and dating coach Cherlyn Chong told Insider she had long suspected the link. She calls the men who are most prone to this behavior "self-gratifiers."
"There are two main things from what I see, and they are entitlement and self-gratification," she said. "They think they can get away with it, and it fuels their ego."
Self-gratification, she explained, is when someone can't sit with an uncomfortable feeling before leaping onto the next thing that makes them feel good about themselves. Their brain is always looking for an instant reward.
For example, in the workplace, this could mean acting up because you don't like your boss. Or it could mean starting an affair because you're unsatisfied with your career.
"Cheating is very intense, it's very passionate, and very exciting, until it blows apart," said Chong. "This is them jumping onto the next best thing that gratifies them."
It's not only confined to the workplace, either. These men also tend to enjoy drinking, smoking, pornography, and drugs, she said. They also spend a lot of money on material things and like to gamble.
'It always gets worse'
According to Chong, the more men get away with their bad behavior, the bolder they get, so "it always gets worse."
"A workplace misconduct can start really small, then it spirals, and results in him cheating," she said. "People like that, the entitlement and the self gratification is in their identity, it is part of them, and because it is in their core it tends to seep out in multiple areas of their lives including in their career and their marriage."
She said self-gratifiers tend to be "pseudo-confident," which is the air of having the ability to do anything, but really not having many skills at all.
"Once they want something they actually get it," she said. "They tend to be sort of the most senior person at work, even though they don't do much, because they have this pseudo-confidence and people think they can do it."
She said they have other traits like being excessively charming, which helps them worm their way out of claims of harassment.
"It's quite creepy," Chong said. "If they talk about themselves a lot, about how much money they earn, how successful they are ... that's one of the major red flags."
Read more:
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Infidelity dating site Ashley Madison still gets thousands of new users every day — here's why
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