I think that there are some semantic implication of "infidelity" that go beyond what you're measuring. The modern definition of consent would include allowing--with a partner's permission--to engage with sexual partners outside of a marriage. Younger people are more aware of that possibility so they aren't going to be as prescriptive with that moral judgement ("always wrong") even if they don't think that kind of activity is for them. I think this draws a parallel with the increase in young women identifying as "bisexual" even though they don't necessarily have a history of any same-sex partners; people are aware that other relationship definitions exist and are hesitant to criticize them or think it impossible for them even if they don't personally engage in them. The survey asks a prescriptively moral question and my opinion is that calling that "infidelity" is putting a personal morality spin on the data.
Agreed, the question is not necessarily measuring attitudes toward infidelity, but rather knowledge/acceptance of polyamory or other types of open relationship, which are greater among younger people. It would be more helpful to have a separate question which added the knowledge and consent regarding the additional sexual partners, bc I don’t think more younger folks are actually ok with cheating, just with polyamory.
As someone who's part of a group in the UK currently in the process of setting up a polyamory advocacy group this is of huge interest to me. Working with polling organisations to record views and experiences of ethical non-monogamy is something I'm really hoping to be able to start doing in 2025.
Ryan, would it be of interest to you to chat to one of the organisers of OPEN (https://www.open-love.org), the biggest polyamory advocacy organisation in the US to see what kind of data sources they have and whether any of those could be added to your information pool? If so, let me know in a reply to this comment and I'll put you in touch.
Mads Larson (psychological historian from Norway) has a fascinating theory about modern dating culture which relates to polyamory. He thinks that online dating is shifting us back into the dominant mating paradigm from >10k years ago, prior to the emergence of pair bonding. His two interviews on the "Modern Wisdom" podcast about this are fascinating.
He basically sees this as a trap. In societies with birth control this mating paradigm will, he says, result in self-extinction for those who fall into it.
With their fertility rate having been below 1.7 for 20 years, Norway is looking at an 30% drop in generational size for each succeeding generation. So it's pretty real for them.
I don't agree. What you're really seeing is younger generation today brand what younger people have always done with cool new words--something that wasn't prevalent before the internet age. Younger generations in every era always look like they are less judgmental and more lax. In reality, it's just being young. If we go back to GenX and Boomers, it was the same thing when they were young. They just didn't call it "polyamory" or hashtag whatever the cool kids came up with. It was known as single people dating around. What was a "committed relationship" back then meant committed to one partner. And if they weren't ready to do that, they didn't tell someone they're "committed", they just said, "I'm not ready for commitment yet. Meanwhile the two people involved continued to date while one or the other, or both, slept around with other people. Their "I'm not ready for commitment" stage is the same as the current "polyamory" stage of young generation today. Nothing's new under the sun.
In reality, it never works out for a vast majority of the people, barring old societal structure where one man with multiple wives is the norm, and people didn't marry for love but for maintaining social structures and properties, and women and girls were married off. In modern societies where people marry for love, it usually doesn't work out. Especially not for women. The younger generations will grow older. And when children come into the picture, as well as mortgages and bills and finances and retirement planning and all sorts of real life decisions impact lives beyond instant lust and emotional gratifications.
Your other example, "bisexual" is also just another cool label for many heterosexual girls who adopted it to be part of the queer community that is all the rage right now. Just because someone slaps a label on something or someone doesn't make it true.
Bisexual men exist. I was replying specifically to the current trend of young heterosexual girls and women who call themselves bi because it's a cool thing to do. This is absolutely a thing, like goths, and punks, and hippies. It has nothing to do with actual gay or bisexual people.
People did practice polygamy. I already addressed that. I don't know how old are the older people you have in mind. But polygamy existed since the history of humans began. There was no "amore" in any of it. Free love wasn't even a thing until the last two centuries. Historic polygamy was purely men acquiring more properties, with the properties being women. It's been happening throughout the centuries.
As to your other point. If you decide to now change the definition of "commitment" to something else, that's just you all changing definitions of words to fit your own need to view things differently. Before some of you decided "commitment" means something else, it definitely meant being exclusively committed to one other person. It still does for a vast majority of people.
I'm not dismissing our experience. It's your life. Do whatever you want. But this polyamory thing isn't anything new or evolved. All I'm saying it's that it's nothing new, just what's been done already being repackaged. If anything, it's regressing back to what was once known as men having multiple wives. Yeah yeah you'll say there are women with multiple male partners. Rare exceptions exist for everything. No doubt some women have tried it since the sexual revolution before "polyamory".
But if it makes you all to feel cooler and somehow more advanced than the rest of us plebs to think you've evolved beyond monogamy, then feel free. It's a free country. Glad it makes you all feel better.
I love the exploration of this question by cohort. It ties in very nicely with Robert Putnam's "we vs. me" language (Putnam talks a lot about the implications of the free love movement), suggesting we're still on a trajectory towards more "me."
Amongst folks who write about cultural trends as cyclical (Putnam, Turchin, Strauss-Howe, etc...) the big question is "where are we in the cycle?" If you buy the cyclical argument, this post offers some evidence that the individualism/non-conformity portion of the cycle is not yet spent.
It looks like you fit a linear regression to some of the graphs when the underlying data suggests quadratic or higher order polynomial fit. The age * year interaction seems to be real.
I really appreciate your analysis. And as a marriage therapist with over 25 years experience, this analysis caught my attention. The other factor in my life that made this interesting was the fact that we have left the evangelical world (Church of Christ/Nondenominational) for the Mainline church world (Anglican, ACNA). Seeing the differences between these two groups in the analysis sparked a thought with me that I thought I would share.
One of the messages I hear in the Anglican tradition is about the mystery of God and it seems to follow with speaking about God and faith in a bit less certain terms. This contrasts with my more fundamentalist/evangelical upbringing that wanted to speak about faith, the Bible and God with certainty. You needed to have a "ready answer" for questions of faith and a corresponding proof text that supported your argument again with certainty.
So when the survey has a question that uses "certain" language like "always wrong" there is a mindset that will easily gravitate towards that answer.
Just a thought. I would love to hear yours if you have the time.
Being truthful about one's sexual history is probably rare. One common admission of polled individuals about sexual morality is that they over or under reported sexual encounters. That said, the reported average number of sexual partners was 8.6 for women and 31.9 for men in a University of Michigan study (https://news.umich.edu). They reported that the tendency was for women to underestimate the number and for men to overestimate. Even if the numbers are exaggerations, the actual practice of sexual morality is different from claimed moral stance.
The questions asked, the selection of who was asked and the tone of the questioner, all and more influences the answers. A hundred years ago, many of the polls could not have been taken because people were more secretive about such topics. The intervening years have somewhat lessened many peoples' views of privacy and influence most of our general views of sexual morality. Fashions, especially of women's clothing, have tended to emphasize sexuality, and almost all of our heroes are hypersexualized, at least more so now than previously. No one except Islamist suicide bombers place much value on virginity, and most of that impression is based on propaganda. I have read that it is a thing now for people to think less of people who have had too few sexual partners and have rather high numbers in mind of those who have had too many partners.
I have said all this as background for disbelieving reported moral views.
Those age cohorts with trend lines - if you had allowed a quadratic trend curve for the older cohorts (where the data spans decades) we would see slope change from significantly upwards to (for some cohorts at least) slightly downwards.
This is very clear evidence that it was Gen X, not the Boomers, who had a real mass revolution in sexual morality. The Hippie movement was never the majority of Americans, and it was counter-acted and even negated in the aggregate by the growth of Evangelicals.
I think that there are some semantic implication of "infidelity" that go beyond what you're measuring. The modern definition of consent would include allowing--with a partner's permission--to engage with sexual partners outside of a marriage. Younger people are more aware of that possibility so they aren't going to be as prescriptive with that moral judgement ("always wrong") even if they don't think that kind of activity is for them. I think this draws a parallel with the increase in young women identifying as "bisexual" even though they don't necessarily have a history of any same-sex partners; people are aware that other relationship definitions exist and are hesitant to criticize them or think it impossible for them even if they don't personally engage in them. The survey asks a prescriptively moral question and my opinion is that calling that "infidelity" is putting a personal morality spin on the data.
Agreed, the question is not necessarily measuring attitudes toward infidelity, but rather knowledge/acceptance of polyamory or other types of open relationship, which are greater among younger people. It would be more helpful to have a separate question which added the knowledge and consent regarding the additional sexual partners, bc I don’t think more younger folks are actually ok with cheating, just with polyamory.
All great thoughts. Unfortunately, I'm data limited.
Nothing in the GSS about polyamory, as far as I can tell.
As someone who's part of a group in the UK currently in the process of setting up a polyamory advocacy group this is of huge interest to me. Working with polling organisations to record views and experiences of ethical non-monogamy is something I'm really hoping to be able to start doing in 2025.
Ryan, would it be of interest to you to chat to one of the organisers of OPEN (https://www.open-love.org), the biggest polyamory advocacy organisation in the US to see what kind of data sources they have and whether any of those could be added to your information pool? If so, let me know in a reply to this comment and I'll put you in touch.
Mads Larson (psychological historian from Norway) has a fascinating theory about modern dating culture which relates to polyamory. He thinks that online dating is shifting us back into the dominant mating paradigm from >10k years ago, prior to the emergence of pair bonding. His two interviews on the "Modern Wisdom" podcast about this are fascinating.
He basically sees this as a trap. In societies with birth control this mating paradigm will, he says, result in self-extinction for those who fall into it.
I was with him until he followed a Nostradamus path with that theory.
Where did you see him doing that?
> In societies with birth control this mating paradigm will, he says, result in self-extinction for those who fall into it.
Feels like a jump to conclusions that sensationalizes a pretty interesting theory.
With their fertility rate having been below 1.7 for 20 years, Norway is looking at an 30% drop in generational size for each succeeding generation. So it's pretty real for them.
I don't agree. What you're really seeing is younger generation today brand what younger people have always done with cool new words--something that wasn't prevalent before the internet age. Younger generations in every era always look like they are less judgmental and more lax. In reality, it's just being young. If we go back to GenX and Boomers, it was the same thing when they were young. They just didn't call it "polyamory" or hashtag whatever the cool kids came up with. It was known as single people dating around. What was a "committed relationship" back then meant committed to one partner. And if they weren't ready to do that, they didn't tell someone they're "committed", they just said, "I'm not ready for commitment yet. Meanwhile the two people involved continued to date while one or the other, or both, slept around with other people. Their "I'm not ready for commitment" stage is the same as the current "polyamory" stage of young generation today. Nothing's new under the sun.
In reality, it never works out for a vast majority of the people, barring old societal structure where one man with multiple wives is the norm, and people didn't marry for love but for maintaining social structures and properties, and women and girls were married off. In modern societies where people marry for love, it usually doesn't work out. Especially not for women. The younger generations will grow older. And when children come into the picture, as well as mortgages and bills and finances and retirement planning and all sorts of real life decisions impact lives beyond instant lust and emotional gratifications.
Your other example, "bisexual" is also just another cool label for many heterosexual girls who adopted it to be part of the queer community that is all the rage right now. Just because someone slaps a label on something or someone doesn't make it true.
Bisexual men exist. I was replying specifically to the current trend of young heterosexual girls and women who call themselves bi because it's a cool thing to do. This is absolutely a thing, like goths, and punks, and hippies. It has nothing to do with actual gay or bisexual people.
People did practice polygamy. I already addressed that. I don't know how old are the older people you have in mind. But polygamy existed since the history of humans began. There was no "amore" in any of it. Free love wasn't even a thing until the last two centuries. Historic polygamy was purely men acquiring more properties, with the properties being women. It's been happening throughout the centuries.
As to your other point. If you decide to now change the definition of "commitment" to something else, that's just you all changing definitions of words to fit your own need to view things differently. Before some of you decided "commitment" means something else, it definitely meant being exclusively committed to one other person. It still does for a vast majority of people.
I'm not dismissing our experience. It's your life. Do whatever you want. But this polyamory thing isn't anything new or evolved. All I'm saying it's that it's nothing new, just what's been done already being repackaged. If anything, it's regressing back to what was once known as men having multiple wives. Yeah yeah you'll say there are women with multiple male partners. Rare exceptions exist for everything. No doubt some women have tried it since the sexual revolution before "polyamory".
But if it makes you all to feel cooler and somehow more advanced than the rest of us plebs to think you've evolved beyond monogamy, then feel free. It's a free country. Glad it makes you all feel better.
I love the exploration of this question by cohort. It ties in very nicely with Robert Putnam's "we vs. me" language (Putnam talks a lot about the implications of the free love movement), suggesting we're still on a trajectory towards more "me."
Amongst folks who write about cultural trends as cyclical (Putnam, Turchin, Strauss-Howe, etc...) the big question is "where are we in the cycle?" If you buy the cyclical argument, this post offers some evidence that the individualism/non-conformity portion of the cycle is not yet spent.
It looks like you fit a linear regression to some of the graphs when the underlying data suggests quadratic or higher order polynomial fit. The age * year interaction seems to be real.
I really appreciate your analysis. And as a marriage therapist with over 25 years experience, this analysis caught my attention. The other factor in my life that made this interesting was the fact that we have left the evangelical world (Church of Christ/Nondenominational) for the Mainline church world (Anglican, ACNA). Seeing the differences between these two groups in the analysis sparked a thought with me that I thought I would share.
One of the messages I hear in the Anglican tradition is about the mystery of God and it seems to follow with speaking about God and faith in a bit less certain terms. This contrasts with my more fundamentalist/evangelical upbringing that wanted to speak about faith, the Bible and God with certainty. You needed to have a "ready answer" for questions of faith and a corresponding proof text that supported your argument again with certainty.
So when the survey has a question that uses "certain" language like "always wrong" there is a mindset that will easily gravitate towards that answer.
Just a thought. I would love to hear yours if you have the time.
Being truthful about one's sexual history is probably rare. One common admission of polled individuals about sexual morality is that they over or under reported sexual encounters. That said, the reported average number of sexual partners was 8.6 for women and 31.9 for men in a University of Michigan study (https://news.umich.edu). They reported that the tendency was for women to underestimate the number and for men to overestimate. Even if the numbers are exaggerations, the actual practice of sexual morality is different from claimed moral stance.
The questions asked, the selection of who was asked and the tone of the questioner, all and more influences the answers. A hundred years ago, many of the polls could not have been taken because people were more secretive about such topics. The intervening years have somewhat lessened many peoples' views of privacy and influence most of our general views of sexual morality. Fashions, especially of women's clothing, have tended to emphasize sexuality, and almost all of our heroes are hypersexualized, at least more so now than previously. No one except Islamist suicide bombers place much value on virginity, and most of that impression is based on propaganda. I have read that it is a thing now for people to think less of people who have had too few sexual partners and have rather high numbers in mind of those who have had too many partners.
I have said all this as background for disbelieving reported moral views.
This data finds that about 15% of folks have had at least 10 sexual partners.
Half had no more four partners.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5795598/
Those age cohorts with trend lines - if you had allowed a quadratic trend curve for the older cohorts (where the data spans decades) we would see slope change from significantly upwards to (for some cohorts at least) slightly downwards.
Magic!
https://i.imgur.com/2Qgkc9p.png
This is very clear evidence that it was Gen X, not the Boomers, who had a real mass revolution in sexual morality. The Hippie movement was never the majority of Americans, and it was counter-acted and even negated in the aggregate by the growth of Evangelicals.