Cheaters: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t post revenge porn, amirite?
They’re also notorious repeat offenders (insert surprised face here), and there might be a scientific explanation as to why.
In a study recently published by Nature, researchers took a look at activity in the amygdala, aka the negative response epicenter in your brain. Their observation demonstrated that the response to an “emotion-evoking stimulus” weakens with repeated exposure. Translation: each successive time that a cheater/lier/stealer is taken to task for their cheating/lying/stealing, they feel a little less guilty and regretful than the time before.
“We speculate that the blunted response to repeated acts of dishonesty may reflect a reduction in the emotional response to these decisions or to their affective assessment and saliency,” the paper reads.
The study also goes on to address why adulterers have no qualms with lying about their infidelities after the fact: “When participants were dishonest for the benefit of someone else, dishonesty at a constant rate was observed … When a person engages in dishonesty purely for the benefit of another it may be perceived as morally acceptable.”
Lying about cheating to protect your partner from the truth, eh?
What martyrs.
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