HOW BAD IS IT? PERCEPTIONS OF THE RELATIONSHIP IMPACT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF INTERNET SEXUAL ACTIVITIES Trent S. Parker Karen S. Wampler

ABSTRACT: Internet sex has become a ubiquitous phenomenon that is affecting couples and families. Eight scenarios (from visiting various adult web sites to having sex) involving a male or female character in a committed relationship were presented in a survey format. Participants (n = 242) rated each scenario in terms of emotional and physical involvement, amount of distraction from the primary relationship, and whether the respondent considered the scenario to be an affair. Results indicate that perceptions of internet activities differed depending on the type of internet sexual activity, although the majority of the internet sexual activities were considered to be highly emotional involving, a distraction to the relationship, and sexual in nature, though no physical contact was involved. The gender of the character in the scenario had no effect on participants’ responses. Women tended to see the scenarios as being more serious than men. Clinical implications are discussed. KEY WORDS: internet affairs; sexuality; therapy.

Even though multiple uses of the internet are possible, adult oriented web sites account for the majority of internet commerce. In 1998 users spent $970 million on adult related sites (Koerner, 2000). Projections indicate that in five years such sites will remain as top internet revenue sources (Keefe, 1999). Analyzing web search engines reveals

Trent S. Parker, MS, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Human Services, Indiana University/Purdue University–Ft. Wayne, 2101 E. Coliseum Boulevard, Fort Wayne, IN 46805-1499 ([email protected]). Karen S. Wampler, PhD, Professor, Texas Tech University, Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Contemporary Family Therapy 25(4), December 2003  2003 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

415

416 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

similar findings. Adult related queries far outnumber other search topics (Miller, 2000). In January 2000, an estimated 17.5 million people accessed adult content sites (Koerner, 2000). Popular literature frequently addresses the subject in some form: advice columns, warnings on how to remain safe, and anecdotal stories (e.g., “Diary of B,” 2000). As the popularity of the internet, particularly adult web sites, increases, clinicians are faced with clients entering therapy for problems associated with the use of the internet. Whereas this media can be facilitative in many aspects (e.g., Cooper, Boies, Maheu, & Greenfield, 2000; Grohol, 1999; Newman, 1997), some individuals are unable to control the time and content of internet usage (Collins, 1999; Cooper, Scherer, Boies, & Gordon, 1999; Shaw, 1997). In turn, this may interfere with their social, occupational, and personal lives, and consequently, in some cases, bring them to therapy. Some attention is given in the literature to these aspects, especially as researchers and clinicians encounter more individuals who identify internet usage as a problem in their lives (Cooper et al., 2000). Almost all of this attention is from the perspective of the individual and focuses on how misuse of the internet affects an individual’s interpersonal skills (including intimacy), interference in occupational settings, and negative effects on relationships (Cooper et al., 2000; Young et al., 2000). While one may infer how these findings will affect couples, especially when one partner engages in cybersex, we could find no research literature on this topic. Internet affairs and extramarital affairs have many similar components. Each involves a relationship with an extramarital partner, secrecy, and fantasy (Young et al., 2000). The primary difference between an internet affair and an affair is that in an affair, the couple meet to engage in the relationship. With internet affairs, on the other hand, the couple rarely meet. This offers a unique advantage to internet affairs. Cooper (1998) termed three factors which give sexual expression on the internet its power: access, affordability, and anonymity. Young (1999) adapted these components to explain cybersexual addiction: anonymity, convenience, and escape (ACE). With the anonymity provided by the internet, people may be more inclined to share intimate ideas, feelings, and secrets that are normally reserved for a primary, long-term relationship. Such sharing may also be done at an accelerated pace compared to non-internet relationships. In terms of convenience, an individual is able to find someone else with similar interests at any given time on the internet. Internet sites operate nearly continuously making it easy to pursue sexual interests at any time. Finally, the internet provides an alternate reality that individuals create. For example, someone who is normally reserved can

417 TRENT S. PARKER AND KAREN S. WAMPLER

enter a world where they are outgoing and desired by many people. In a qualitative study, Waskul, Douglass, and Edgley (2000) conducted interviews in a wide variety of sexually oriented on-line chat forums. Though examining a different aspect of on-line sexuality, their study supported the ACE model, particularly the anonymity afforded by the internet. Participants commented on how the anonymity of interaction over the internet allowed the creation and ability to role play alternative selves (i.e., escape). With the implications of the ACE model, the question is raised, what difficulties arise for those in committed relationships who pursue sexuality via the internet? Affairs have been defined as a breech of trust, dependent upon what an individual agreed to or what they thought they agreed (Spring, 1996). While some (e.g., Topp, 2001) claim that internet affairs enhance sex within their primary relationship, it seems that real-life relationships cannot compete with virtual relationships. A virtual relationship is perfect: a good-looking partner, free from blemishes and tailored to the person’s tastes, no need to resolve differences because there are many other available and desiring partners out there, and a virtual relationship is available anytime (Cerissa, 2001). Internet affairs offer a new perspective on the definition of an affair. Further research is needed to determine its effects on a relationship. Through anecdotal accounts, we learn that internet affairs affect relationships in much the same way as an affair (Gutfeld, 1999). Yet, in an internet affair the couple does not meet or even touch each other. Based on this fact, Collins (1999) explored whether or not we should categorize internet affairs as emotional affairs. She concludes that relationships conducted through the internet should not be seen as having the same significance as body-based relationships. To begin to address these issues, Maheu (2001) is conducting an on-line survey about attitudes towards internet affairs. At the time of this writing, the majority of the respondents did not find internet affairs as more acceptable than actual affairs (45%), felt that internet affairs were a threat to traditional relationships (48%), and did not think that internet affairs enhanced the primary relationship (36%). No study has addressed the potential impact of different types of internet sexual activity on the couple relationship. To accomplish this, participants were given several scenarios involving different types of internet sexual activity. Participants then rated each scenario in terms of the emotional and sexual involvement, amount of distraction from the primary relationship, and whether or not the activity should be considered an affair. The present study has three hypotheses. One, participants will

418 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

view the scenarios as increasing in emotionality, sexuality, distractibility and more of an affair as they go from visiting various pornographic web sites, visiting (but not participating) in adult chat rooms, becoming a member of an adult web site, interacting in an adult chat room, having cybersex, and engaging in cybersex at various times. In addition, two scenarios involving direct contact, having telephone sex and meeting to have sex in a hotel room, are included for comparison purposes. Our second hypothesis predicts that the gender of the character in the scenarios would influence the perceptions of the respondent. Specifically, when the character is female, respondents would rate the scenarios higher in emotion and distractibility, lower in sexuality, as more of an affair than if the character is a male. Third, we hypothesize that men and women will rate the characters differently, with men rating scenarios less emotional, less distracting, less of an affair, and more sexual. Finally, we hypothesize that the most intense level of internet sexual activity, engaging in cybersex, will still be perceived as less of a problem than an affair involving physical contact (meeting in a hotel room to have sex).

METHODS Participants The sample consisted of undergraduate students (n = 242) attending a southwestern university. The participants were recruited from human science and health classes. Ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 53 (M = 21.66, SD = 4.35) and included 78 men and 164 women. In terms of religion, there were 45 Catholic, 187 Protestant, and 10 “other.” In terms of race and ethnicity, the majority were Caucasian (n = 200) and other (n = 42). Other groups represented were AfricanAmerican (n = 11), Hispanic (n = 20), American Indian, (n = 6), and Iranian (n = 1). Most (n = 200) had never been married, and 42 reported either being married (n = 18), living together (n = 17), divorced (n = 6), or separated (n = 1).

Measures In addition to providing demographic information such as age, relational status, gender, and religion, participants completed an eightitem questionnaire. The questionnaire followed Thompson’s (1984) for-

419 TRENT S. PARKER AND KAREN S. WAMPLER

mat in exploring three aspects of an affair: emotional involvement, sexual involvement, and amount of distraction from the primary relationship. For each type of sexual activity, these three aspects are rated on a Likert-type scale with scores from one to seven, with one representing the least impact and involvement and seven representing the most. In addition, participants were asked to rate the scenario on the degree to which the behavior constitutes an affair using a 7-point Likert scale with one indicating the participant felt the behavior constituted an affair and seven indicating the participant felt like the behavior did not constitute an affair. In order to address gender differences, two parallel versions of the questionnaire were created. Both questionnaires differed only in the gender of the character in the scenarios. In other words, one questionnaire involved a man in each scenario and the other involved a woman. Scenarios. After explaining to the participants that the character involved is in a long-term committed relationship and that the character’s partner knows nothing of his or her involvement in internet sexual activity, participants were presented with the scenarios in the following random order: meeting in a hotel room to have sex, interacting in adult chat rooms, having cybersex, having telephone sex, becoming a member of an adult web site, engaging in cybersex various times, visiting adult chat rooms but not interacting, and visiting various adult web sites. A sample scenario (interacting in adult chat rooms) is as follows: As part of the web site membership, a man is able to participate in a chat room. He meets a woman there. Spending five hours each week, he begins to develop a relationship with this acquaintance through flirting and eventually sharing personal information.

RESULTS Preliminary Analyses Age and relationship status. Preliminary analyses were conducted to assess for possible confounding effects related to the demographic characteristics of the sample. Pearson correlation was used to determine the relation of participants’ age to the main variables in the study. Age was significantly correlated with six items. Older participants were more likely to view: visiting an adult chat-room as an affair, r(210) =

420 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

−.14, p = .05; flirting in a chat room as an affair, r(210) = −.15, p = .05; and higher sexual involvement in the flirting in the chat room scenario, r(210) = .20, p = .01. Thus older respondents tended to view internet sex as more serious, although only 6% of the t-tests were statistically significant. To examine the relationship between the main variables of the study and relationship status, a series of repeated measures of analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with relationship status (never married vs. other) as a between factor and scenario (one through eight) as the repeated measures factor. The scenarios were ordered based on our assumptions from least to most serious. A significant interaction effect occurred between scenario and relationship status for degree of sexual involvement, F(1, 7) = 115.1, p < .05. The means for sexual involvement (Table 1) indicate that, generally, for the less serious scenarios, never married participants rated sexual involvement less than

TABLE 1 Means and Standard Deviations Based on Relationship Status Sexual Involvement Never Marrieda Scenario Visiting adult websites Adult chat rooms, no interaction Adult website member Adult chat rooms, interaction Internet sex Cybersex many times Telephone sex Sex n = 172. n = 38.

a b

M

SD

3.90

1.84

2.30

Affair

Otherb M

SD

Never Marrieda

Otherb

M

SD

M

SD

4.26 2.07

5.49

1.61

4.43 2.17

1.61

3.07 1.84

5.89

1.51

4.69 2.17

4.90

1.84

5.29 1.92

4.63

2.01

3.33 2.00

2.53

1.28

3.12 1.77

3.90

1.78

2.74 1.87

5.69 5.72

1.25 1.26

5.81 1.40 5.79 1.46

2.95 3.08

1.88 1.87

1.90 1.53 2.24 1.85

6.07 6.29

1.11 1.15

5.98 1.46 6.07 1.45

2.57 1.53

1.87 1.45

1.62 1.19 1.29 .86

421 TRENT S. PARKER AND KAREN S. WAMPLER

other participants, while for more serious scenarios, there was no difference. There was a significant main effect for relationship status on how the respondents rated the extent to which the character was involved in an affair, F(1, 7) = 65.4, p < .001, with the never married less likely to view the situation across the scenarios as an affair (Table 1). There were no significant interaction or main effects for emotional involvement and amount of distraction. As expected, the main effect for scenario was significant in each analysis, indicating that our assumed ordering of the scenarios from least to most serious was an accurate reflection of the participants’ responses (Table 1).

Hypotheses Scenario. Our first hypothesis stated that the participants would view the scenarios as increasing in emotionality, sexuality, and distractibility as they went from visiting various pornographic web sites, watching (but not participating) in adult chat rooms, becoming a member of an adult web site, flirting in an adult chat room, having cybersex, engaging in cybersex at various times, having telephone sex, and finally meeting in person to have sex. The extent to which participants viewed these events as constituting an affair should increase as well. In order to test this hypothesis, a series of one-way repeated measures of analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted, with scenario as the repeated measure. As expected, the analyses indicated a significant main effect for scenario on emotionality, F(7, 235) = 119.52, p < .001, sexuality, F(7, 235) = 223.58, p < .001, distractibility, F(7, 233) = 109.83, p < .001, and affair, F(7, 232) = 125.69, p < .001. The means and standard deviations are in Table 2. We expected a linear relationship for each dependent variable. In other words, we ordered the scenarios from least to most serious based on the amount of interaction and involvement. The statistically significant main effect indicates that there was a difference by order of scenario in the direction expected. As can be seen in Table 2, the means indicate that our order was not the best fit for all the variables, even though, in each case, statistically, a linear function is the best fit. Using the mean score across the four aspects (emotion, sexuality, distractibility, affair), the participants ranked the different types of sexual activity in the following order: adult chat rooms, no interaction (M = 2.61), visiting adult web sites (M = 3.13), member of an adult web site (M = 4.10), adult chat rooms with interaction (M = 4.47), internet sex (M =

422 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

TABLE 2 Scenarios and Dependent Variables With Corresponding Means Emotion Scene Visiting adult websites Adult chat rooms, no interaction Adult website member Adult chat rooms, interaction Internet sex Cybersex many times Telephone sex Sex

M

SD

Sex

SD

2.31 1.46 3.97 1.88 2.20 1.40 2.43 1.68

3.93 3.11

1.96 1.81

2.70 1.77 2.31 1.70

2.67 1.79 4.96 1.86 5.12 1.18 2.63 1.39

5.33 5.44

4.81 1.26

3.59 2.06 4.30 1.85

4.10 4.18 4.41 3.62

5.96 5.85 6.23 6.22

1.20 1.26 1.04 1.29

5.23 5.08 5.60 6.51

5.71 5.74 6.05 6.25

SD

Affair

M

1.74 1.75 1.83 1.91

M

Distractibility

1.28 1.29 1.18 1.21

M

SD

1.86 1.89 1.80 1.37

5.39), internet sex multiple times (M = 5.42), telephone sex (M = 5.53), sex (M = 5.65). Gender. For the second hypothesis, we predicted that the gender of the character in the scenarios would influence the perceptions of the respondent. Specifically, we hypothesized that when the character was female, respondents would rate the scenarios higher in emotion and distractibility, lower in sexuality, and rate the scenario as more of an affair than if the character were a male. The third hypothesis stated that men and women would rate the characters differently, with men rating scenarios less emotional, less distracting, less of an affair, and more sexual. Four two by two multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) were conducted. Gender of the character and gender of the participant were the between factors with emotional and sexual involvement, distractibility, and affair for each scenario as the dependent variables. No significant interaction occurred between gender of participant and gender of the character. Contrary to our hypothesis, no significant main effect was found for gender of the character for the participant’s rating of emotional involvement, sexual involvement, distractibility, or level of affair. There was a significant main effect for gender of the respondent and his or her rating for emotion, F(8, 231) = 2.66, p < .05, sexuality, F(8, 231) = 4.29, p < .001, distractibility, F(8, 229) = 4.51, p < .001, and

423 TRENT S. PARKER AND KAREN S. WAMPLER

level of affair, F(8, 228) = 4.92, p < .001. Univariate tests of between subjects effects indicated that gender differences for every scenario except visiting chat rooms with no interaction (Table 3). Women viewed visiting adult web sites as more distracting and more like an affair. For becoming a member of an adult web site, women saw more sexuality, TABLE 3 Men vs. Women on Variables by Scenario Malea Scene (variable) Visiting adult web sites Distractibility Affair Member of an adult web site Sexuality Distractibility Affair Adult chat rooms, interaction Emotionality Distractibility Affair Internet sex Sexuality Distractibility Affair Cybersex many times Sexuality Distractibility Affair Telephone sex Sexuality Distractibility Affair Sex Distractibility n = 78. n = 164. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

a b

M

SD

Femaleb M

SD

3.40 1.82 4.18 1.97 2.21 1.48 2.94 1.84

F

df

8.53** 9.22*

236 235

4.37 2.00 5.24 1.72 12.12** 238 4.29 1.95 5.40 1.65 20.67*** 236 2.73 1.83 4.02 2.04 22.03*** 235 4.78 1.24 5.28 1.12 9.80** 5.14 1.26 5.58 1.24 6.56* 3.77 1.74 4.56 1.85 10.16*

238 236 235

5.22 1.37 5.94 1.17 18.15*** 238 5.45 1.34 6.21 1.05 22.94*** 236 4.40 1.88 5.64 1.72 26.38*** 235 5.23 1.49 5.97 1.12 18.21*** 238 5.27 1.35 6.14 1.12 27.22*** 236 4.35 1.86 5.42 1.81 18.49*** 235 5.55 1.38 6.29 .98 22.66*** 238 5.85 1.14 6.42 .94 16.79*** 236 5.00 1.82 5.88 1.73 13.37*** 235 5.96 1.41 6.35 1.22

4.63*

236

424 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

distractibility, and the scenario more like an affair. Women also viewed interacting in adult chat rooms as involving more emotionality, distractibility, and more like an affair. For internet sex cybersex many times, and phone sex, women viewed more involvement sexually, more distractibility, and saw these behaviors as more like an affair. Women also saw having sex in a hotel room as more distracting. Affair. Finally, we wished to compare and contrast the difference between an internet affair (engaging in cybersex) and an affair involving physical and sexual contact (meeting in a hotel room to have sex). In order to assess the differences, a series of paired samples t-test was run comparing the internet affair scenario to the affair scenario. As seen in Table 4, an internet affair was seen as having more emotional involvement, less sexual, less distracting, and less of an affair.

DISCUSSION The first purpose of this study was to assess participants’ perceptions of different behaviors related to sexual content on the internet. Clearly, some behaviors were considered to be worse than others in terms of the impact on the relationship. Taking the mean ratings across the four aspects (emotional involvement, sexual involvement, distractibility, and affair), respondents rated visiting adult chat rooms with no interaction, visiting adult web sites, becoming a member of an adult web site, and visiting adult chat rooms with interaction as less problematic than internet sex, internet sex multiple times, telephone sex, and sex. All of the sexual activities on the internet, except for visiting adult TABLE 4 Comparing Internet Sex and Sex Engaging in Cybersex Meet in Person for Sex Variable Emotion Sexuality Distractibility Affair *p < .001; **p < .05.

M

SD

M

SD

t

df

4.10 5.71 5.96 5.23

1.74 1.28 1.20 1.86

3.62 6.25 6.22 6.51

1.91 1.21 1.29 1.36

−4.5* 6.34* 2.79** −10.11*

241 241 239 239

425 TRENT S. PARKER AND KAREN S. WAMPLER

chat rooms with no interaction and visiting adult web sites were seen to be problematic. This is interesting given that sexual activities on the internet require no physical contact between partners: all communication and interaction takes place through a computer. Even from this once-removed perspective, internet sexual activity is seen as problematic to relationships. We also found that internet sex was rated less of an affair than physical sex. This does not, however, negate the seriousness of engaging in internet sex while in a closed relationship. In terms of sexual involvement, distractibility, and similarity to an affair, participants viewed activities as having more than moderate amounts of these qualities beginning with internet sex. Internet sex while in a closed relationship is closer to an affair than not. Our second hypothesis predicted that the gender of the character in the scenarios would influence participants’ perception. We found no support for this hypothesis. This finding contrasts with a study conducted by Sprecher, Regan, and McKinney (1998) that found that women depicted in a vignette as involved in an extramarital sexual relationship were viewed more negatively. The difference in the findings of the current study may represent a difference between internet affairs and affairs. Finally, in this study, we predicted that men and women would have different perceptions of the scenarios. Overall, we found that men and women see adult internet activities differently in terms of sexual involvement, the amount of distraction an activity provides from the primary relationship, and how much the activity constitutes an affair. Women tended to see these activities as more serious than did men. It is interesting to note that men and women viewed similar amounts of emotional involvement (except interacting in adult chat rooms). Overall, levels of perceived emotional involvement remained low. This suggests that both men and women do not see emotional investment in these internet activities.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Clinicians are seeing couples presenting with internet sexuality concerns. Particularly, one partner is either engaging in internet sex, or is spending large quantities of time on the internet viewing adultrelated content. While some couples may not see on-line sexual activity as serious as an affair, it is apparent from the results of this study that this kind of activity has a large potential impact on the couple

426 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

relationship. Additionally, with internet affairs being similar, though not equal to, affairs, some similar feelings and problems may arise. For example, the partner who is not involved in the on-line behavior, may experience difficulties in defining the behavior according to her or his reaction. In other words, the uninvolved partner may experience feelings similar to discovering a partner has had an affair (e.g., jealousy or fear), but this reaction will be toward a behavior between a partner and a person he or she has never met in real life. These feelings may be further complicated by society’s disagreement regarding whether or not on-line sexual behaviors constitute an affair. Such ambiguity is similar to experiences of the uninvolved partner prior to discovering, yet suspecting, that his or her partner has had an extramarital affair. Gass and Nichols (1988) write that partners cannot begin the grief process over the relationship if there is no clear identification of the situation. It then becomes necessary for clinicians to normalize the ambiguous feelings and assist the couple or partner in defining the seriousness of the behavior and to what extent it should be deemed as an affair. To this end, it is also necessary for the involved partner to identify the behavior and bring the behavior out of secrecy. As with affairs, internet affairs involve dishonesty and secrecy (Young et al., 2000). Dishonesty can lead to the uninvolved partner feeling as though he or she is being made to go crazy (Gass & Nichols, 1988). While there may be evidence that an internet affair is happening, such as finding e-mails, when the involved partner denies the evidence, the uninvolved partner is left to decide whether or not his or her perceptions are true. This can lead to dismissal of evidence or perceptions, which complicates treatment further. Treating the partner involved in the behavior is also an important consideration. In so doing, it is necessary for the clinician to consider the type and severity of the problem in order to determine the best type of treatment. Specifically, the clinician should identify if the partner is involved with a one-time virtual meeting, a continuing internet affair, sexual addiction, or internet addiction (Young et al., 2000). Options such as group therapy for sex or internet addiction, addictions counseling, or bibliotherapy are possibilities for treatment of the involved partner. It is also important to highlight that no differences were found due the gender of the character in the vignettes. This suggests that internet sexual activity may strongly affect the relationship, regardless of the gender of the partner involved. This must be tempered, however,

427 TRENT S. PARKER AND KAREN S. WAMPLER

by the finding that women tended to see internet sexual activity as more serious than men. Based on this, women may see internet sexual activities as more harmful to the relationship. Finally, when comparing internet affairs with affairs, internet affairs significantly included greater emotional involvement. This lends support to Collins’ (1999) suggestion that internet affairs be categorized as “emotional affairs.” Emotional involvement with an affair is an indicator of the degree to which keeping the primary relationship intact and improved is possible (Thompson, 1984). The more emotional involvement in an affair, the more likely the relationship will suffer or even dissolve. With internet affairs having more emotional involvement, clinicians may find repairing and improving the primary relationship difficult.

LIMITATIONS Interpreting these findings should be done in light of the limitations to this study. First, we did not ask whether or not the participants have been involved in internet sex. This would very likely make a significant difference in terms of the participant’s perception of the activity. Similarly, the study presented participants with fictional scenarios, not their actual experience. There were also considerably more women than men as well as more Caucasians comprising the sample. While this study found no differences based on race, a more evenly distributed sample may yield different results. Finally, sample consisted of undergraduates, which makes generalizing the findings difficult. The undergraduate sample represents a young, well-educated, population. Despite these limitations, this study contributes to a new aspect of couple relationships. As more and more people are affected by the internet, exploring these issues through research is necessary. The findings of this study can be used to examine influences of the internet on couple relationships. For example, while this study addressed how people perceive affairs and internet affairs, from these data, we cannot infer how a couple will react. Because women tended to see internet activities as more serious than men, this implies that women’s reactions to an internet affair will be stronger than men’s. This is tempered by the finding that the gender of the partner involved in the scenario did not make a difference in terms of the perception of emotional and sexual involve-

428 CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

ment, distractibility, and similarity to an affair. More research is needed in this area to explore reactions and consequences. In a similar vein, individuals who were married, separated, or divorced viewed internet sexual activity as generally more serious than never married individuals. This may be due to the fact that those individuals that are in or have been in a committed relationship have a clearer idea about what constitutes a breach of the commitment. Finally with internet sex being closer to an affair than not, a partner’s reaction to this behavior will likely be similar to that of an affair. There may be some confusion to this reaction because there was no physical contact made. The current study implies that internet sex can be framed as an affair. Such framing has potential to validate a partner’s reaction to internet activities.

REFERENCES Cerissa. (2001). Cyber-cheating: Real or virtual? Retrieved from: http://www.pan-arts.com/era/date-state/cheating.htm Collins, L. (1999). Emotional adultery: Cybersex and commitment. Social Theory and Practice, 25, 243–270. Cooper, A. (1998). Sexuality and the internet: Surfing into the new millennium. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 1, 181–187. Cooper, A., Boies, S., Maheu, M., & Greenfield, D. (2000). Sexuality and the internet: The next sexual revolution. In L.T. Szuchman & F. Muscarella (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on human sexuality (pp. 519–545). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Cooper A., Scherer, C., Boies, S. C., & Gordon, B. (1999). Sexuality on the internet: From sexual exploration to pathological expression. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 30, 154–164. “Diary of B.” (2000, January). Redbook, 194(1A), 112. Gass, G.Z. & Nichols, W.C. (1988). Gaslighting: A marital syndrome. Contemporary Family Therapy, 10, 3–16. Grohol, J. M. (1999). Too much time online: Internet addiction or healthy social interactions? CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2, 395–401. Gutfeld, G. (1999). The sex drive. Men’s Health, 14(8), 116–124. Keefe, L. M. (1999). Too much sex and violence on the net. Marketing News, 33, 3. Koerner, B. I. (2000). A lust for profits. U.S. News & World Report, 128(12), 36–42. Maheu, M. (2001). Cyber-affairs, a reader survey. Self-help and psychology magazine, 6, 5. Retrieved from: http://shpm.com/cgibin/cyber_survey.cgi?results=go&start=go Miller, M. (2000). Surfs up, IQs down: Top 50 web searches. Kansas City Business Journal, 18, 16. Newman, B. (1997). The use of online services to encourage exploration of ego-dystonic sexual interests. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 22, 45–48. Shaw, J. (1997). Treatment rationale for internet infidelity. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 22, 29–34. Sprecher, S., Regan, P. C., & McKinney, K. (1998). Beliefs about the outcomes of extramarital sexual relationships as a function of the gender of the “cheating spouse.” Sex Roles, 38, 301–311.

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Spring, J.A. (1996). After the affair: Healing the pain and rebuilding the trust when a partner has been unfaithful. New York: Harper Collins. Thompson, A. P. (1984). Emotional and sexual components of extramarital relations. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 46, 35–42. Topp, G. (2001). Virtual immorality. Retrieved from: http://www.pan-arts.com/era/datestate/virtual-immorality.htm Waskul, D., Douglass, M., & Edgley, C. (2000). Cybersex: Outercourse and the enselfment of the body. Symbolic Interaction, 23, 375–397. Young, K.S. (1999). Cybersexual addiction Retrieved from: http://www.netaddiction.com/ cybersexual_addiction.htm Young, K. S., Griffin-Shelley, E., Cooper, A., O’Mara, J., & Buchanan, J. (2000). Online infidelity: A new dimension in couple relationships with implications for evaluation and treatment. Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, 7, 59–74.

How Bad Is It? Perceptions of the Relationship Impact ... - Springer Link

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On the one hand, we introduce the notion of the core of a KLM model, which ... We give two equivalent characterizations of the cores of KLM models: they are ...

Bad guys: Why the public supports punishing white ... - Springer Link
Oct 16, 2008 - Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008. Abstract ... Division of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, PO Box 210389, Cincinnati,.

How inherently noisy is human sensory processing? - Springer Link
Like any physical information processing device, the human brain is inherently noisy: If a participant is presented with the ... mental and computational efforts aimed at understanding and characterizing human sensory processing. Psychonomic ..... we

Is There an Optimal Constitution? - Springer Link
of citizens, while the Brennan-Buchanan equilibrium is the best way to deter the ambitions of self-interested politicians. .... Notice that the Frey equilibrium is a saddle point (L. ∗, P∗. ) .... An optimal control problem that takes into accoun

The Relationship between Children's Self-perceptions ...
April, 2009. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in the. Department of Psychology at Brown University ...

Liquidity Crunch in the Interbank Market: Is it Credit or ... - Springer Link
Published online: 17 May 2011. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011. Abstract The interplay between ... market. A useful indicator of the liquidity (funding) risk perceived by banks is their behavior in monetary policy operations.

THE PHENOMENAL STANCE Cognitive science is ... - Springer Link
think of them as mere mechanisms seems at best counterintu- itive and unhelpful. More often it may strike us as ludicrous, or even abhorrent. We are 'intuitive dualists' (Bloom, 2004). We view people and objects as fundamentally different sorts of th

Automated Promotion Machine: Emerging IS for the ... - Springer Link
by in-store promotion terminal or online Internet terminal. Potential impacts of .... attention to consumer's unique needs with a low cost. Automated ... Level 1 APM, can track consumer buying process and can be accessed by wireless devices.

Automated Promotion Machine: Emerging IS for the ... - Springer Link
individuals via in-store machine, Internet, or mobile devices. The most .... Keams et al. [19], the degree that IT planning represents business plans determines.

The Incredible Economics of Geoengineering - Springer Link
Dec 6, 2007 - As I shall explain in this paper, its future application seems more likely than not. ... because the incentives for countries to experiment with ...

The Strength of Weak Learnability - Springer Link
high probability, the hypothesis must be correct for all but an arbitrarily small ... be able to achieve arbitrarily high accuracy; a weak learning algorithm need only ...

Calculus of Variations - Springer Link
Jun 27, 2012 - the associated energy functional, allowing a variational treatment of the .... groups of the type U(n1) × ··· × U(nl) × {1} for various splittings of the dimension ...... u, using the Green theorem, the subelliptic Hardy inequali

The Strength of Weak Learnability - Springer Link
some fixed but unknown and arbitrary distribution D. The oracle returns the ... access to oracle EX, runs in time polynomial in n,s, 1/e and 1/6, and outputs an ...

The Relationship between Children's Self-perceptions ...
Your presence at Saturday Night Research Parties is always a breath of fresh air. ..... of global behavior demonstrated strong correlations across age and gender lines, while context- ...... distributed to staff members and Think City teachers.

How Bad is Selfish Voting? - PURE
vote for its favorite alternative, and the alternative with most votes wins the election. ... We investigate three common voting rules, which belong to the family of positional .... file is preferred to the previous outcome according to its true pref

The ignorant observer - Springer Link
Sep 26, 2007 - ... of uncertainty aversion directly related to comparisons of sets of infor- ...... for all f ∈ Acv. Hence, ai ˆVi ( f ) + bi = aj ˆVj ( f ) + bj for all i, j ∈ N, ...

The molecular phylogeny of the type-species of ... - Springer Link
dinokaryotic and dinokaryotic nuclei within the life- cycle, and the absence of the transversal (cingulum) and longitudinal (sulcus) surface grooves in the parasitic ...

Is insulin signaling molecules misguided in diabetes ... - Springer Link
Gopalapuram, Chennai 600 086, India (E-mail: [email protected]). Multiple ... pathway, which requires ATP and degrades the bulk of cellu- lar, and some ...