Dissertation Defense-Justin Ludwig

Beyond “Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater”: Whether and How Genuine Self-Forgiveness and Defensiveness Predict Infidelity Propensity and Recidivism Infidelity is a common and damaging relationship transgression. Although many transgressors do not re-engage in unfaithful behavior, a substantial minority do, making it important to understand the factors that influence infidelity propensity and recidivism. However, surprisingly little is known about the transgressor’s perspective. I therefore conducted three studies that utilized complementary methods to address this gap. Across studies, I examined two key processes from the transgressor’s perspective—pseudo self-forgiveness (i.e., minimizing responsibility through defensiveness) and genuine self-forgiveness (i.e., accepting responsibility, self-acceptance, and reorienting toward one’s values)—that I hypothesized would correlate with infidelity propensity and recidivism. Study 1 (N = 241) consisted of two waves of data collected five months apart and sampled participants who had engaged in infidelity in either a current or past relationship. Longitudinal analyses showed that pseudo self-forgiveness was associated with later intentions toward infidelity and enacted boundary-crossing behaviors/infidelity over the previous five months, whereas genuine self-forgiveness was associated with fewer boundary-crossing behaviors/infidelity over the previous five months. In Study 2 (N = 271), participants who had engaged in infidelity in their current relationship were sampled. Results showed that pseudo self-forgiveness was associated with greater infidelity propensity, whereas genuine self-forgiveness was associated with lower infidelity propensity. Finally, Study 3 (N = 214) utilized an experimental design to examine whether prompting individuals to reflect on their infidelity in a manner consistent with genuine self-forgiveness (vs. pseudo self-forgiveness) reduced infidelity propensity. Although the genuine (vs. pseudo) se