The emergence of AIDS and a revival of religion also have had an impact, studies suggest. The Chicago research shows that those who attend religious services regularly are three times less likely to stray from their marriages. These stricter attitudes have held as women have flooded into the workplace, creating a virtual laboratory for extramarital temptation. I think it's possible that people have begun to see each other as people, too, and not just sex objects. Men are almost twice as likely as women to pursue affairs.
Psychologists describe the reasons as part opportunity, part biology.
While infidelity isn't only about sex, they say, men tend to engage in affairs just for the sex, with minimal emotional attachment. Indeed, some studies suggest that half of men who had had affairs insist they were happily married at the time. According to the University of Chicago studies, blacks cheat more than whites, the poor more than the middle class or wealthy, city dwellers more than suburbanites, those with less education, those who have been married more than once, those who are less happy or satisfied in their marriages, and those who rarely attend church. The Minnesota Poll shows that most Minnesotans suspect that politicians' behavior is about the same as everyone else's. Psychologists see these cultures as a combustible blend of ambition, stress, risk and self-absorption, traits that invite sexual adventure and infidelity.