Does the marriage length affect your betrayal tendency? An examination of the moderating role of relational mobility

Objectives: The present project aimed to understand the influence of marriage length on people’s betrayal tendency in different environments that varied in different degrees of relational mobility. We assumed people in different relational mobility settings would form different characteristics (e.g., various levels of morality and concern for the other) and those different traits accordingly would lead to various degrees of betrayal tendency when marriage length has changed. Methods: We conducted a study with 2 (marriage length: Short vs. long) x 2 (relational mobility: High vs. low) design. We used a sentence-making test to manipulate participants’ perceived relational mobility and asked participants to answer the scenarios differing in marriage length information. Results: The results showed that the influence of marriage length on people’s betrayal tendency was moderated by the degree of perceived relational mobility in a given situation. Specifically, the longer people were married, the higher the possibility people would betray when they perceived a higher level of relational mobility; in contrast, the influence of marriage length on betrayal tendency was not significant when people perceived a lower level of relational mobility. In addition, morality and concern for the other were not able to explain the moderating effect of relational mobility on the relation between marriage length and betrayal tendency. Conclusion: These results indicated that socioecological characteristics (e.g., relational mobility) had a substantial influence on shaping people’s romantic relationship experiences. All rights reserved.