The science behind the phrase ‘once a cheater always a cheater’

It was the idea being that if someone’s cheated once before, chances are, they’re more likely to cheat again.

It may seems pretty harsh – after all, why wouldn’t people turn their lives around after doing something wrong?

However, some researchers have figured why a lying partner might be more likely to repeat the offence.

The Nature Neuroscience, study suggests that a reduction in ’emotional reaction’ each time we lie could be why serial cheaters become the way they do.

So when you think about it, it’s actually pretty obvious; each time a person lies, the less and less guilty they feel. In other words, once you tell one lie, it’s a slippery slope.

The test from University College, London researchers, participants were provoked into lying in order to win a cash prize and they were shown a glass jar full of coins and were instructed to help a partner – who was shown a blurred picture of that same jar – to guess how many it contained.

In one group, participants were told they would receive a cash prize if their partner overestimated the number of coins, which caused them to exaggerate or lie and then during the tests, the researchers found that lying sparked a response in a part of the brain responsible for emotions – the amygdala.

But each time the person lied, this reaction weakened and ‘the magnitudeof dishonesty got larger and larger over the course of a block’.

While the study didn’t analyse the effects of infidelity specifically, it’s easy to make the connection, which its co-author and researcher at Princeton Neuroscience Institute Neil Garrett did in an interview with Elite Daily:

‘The idea would be the first time we commit adultery we feel bad about it,’ he said.

‘But the next time we feel less bad and so on, with the result that we can commit adultery to a greater extent.’

He says that this study, and others, suggest that a ‘powerful factor’ preventing us from cheating is our emotional reaction to it – basically how bad we feel – and that as we adapt to it, that reaction reduces ‘thereby allowing us to cheat more’.

And there’s an even more stark finding at the end of the article.

It’s a slippery slope indeed (Picture: Pexels)

‘Despite being small at the outset, engagement in dishonest acts may trigger a process that leads to larger acts of dishonesty further down the line,’ the article reads.

And this is echoed by the study’s co-author.

‘With serial cheaters, it could be the case that they initially felt bad about cheating, but have cheated so much they’ve adapted to their ways and simply don’t feel bad about cheating any more,’ Garrett says.

‘Another possibility is that they never felt bad about cheating to begin with, so they didn’t need adaptation to occur, they were comfortable with it from the get-go.’

If you’ve told even a white lie before, you have to admit that this feeling is familiar – once you’ve indulged in just a touch of deceit, it does get easier and easier to keep going.

But cheating? Well, it’s not quite the same as stealing the last of someone’s milk.