Cheating Earlier In Relationship More Damaging

According to the latest research, trust if broken early in relationship cannot be revived soon. The betrayal early on relationships are tough to patch up as compared to the rift later in relationships.

"First impressions matter when you want to build a lasting trust. If you get off on the wrong foot, the relationship may never be completely right again. It's easier to rebuild trust after a breach if you already have a strong relationship," said Robert Lount, co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

The study opposes the popular notion that many great relationships start off on a bad note. "Our results fly in the face of this Hollywood notion of hating someone at first sight but then developing a wonderful, passionate relationship. The likelihood of that happening in real life is pretty low," he said. 


Two experiments were conducted for the research, the participating college students were made to play a game in which their partners violated their trust either right at the beginning of the game or sometime later. For the study, the popular game 'prisoner's dilemma' was used to observe the intensity of the participant's trust after it was broken.

The first set of the experiment had participants playing the computer game, thinking they were gaming against their partners in the other room, where as in fact it was pre-programmed to deceive the player at some vital points during the 30 rounds.

The end evaluations showed that the players betrayed at the beaning of the game held very shallow regards for their partners and were least co-operative during the final course of the games, showing lowered trust on their partners.

However, the results were quite opposite when the same evaluation were done for participants who were betrayed later part of the games. The computer defected the players in either of the cases at same number of times, but the timings varied.

"An immediate breach of trust is particularly difficult to overcome, and later breaches are considerably less harmful," said Lount

At the end of the experiment the participants were asked to attend a questionnaire. This revealed that the players who were betrayed at the beaning of the game rated their partners as less trustworthy than the others deceived later.

The second set of experiment was repeated in the same manner as the first one with 108 students, but the participants were asked to answer a shorter set of questions concerning their perceptions and feelings about their partner immediately following a deception and every 10 trials thereafter.

"Our results suggest that immediate breaches are especially costly because they seriously damage the impressions people have about their partner, and that's hard to repair," he said.

So, be careful about when and how you cheat your partner.