DAVID C. ATKINS AND DEBORAH E.
KESSEL Fuller Theological Seminary
Religiousness and Infidelity: Attendance, but not
Faith and Prayer, Predict Marital Fidelity
High religiousness has been consistently linked
with a decreased likelihood of past infidelity but
has been solely defined by religious service
attendance, a limited assessment of a complex
facet of life. The current study developed nine
religiousness subscales using items from the
1998 General Social Survey to more fully
explore the association between religiousness
and infidelity. Interestingly, logistic regressions
using currently married participants ( N
1,439) demonstrated that attendance, but not
faith, nearness to God, prayer, and other reli-
gious attributes, was related to infidelity.
Exploratory analyses also found that individu-
als with high religious importance but low
attendance were more likely to have had an
affair and weak evidence that marital happiness
moderated the association between religious-
ness and infidelity.
You shall not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14;
New English Bible). The major monotheistic re-
ligions (i.e., Christianity, Judaism, Islam) pro-
mote fidelity and explicitly prohibit infidelity in
marriage, and in this same vein, the majority of
individuals believe infidelity in marriage is
wrong (Johnson et al., 2002). Past research has
consistently shown an association such that more
religious individuals are less likely to have had af-
fairs compared to the less religious (Allen et al.,
2005; Atkins, Baucom, & Jacobson, 2001;
Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Semi-
nary, 180 N. Oakland Ave., Pasadena, CA 91101 (datkins@
fuller.edu).
Key Words: general social surveys, infidelity, religiousness.
Journal of Marriage and Family 70 (May 2008): 407418
Edwards & Booth, 1976; Liu, 2000; Treas & Gie-
sen, 2000). Yet, in all of the previous research on
infidelity, religiousness has been measured solely
by attendance at religious services, a very limited
assessment of a rich and complex facet of life.
This raises a host of questions: Are there nuances
in the association of religiousness and infidelity
that attendance fails to capture? Is the negative
association found in past research specific to
attendance or is attendance merely acting as
a proxy for other religious variables? If further
dimensions of the religious life were assessed,
would attendance show the strongest association
with infidelity out of a variety of religious fac-
tors? The present research focused on precisely
these questions.
Most Americans share the expectation that mar-
ried couples will remain sexually faithful to their
spouse (Johnson et al., 2002; Treas & Giesen,
2000), yet there is a disconnect between this com-
mon expectation and the not uncommon occur-
rence of infidelity. In a nationally representative
sample, Wiederman (1997) found that 23% of
men and 12% of women reported an affair at some
point in their marriages, and 4.1% of men and
1.7% of women reported having engaged in infi-
delity within the past 12 months. Likewise, Choi,
Catania, and Dolcini (1994) found that 2% of
a nationally representative sample of American
couples reported having engaged in infidelity
within the past 12 months. Moreover, these figures
are almost certainly conservative estimates, as
rates of infidelity can be notably higher when
anonymous survey methods are used versus face-
to-face interviews (Whisman & Snyder, 2007).
When infidelity occurs, it is often associated
with a number of deleterious outcomes for
407
408
marriages and individuals. Research shows that
infidelity is positively associated with divorce
(Atkins et al., 2001), including one prospective
study showing that earlier infidelity raises the
likelihood of later divorce (Previti & Amato,
2004). Moreover, infidelity is associated with
poor marital quality (Glass & Wright, 1977; Pre-
viti & Amato; Spanier & Margolis, 1983), which
itself is a predictor of divorce. Research also sup-
ports links between infidelity and psychopathol-
ogy such as depression and symptoms of
posttraumatic stress disorder (Cano & OLeary,
2000; Gordon, Baucom, & Snyder, 2004). Infi-
delity not only has implications for individual
psychological health and strength of relation-
ships, it also has increasingly been implicated
as a transmission route for sexually transmitted
infections including HIV/AIDS (Finer, Darroch,
& Singh, 1999). Although these negative con-
comitants of infidelity point to the importance
of understanding factors associated with
decreased likelihood of infidelity, some have sug-
gested positive impacts of affairs. In particular,
affairs can provide supportive relationships in,
and a way out of, a bad marriage (Vaughn, 1990).
As noted above, past research has identified
a consistent negative association between reli-
giousness and infidelity. Allen et al. (2005) pro-
posed a framework for studying infidelity,
wherein one dimension is the level of analysis,
consisting of individual, relational, and contex-
tual. Religiousness may interact with infidelity
within each of these spheres. At the individual
level, theological teachings underscore the impor-
tance of marriage and fidelity and the prohibition
of infidelity. In addition to specific messages about
infidelity, there are other indirect ways that reli-
gion may help prevent infidelity. For example,
religious teachings emphasize forgiveness, care
toward others, and admonishments about anger,
which will foster individual attitudes that in turn
could strengthen marital relationships (Mahoney,
Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). At
the relational level, Mahoney and Tarakeshwar
(2005) have studied how religious couples sanc-
tify their marriages through viewing their relation-
ships as having spiritual significance and pointing
to God as the source of the relationship. Within
couples that share similar religious beliefs, spiri-
tual practices can be shared practices that sustain
and improve the marital relationship. Moreover,
religious communities provide contexts that
explicitly or implicitly underscore the costs of infi-
delity to the marriage but also reinforce social dis-
Journal of Marriage and Family
approval and possible loss of relationship and
community. Thus, individual (e.g., theological
teachings and cognitive consistency with viewing
oneself as a religious person), relational (e.g., mar-
ital sanctification, shared activities and beliefs
between spouses), and contextual processes (e.g.,
shared community values and relationship) may
affect the likelihood of infidelity and may not be
wholly captured by attendance. Finally, the find-
ings from at least one study suggest that religious-
ness may interact with other factors in its
association with infidelity. Atkins et al. (2001)
found that the association of religiousness with
infidelity was moderated by marital happiness.
Although religiousness and infidelity may
interact from individual beliefs up to social struc-
tures, the assessment of religiousness has focused
almost entirely on attendance, typically employ-
ing single-item measures (Mahoney et al.,
2001). The present study extended earlier
research by taking a multifaceted view of the
association of religiousness with infidelity. As
an initial step, a multidimensional scale of reli-
giousness was created, including dimensions of
religiousness such as perceived closeness to
God, religious service attendance, forgiveness,
prayer, faith, and negative perceptions of reli-
gion. These dimensions of religiousness were
then related to infidelity controlling for demo-
graphic factors based on past research (Atkins
et al., 2001; Treas & Giesen, 2000; Wiederman,
1997), including age, gender, years of education,
race, respondents income, and previous divorce.
Although there was no direct research upon
which to base hypotheses, the exploratory
hypothesis was that additional dimensions of reli-
giousness beyond religious service attendance
would be associated with infidelity. Moreover,
it was hypothesized that the association of reli-
giousness with infidelity would be moderated
by marital happiness, replicating the earlier find-
ings of Atkins et al. (2001).
METHOD
Participants
The participants for this study were drawn from
the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS) conducted
by the National Opinion Research Center at the
University of Chicago. The initial GSS took place
in 1972 and since then more than 42,000 respond-
ents have participated, answering over 3,300
different questions. The surveys are structured,
Religiousness and Infidelity
face-to-face interviews and involve a national,
cross-sectional sample of noninstitutionalized,
English-speaking individuals between the ages
of 18 and 89 in the continental United States.
At present, the GSS is conducted every other year
with approximately 3,000 participants, and the
1998 survey (N 2,832) included a special bat-
tery of questions related to religion and spiritu-
ality. Of participants surveyed in 1998, 283
(10%) were widowed, 446 (16%) were
divorced, 663 (23%) were never married, and 1
had missing data for marital status. Of partici-
pants who had been married at some point (n
2,169, 76.7% of total sample), 82.1% reported
never having had sex with another person while
they were married, whereas 17.9% reported sex-
ual infidelity at some point while married
(14.7% women and 22.5% men).
Because one of the hypotheses related to mar-
ital happiness, participants who were married or
married but separated at the time of the interview
were included in the analysis, yielding a sample
size of 1,439. (Note that participants who have
been divorced but were remarried at the time of
the survey were included in all analyses.) Sensi-
tivity analyses (described in Data Analyses)
examined whether religiousness associations
generalized to participants who were previously
married (i.e., widowed or divorced).
As general indicators of the religiousness of
the sample, 48.2% of participants indicated that
they attend religious services once a month or
more frequently, and 59.5% reported that they
find strength and comfort in religion most days
or more frequently. Moreover, 82% (n 2,290)
of the sample were affiliated with a branch of
the Christian church (i.e., Protestant, Catholic,
Nondenominational), 4% (n 110) were affili-
ated with other religious traditions (e.g., Jewish,
Buddhist, Muslim), and 14% (n 396) listed
no religious affiliation. In addition, the majority
of participants reported stable, long-term reli-
gious beliefs: 85.6% endorsing that they are
current believers and always have been; 2.9%
endorse no beliefs currently or previously; 6.2%
endorse that they believe now but did not previ-
ously; and 5.3% report no current spiritual be-
liefs whereas previously they did.
Measures
All of the variables used in this project were taken
from questions that were included in the 1998
GSS (Davis & Smith, 2002).
409
Infidelity. Infidelity was measured through a sin-
gle question: Have you ever had sex with some-
one other than your spouse while you were
married? Previous studies with the GSS (e.g.,
Atkins et al., 2001) have noted that the wording
of the infidelity question is somewhat ambiguous.
In particular, the wording limits infidelity to mar-
riage relationships as opposed to other committed
relationships (e.g., cohabiting partners or same-
sex partners in all likelihood); at the same time,
it does not identify a specific marital relationship
for those participants who have been married
more than once. Finally, although most survey re-
spondents would likely interpret sex as indicating
sexual intercourse, this is not a universal interpre-
tation (see discussion in Allen et al., 2005).
Where possible, we attempt to address these def-
initional ambiguities in the analyses and consider
their implications in interpreting the results.
Marital happiness. Marital happiness was mea-
sured through a single question on the GSS:
Taking all things together, how would you
describe your marriage? Would you say that your
marriage is very happy, pretty happy, or not too
happy? Although it would be preferable to have
a scale of marital happiness, multi-item scales are
often not feasible in large surveys. At the same
time, Goodwin (1992) has shown that a single-
item assessment of marital happiness correlates
highly with total marital adjustment and differen-
tiates between adjusted and distressed couples.
Religiousness. Thirty-seven items from the 1998
GSS religion battery were used to assess a variety
of religious domains, including beliefs, attitudes,
behaviors, and affective experience. For exam-
ple, items reflecting personal or corporate reli-
gious behavior or both included frequency of
church attendance, religious activities, and
prayer. Negative attitudes toward religion were
assessed with items such as I believe religion
brings conflict and I believe religious people
are often too intolerant. Items such as I find
strength and comfort in religion and I feel deep
inner peace or harmony assess religious experi-
ence. Specific items are discussed later in the con-
text of scale development.
Other variables. Demographic variables that
have been shown to be important in previous
assessments of infidelity were entered as covari-
ates in the regression model (Atkins et al.,
2001; Treas & Giesen, 2000; Wiederman,
410
1997). These included age, gender, years of edu-
cation, race (i.e., White, Black, Other), respond-
ents income, and previous divorce. The GSS
assessed income in 23 separate income blocks
from less than $1,000 to $110,000 and higher.
Income was transformed to approximately
$10,000 increments, except that the three highest
increments were $15,000, $20,000, and open-
ended based on the way that the GSS originally
coded the variable. There was considerable miss-
ing data for income (n 446, 31.0%), reflecting
in part that some individuals were not working
(i.e., at home, retired, laid off), though 21.3% of
these individuals still reported income. Other
participants simply refused to report income
although they specified that they were working
full- or part-time. Two models examined (1)
imputing zero for those with missing data and
who were not working, and (2) using multiple
imputation (as described below) for all missing
income data. No substantive differences were
found treating the missing income data in these
two ways. Analyses below report multiply
imputed data.
Data Analysis
Missing data. The GSS uses a planned missing
data design with three separate ballots. Certain
core items (e.g., age, gender, race) are asked on
all ballots and have little to no missing data (less
than 0.1% for age, gender, race). Rotating ques-
tions are included on two out of three ballots
and asked to two thirds of the sample by design,
which is becoming commonplace in large sur-
veys (Schafer & Graham, 2002). Missing data
were imputed using multiple imputation, in
which a number of data sets are generated from
the initial data containing missing data (see
Acock, 2005, for an overview). In each replica-
tion, all of the observed data are repeated, and
the missing data are imputed based on a regres-
sion model predicting each variable from every
other variable plus a random component (i.e.,
there is variability across the replicated data sets
in the imputed values). Multiple imputation has
been shown to be one of the most accurate meth-
ods for handling missing data (Acock, 2005), par-
ticularly in cases of planned missing data like
much of the missing data in the GSS.
Factor analysis. An exploratory factor analysis,
using Principal Axis Factoring and Promax rota-
tion, was conducted using 37 religiousness items
Journal of Marriage and Family
from the 1998 GSS. Factors that had at least two
loadings of .4 and above were retained (Gorsuch,
1997). Subscales suggested by the factor analysis
were created by adding the relevant items. The
resulting subscale was standardized, and internal
consistency was examined using Cronbachs
alpha.
Logistic regression. A series of logistic regres-
sion models were fit with infidelity as the out-
come (0 no, 1 yes) and covariates and
religiousness subscales as predictors. An addi-
tional model examined whether the association
of religiousness was moderated by marital hap-
piness. Because of the multiple imputation,
regression models were fit to each replicated
data set. Regression coefficients are simply
averaged across replications, but standard errors
take into account the variability within and
between replicated data sets (Schafer & Olson,
1998).
Sensitivity analyses. Several additional analyses
were conducted to ascertain whether the findings
from the logistic regressions were sensitive to the
particular subset of the GSS used or the wording
of the infidelity question. Because of the open-
ended phrasing of the infidelity question, partici-
pants who have been divorced may have had an
affair in their previous marriage. Thus, one sensi-
tivity analysis examined the moderating effects
of previous divorce. To examine whether the reli-
giousness associations generalized beyond cur-
rently married participants, a second sensitivity
analysis included participants who had ever been
married (N 2,168), excluding the marital hap-
piness question. Finally, because the infidelity
question does not specify a timeframe, it is pos-
sible that the affair may have occurred many
years previously even if in the current marriage,
whereas religiousness items are all assessed at
the time of the interview. Thus, the final sensi-
tivity analysis examined a model restricted to
a younger cohort of individuals.
General issues. Like most national surveys, the
GSS does not use a simple random sample of in-
dividuals in the United States. Instead, an initial
sample of primary sampling units (PSUs) is
selected; in rural areas, these are counties,
whereas in densely populated metropolitan areas,
they are subsets of cities. A second stage of selec-
tion occurs within each PSU. The two-stage
design is more efficient (i.e., a simple random
Religiousness and Infidelity 411

sample with in-person interviews would be pro- Table 1. Factor Loadings Based on Principal Axis Factor-
hibitively expensive) but affects the statistical ing Using Promax Rotation With Coefficient Alphas
analyses. To account for the clustered, nonran-
Factor 1: Nearness to God (a .93)
dom nature of the data, standard errors in the
1. I find strength and comfort in religion .94
regression analyses are based on robust variance
2. I feel Gods presence .93
estimates that take into account the clustered
3. I feel Gods love directly or through others .91
nature of the data (Harrell, 2001).
4. I desire to be closer to God .81
Exploratory graphs examined the association
5. I feel deep inner peace or harmony .79
of each continuous predictor with the probability
6. I work together with God as partners .77
of infidelity, using a loess smoother to detect non-
7. I try to carry my beliefs into other dealings .61
linear associations, and interactions with key cat-
8. I look to God for strength and support .58
egorical variables (e.g., gender and previous
9. I think about life as part of a larger force .53
divorce) were explored. All analyses were done
10. I believe God is concerned .48
in R version 2.5.0 (R Development Core Team,
with human beings personally
2007) and made extensive use of the Hmisc
11. I consider myself a religious person .48
(Harrell, 2007), Design (Harrell, 2005), and mi-
Factor 2: Attendance (a .82)
tools (Lumley, 2004) packages for multiple impu-
1. How often do you attend religious services? .78
tation and cluster-adjusted logistic regression.
2. How often do you take part in .53
religious activities?
RESULTS Factor 3: Prayer (a .89)
1. How often do you pray privately? .92
Factor Analysis: Religiousness Subscales 2. How often do you pray? .89
Factor 4: Religion as Problem (a .71)
Results of the exploratory factor analysis showed 1. I believe that religion brings more conflict .69
that 29 out of the 37 religiousness items from the 2. I believe religious people are often too intolerant .66
GSS loaded onto nine factors and accounted for Factor 5: Transformation (a .74)
66% of the total item variance. Table 1 lists each 1. Have you ever had a born again experience? .77
of the nine factors with factor loadings and inter- 2. Have you ever had a turning point .76
nal consistency estimates for each resulting sub- in your life for religion?
scale. The subscales cover many dimensions of Factor 6: Doubts (a .75)
religious and spiritual life, including importance 1. Have evil in the world ever caused you doubt? .80
and experience of religion (e.g., Nearness to 2. Has personal suffering caused you doubt? .73
God, Transformation), specific religious behav- Factor 7: Forgiveness (a .61)
iors and attitudes (e.g., Attendance, Prayer, For- 1. Have you ever forgiven .67
giveness), and negative aspects of religion (e.g., yourself for mistakes?
Religion as Problem, Punitive God). The sub- 2. Do you forgive those who hurt you? .56
scales have good internal consistency with two Factor 8: Faith (a .77)
exceptions; Punitive God and Forgiveness sub- 1. Has a death in the family .96
scales both have alphas less than .70, in part strengthened your faith?
because of their skewed distributions. 2. Has the birth of a child .60
strengthened your faith?
Descriptive Correlations: Religiousness Factor 9: Punitive God (a .53)
and Infidelity 1. I often wonder whether God has abandoned me .79
2. I feel God is punishing me for sin .47
Spearman correlations between religiousness sub-
scales and infidelity are shown in Table 2. Punitive
God and Doubts are relatively independent of tion at .12, whereas the next strongest associa-
other factors, whereas moderate to strong correla- tion with infidelity is Faith (r .07) at almost
tions are seen among the other religiousness sub- half the strength of Attendance.
scales. Nearness to God and Attendance are
Logistic Regression: Religiousness
notable in their correlation with one another and
and Infidelity
also the other religiousness subscales. At the same
time, the correlations with infidelity are generally Based on previous research suggesting that
quite low. Attendance shows the strongest correla- age has a notably nonlinear relationship with
412 Journal of Marriage and Family

Table 2. Correlations of Religiousness Subscales and Infidelity

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Infidelity
2. Nearness to God 0.06
3. Attendance 0.12 0.61
4. Prayer 0.03 0.27 0.19
5. Religion as Problem 0.05 0.38 0.36 0.06
6. Transformation 0.04 0.54 0.40 0.16 0.29
7. Doubts 0.04 0.10 0.10 0.12 0.08 0.00
8. Forgiveness 0.02 0.40 0.28 0.15 0.19 0.28 0.09
9. Faith 0.07 0.42 0.34 0.13 0.18 0.35 0.14 .18
10. Punitive God 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.02 0.04 0.10 0.20 0.12 0.11
Note: Correlations based on original, nonimputed data. Sample sizes for correlations range from 584 to 1,218. Because cor-
relations are used for descriptive purposes, inferential statistics (i.e., p values) are not reported.

infidelity (Atkins et al., 2001; Wiederman, 1997),
age was modeled using a restricted cubic spline
(Harrell, 2001). A spline divides up a predictor
into two or more segments and fits a separate
regression slope within each segment, and cubic
splines fit quadratic regressions within segments.
Splines can be effective tools for modeling
nonlinear relationships that are not well fit by
polynomial contrasts. In the current instance,
likelihood-ratio tests and information criteria
(i.e., AIC and BIC) all preferred the model using
the restricted cubic spline over polynomials for
age. Exploratory analyses revealed a nonlinear
association for years of education and for income,
which were both modeled using linear and qua-
dratic terms. Exploratory graphs also supported
an interaction between education and gender.
The GSS included only three categories of race
in 1998 (i.e., White, Black, Other). Because the
Other category was quite small (only 5% of the
sample) and appeared to have a similar relation-
ship with infidelity as White, it was combined
with White. Thus, race was a single dummy-
coded predictor comparing non-Black and Black,
where non-Black includes participants who indi-
cated White or other racial categories. Categori-
cal predictors were dummy-coded with the
following reference categories: females, Black
participants, very happy marriages, and no previ-
ous divorce.
Religiousness subscales were initially
included in a model with covariates. A further,
exploratory model was tested following methods
outlined by Gorsuch and Walker (2006). These
authors have recently examined a simple trans-
formation of religious attendance and importance
(Nearness to God in the present analyses) to
enhance their interpretability. Specifically, two
new variables were created: one in which Near-
ness to God and Attendance were summed (Near
1 Attend), and a second in which Attendance
was subtracted from Nearness to God (Near 
Attend). These two new variables assess the con-
gruence of belief and behavior (Near 1 Attend)
but also the divergence (Near  Attend). Those
participants with high scores on Near  Attend
indicate that they feel very close to God and that
religion is important but rarely attend religious
services. These two derivative variables are
almost totally unrelated (r .05), and thus well
suited for assessing congruence and divergence
of religious belief and behavior. These simple
transformations result in two predictors that are
directly interpretable, as opposed to the com-
mon strategy of entering variable interactions.
Twenty multiply imputed data sets were cre-
ated from the complete data with religiousness
subscales. Three logistic regressions were fit to
the multiply imputed data: (a) covariates only,
(b) covariates plus nine religiousness subscales,
and (c) an exploratory model with covariates plus
two transformed religiousness variables (i.e.,
Near 1 Attend and Near  Attend). Table 3 con-
tains odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for
odds ratios for the three models just described. In
examining the covariates, age has a nonlinear
association that is similar to what has been seen
in previous research. Nonlinear associations
(i.e., age, income, education) were interpreted
through plotting the predicted regression lines
(not shown). The likelihood of having had an
affair reaches a peak in approximately the late
40s, early 50s, and drops off on either side of this.
At the same time, there are a few differences from
Religiousness and Infidelity 413

Table 3. Logistic Regression Results of Infidelity on Religiousness Controlling for Demographic Covariates (N 1,439)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

B B B
Variables e 95% CI e 95% CI e 95% CI

Intercept 0.18 0.01 4.29 0.14 0.01 3.08 0.16 0.01 4.06
y y
Age 7.59* 7.17 7.19
Gender (female) 0.02* 0.00 0.92 0.02* 0.00 1.08 0.08* 0.00 1.09
y y y
Education 0.69 0.44 1.08 0.72 0.45 1.14 0.70 0.45 1.11
2
Education 1.02* 0.99 1.03 1.02* 0.99 1.03 1.02* 0.99 1.03
y y
Race (Black) 0.75 0.45 1.22 0.71 0.43 1.18 0.71 0.43 1.17
Income 0.70* 0.55 0.90 0.69* 0.53 0.90 0.69* 0.54 0.89
2
Income 1.03** 1.01 1.06 1.04** 1.01 1.06 1.04** 1.01 1.06
Divorce (no divorce) 2.39** 1.62 3.52 2.29** 1.53 3.43 2.28** 1.54 3.39
Marital happiness (very happy)
Pretty happy 2.18** 1.48 3.20 2.18** 1.47 3.23 2.15** 1.46 3.17
Not too happy 2.97** 1.21 7.26 3.00** 1.19 7.54 2.97** 1.21 7.34
Sex 3 Education 2.20** 1.22 3.96 2.22** 1.19 4.13 2.17** 1.19 3.96
2
Sex 3 Education 0.97** 0.95 0.99 0.97** 0.95 0.99 0.97** 0.95 0.99
Nearness to God 1.19 0.90 1.57
Attendance 0.71** 0.53 0.94
Prayer 0.98 0.79 1.22
Religion as problem 1.04 0.83 1.32
Transformation 1.02 0.80 1.29
Faith 0.91 0.72 1.17
Doubt 1.02 0.83 1.26
Forgiveness 1.08 0.86 1.35
Punitive God 1.04 0.81 1.34
Near 1 Attend 0.84* 0.70 0.99
Near  Attend 1.25* 1.01 1.55
2
v 148.5 190.9 163.1
Df 15 24 17
AIC 1158.4 1155.6 1149.3
Note: 95% CI 95% Confidence Interval for odds ratio. AIC Akaike Information Criterion. Reference categories for cat-
egorical predictors are noted in parentheses. There is no single regression coefficient for age because of the spline fit. The like-
B
lihood ratio chi-square is reported under e .
y
p , .10. *p , .05. **p , .01.

past research (e.g., Atkins et al., 2001; Wieder-
man, 1997): This peak is at a somewhat earlier
age, the dropoff in older cohorts is not as pro-
nounced, and the model suggests that rates of infi-
delity increase in the youngest cohort (i.e., ages
18 30). The relationship of years of education
on infidelity is strongly dependent on gender.
At lower levels of education (e.g., less than 10
years), mens and womens rates of infidelity
are similar; as years of education increase, mens
likelihood of having had an affair also increases,
to a peak level at roughly a college education (i.e.,
15 16 years of schooling). At yet higher levels
of schooling, mens rate of infidelity decreases.
Womens reports of infidelity do not increase
with years of schooling until college education
and notably at graduate levels of education
(i.e., 171 years of schooling), at which point
their likelihood of reporting an affair is greater
than men. There is a weak suggestion of differ-
ences in rates of infidelity between non-Black
and Black participants, with fewer non-Black
participants reporting infidelity. Income has
a strongly nonlinear relationship with infidelity,
with an overall U shape. Participants at the low-
est income levels (i.e., under $10,000) and high-
est income levels (i.e., $110,000 and higher)
share similar rates of infidelity that drop off in
between the two income extremes. Participants
earning between $40,000 and $60,000 per year
414
are the least likely to have reported having an
affair.
Finally, relationship variables were strong pre-
dictors of infidelity. Previous divorce is associ-
ated with a 2.5 times greater likelihood of
infidelity. In addition, marital happiness has
a strong relationship with infidelity. Those partic-
ipants who report that their marriages are pretty
happy are 2.2 times more likely to have had an
affair than those with very happy marriages; par-
ticipants with not too happy marriages are 3 times
more likely to report an affair relative to those
with very happy marriages.
The second model that includes the religious-
ness subscales in addition to covariates is inter-
esting both for what it shows and what it fails to
show. Attendance proved to be the only signifi-
cant predictor of infidelity. Although Nearness
to God is approaching significance, the odds ratio
is over one, implying a positive relationship
between participants sense of being near to
God and the likelihood of infidelity, although
early correlation analyses had suggested exactly
the opposite. Follow-up analyses without Atten-
dance demonstrated that the positive association
between Nearness to God and infidelity is an arti-
fact of the correlation between the two subscales.
When Attendance is removed, Nearness to God
has a negative but nonsignificant (p .42) rela-
tionship with infidelity. Additional facets of
religiousness do not add significant prediction
over and above Attendance.
Because each subscale has been standardized,
the odds ratio for Attendance (i.e., 0.71) is inter-
preted as a 29% decrease in the likelihood of hav-
ing had an affair for each standard deviation
increase in Attendance. Furthermore, those partici-
pants who rarely if ever attend services (i.e., 2
SD) are approximately 4.0 times more likely to
have had an affair compared to those participants
who attend services with great frequency (i.e.,
12 SD).
The third, exploratory regression includes co-
variates and the two transformed religiousness
variables described earlier (i.e., Near 1 Attend,
Near  Attend). The two transformed predictors
had opposing and significant associations. The
odds ratio for Near 1 Attend is 0.84, indicating
a 16% reduction in the likelihood of a past affair
for each 1 SD increase. Conversely, the odds
ratio for Near  Attend is 1.25, indicating
a 25% increase in the likelihood of a past affair
for each 1 SD increase. Thus, those individuals
with congruence between sense of nearness to
Journal of Marriage and Family
God and behavior show decreased odds of infi-
delity whereas those with divergence show
increased odds of infidelity.
Moderating Effects of Marital Happiness
We also examined whether marital happiness
would moderate the associations of either At-
tendance or the two transformed religiousness
variables on infidelity by including their interac-
tions in the model with covariates. Neither the
2
model with Attendance, v (2, N 1,423)
1.22, p .54, nor2 the model with the trans-
formed variables, v (2, N 1,422) 0.98, p
2
.61 and v (2, N 1,422) 1.42, p .49,
respectively, revealed significant interactions
between the religious variables and marital hap-
piness. Exploratory analyses had supported that
there may be a moderating effect of marital hap-
piness, specifically for the not too happy group
of participants; one challenge to testing this
hypothesis is that the GSS assesses marital hap-
piness on a 3-point scale, and few individuals
indicated that their marriages were not too
happy (n 37, 2.8% in original, nonimputed
data).
The Attendance subscale is almost entirely
determined by a single item on religious service
attendance (i.e., a 9-point Likert scale), which
was asked of participants in each year the GSS
was administered. Thus, as a final test of the mar-
ital happiness moderating hypothesis, we exam-
ined the interaction of marital happiness and
religious service attendance using data from the
1991 2004 GSS, those surveys that included
the infidelity question. The exact same proce-
dures that were described previously for the
1998 GSS were used in this analysis. Using those
participants who were married or married but sep-
arated yielded 10,671 total participants, and more
importantly, 249 participants who had indicated
not too happy marriages. An identical model to
that shown in Table 3 including covariates was
run, using the single item assessment of religious
service attendance as the sole religiousness pre-
dictor and including year of the survey as a set
of dummy-coded contrasts, though no significant
differences across years were observed. In this
analysis with a greatly expanded sample size,
the interaction of marital happiness and religious
service
2
attendance just reached significance,
v (2, N 10,645) 6.0, p .05.
The interaction is driven by the slope of atten-
dance for the not too happy group, which partly
Religiousness and Infidelity
accounts for the borderline significance. The
attendance slopes of the very happy and pretty
happy participants are negative and virtually par-
allel, with the pretty happy participants 1.9 times
more likely to have reported an affair than the
very happy participants; the slope of the not too
happy participants is steeper and more elevated
than the pretty happy participants. At frequent
levels of service attendance (i.e., once a week or
more), the model predicts pretty happy partici-
pants to be 6.3% and not to happy to be 11.9%
more likely to have had affairs relative to very
happy participants (who have a 5.2% overall pre-
dicted likelihood). For those participants who
never went to religious services, the model pre-
dicts pretty happy participants to be 5.4% and
not too happy to be 22.7% more likely to have
had affairs relative to very happy participants
(who have an 11.6% overall predicted likeli-
hood). Thus, the difference in percentages of par-
ticipants reporting affairs is almost constant
across levels of service attendance for very happy
and pretty happy couples but increases notably
for not too happy couples.
Sensitivity Analyses
The first sensitivity analysis examined whether
associations were different for currently married
participants who have been divorced, as their af-
fairs may have been in a previous marriage (and
may have contributed to the divorce). Model 3
in Table 3 was rerun including interactions
between divorce and all other predictors. None
of the divorce interaction terms were significant,
nor
2
was the omnibus, likelihood ratio chi-square,
v (16, N 1,405) 19.5, p .24. Thus, it ap-
pears that the observed results are similar for
participants regardless of previous divorce.
A second sensitivity analysis included all par-
ticipants in the 1998 GSS who had ever been mar-
ried (N 2,168), adding participants who were
divorced or widowed at the time of the inter-
view. The marital happiness predictor was
excluded for this analysis, and a marital status
variable (i.e., married, separated, divorced, wid-
owed) was included with married as the refer-
ence category. In this analysis, the nonlinear
relationship of age was no longer significant,
and Near  Attend also failed to reach signifi-
cance (OR 1.11, 95% CI 0.93, 1.32, p
.12). Near 1 Attend had a similar association as
seen earlier (OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.71, 0.96,
p , .01). Thus, findings seem to be largely con-
415
sistent for a broader sample including those par-
ticipants who were married at some point but
were not at the time of the survey.
Although it is impossible to learn when the
affair occurred, analyzing younger cohorts limits
the range of time between the GSS assessment
and the affair to some extent. Thus, a final sensi-
tivity analysis reanalyzed the 1998 GSS data set
including all participants who were currently or
previously married but limited to those partici-
pants who were 40 years of age or younger (n
691). Even in the younger cohorts, there was
evidence for both Near 1 Attend (OR 0.74,
95% CI 0.57, 0.95, p , .01) and Near 
Attend (OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.00, 1.69, p
.05). Thus, results are similar with a shorter
timeframe, limiting the temporal distance
between when the affair may have occurred and
the assessment of religiousness.
DISCUSSION
The present research underscores the important
association between personal religiousness and
infidelity. At the same time, the results are sur-
prising for what they fail to show. In the first mul-
tifaceted examination of religiousness with
infidelity, only attendance at religious services
proved to be significantly related to infidelity.
Thus, among religiousness factors attendance ap-
pears to have a unique and possibly protective
relationship with infidelity. Moreover, endorsing
religion as being very important without the
behavioral component of attending services
was positively associated with infidelity. In ad-
dition, there appears to be weak support for
a moderating effect of marital happiness on the
relationship between religious service attendance
and infidelity.
Whats So Special About Attendance?
Discussions of religion (and particularly Chris-
tianity) often focus on prayer, faith, forgiveness,
and the transformative power of religion. Yet
none of these components were predictive of infi-
delity, whereas religious service attendance was.
In examining the subscales of the present investi-
gation, the attendance subscale is unique on at
least two dimensions. First, the vast majority of
items used to assess religiousness on the GSS
focus on beliefs/attitudes (e.g., I believe that
religion brings more conflict; I believe God
is concerned with human beings personally) or
416
experiences (e.g., I feel Gods love directly or Thus, attendance can be seen as a costly commit-
through others; Have you ever had a born- ment both for practical reasons (i.e., time and
again experience?). Attendance is a purely
behavioral assessment, and the only other sub-
scale with behavioral items is the Prayer subscale.
The second dimension that differentiates atten-
dance is the corporate or community aspect of
attendance. By definition, attending religious
services implies that the individual is participat-
ing with other people, which is likely to include
the spouse. None of the other subscales imply in-
teractions with other people in the context of reli-
giousness, including Prayer.
Previous research has highlighted religious
homogamy between spouses (i.e., similar reli-
gious values within a couple) as both common
and associated with positive, relationship out-
comes (e.g., greater satisfaction and reduced like-
lihood of divorce; reviewed in Mahoney et al.,
2001). Thus, attendance in the present study
likely implies attendance with ones spouse for
many participants. This communal aspect of
attendance could help to prevent infidelity
through several mechanisms. First, it is a shared
activity between spouses, and past research has
shown that disengagement in couples is associ-
ated with affairs (Atkins, Yi, Baucom, & Chris-
tensen, 2005). Moreover, spouses that share
similar religious convictions are likely to share
values specifically about the relationship, includ-
ing commitment and fidelity but also broader
convictions of forgiveness and care that may
serve to strengthen the marital relationship. In
addition, an individual who is regularly attending
services will have a network of relationships
within the church, synagogue, or mosque. These
relationships may provide social support to the
spouses as well as social comparison. Having
an affair risks that the infidelity could be revealed
within the religious community, which could
have consequences from shame and embarrass-
ment to being ostracized or removed from the
community. Finally, attending religious services
almost certainly means that an individual is hear-
ing religious teaching on marital fidelity and the
general importance of marriage.
The current findings also may be interpreted in
light of costly signaling theory (as applied to reli-
gious groups, see Sosis, 2000; Sosis & Bressler,
2003). Commitment to social groups varies along
a spectrum, with certain commitments being
largely private and entailing little social risk to
the individual (e.g., private prayer) whereas other
commitments are more public (e.g., attendance).
Journal of Marriage and Family
energy spent) but also for how the social commu-
nity will interpret this public behavior. In a similar
vein, social psychological theories such as self-
perception theory (Bem, 1972) suggest that our
attitudes are based in part upon viewing and inter-
preting our actions. Thus, the behavioral activity
of attendance can serve to reinforce attitudinal
variables. In that respect, it could be interesting
to compare weekly attendance at religious serv-
ices with other regular activities that do not have
moral components regarding infidelity (e.g.,
social clubs or volunteering), as the social and
self attributions would be different. Moreover,
future research will need to clarify whether the
present speculations have some veracity.
Importance Without Attendance
The majority of individuals in the GSS who at-
tended religious services regularly also endorsed
a strong sense of feeling near to God (r .66 for
Nearness to God and Attendance). Yet there is
an important subgroup who endorsed a strong
sense of feeling close to God and religions
importance in their life but did not attend serv-
ices, which was yoked to markedly higher re-
ports of infidelity. Why might this be?
One possibility is that these are individuals
whose affairs were made known to their reli-
gious communities and were subsequently
ostracized or chose to leave. Thus, they may
have been attending religious services at some
point, but as a result of the affair, they no longer
do. If this were the mechanism behind this find-
ing, we would expect there to be a significant
interaction with divorce, which was not the case.
Another possibility builds upon the idea of reli-
gious homogamy. It is possible that these indi-
viduals have religious convictions that are not
shared by their spouse. When religious values
are not shared between partners, it may practi-
cally interfere with attending services (e.g., the
spouse may clearly prefer to engage in other
activities) but also could undermine the positive
influences of shared religious belief noted ear-
lier. If a partners differing views on religion
does interfere with attendance, then the mecha-
nisms mentioned earlier for the protective role
of attendance (i.e., costly signaling theory and
self-perception theory) would also be undermined.
These speculations point to the critical need for
further research focused on religious variables
Religiousness and Infidelity
shared between partners and how these relate to
infidelity.
Marital Happiness
The moderating effects of marital happiness on
religiousness and infidelity remains largely an
open question. There was not support for moder-
ation in the 1998 sample and only weak support in
the combined 1991 2004 samples. The GSS
only used a 3-point measure of marital happiness,
and the moderating effect that was observed was
restricted to the not too happy group. A more
refined assessment of marital happiness is needed
to provide a precise test of this hypothesis.
The moderating effect that was observed in the
combined sample portrays an intriguing intersec-
tion of marital and religious life. A strong mar-
riage should provide a robust deterrent to
having an affair (i.e., Why should I be interested
in someone else and risk the good relationship
that I have?). A frankly unsatisfying marriage
may turn the odds in the other direction and
may promote an affair given the opportunity. In
the face of a bad marriage, the clarity and strength
of religious convictions and community aspects
of religious life may be all the more important.
Again, future research with a refined measure of
marital happiness will need to clarify this poten-
tially important relationship.
Limitations and Conclusions
Although there are many strengths to the present
research (e.g., large nationally representative
sample, multidimensional assessment of reli-
giousness), there are also some limitations. In
addition to the limitations mentioned earlier and
addressed by the sensitivity analyses, the GSS
religiousness questions tend to be individually
focused and broadly applicable, which leads
them to be somewhat generic. Thus, there are
no questions about how individuals view their re-
lationships in light of their religious beliefs (e.g.,
sanctification; Mahoney & Tarakeshwar, 2005;
Mahoney et al., 2001). Moreover, there are no
questions about their religious communities that
might further reveal contextual influences.
The results of this study indicate a powerful
and complex relationship between religious
behavior with infidelity. It also calls into question
the idea that beliefs without behavior may serve
a protective factor with infidelity. Perhaps most
important of all, the present research focuses
417
a spotlight on the critical need for future research
on shared behaviors and beliefs between partners
to examine how the relational nature of religious-
ness may affect infidelity.
NOTE
The article is based in part on Deborah Kessels masters
research. Some of the results were presented at the Association
for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, 2005 conference in
Washington, DC, and the International Association for Rela-
tionship Research, 2006 conference in Rethymnon, Crete. We
thank Jim Furrow, Jamie Bedics, Rebeca Marn Cordero, and
Rich Gorsuch for their insightful comments and feedback that
greatly improved the manuscript.
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