Most adulterous professions

A survey of the 1.9 million accounts on AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people looking to cheat on their spouses, rounds up the most common occupations among the would-be infidelitous:

For Women:
1. Teachers
2. Stay-at-home Moms
3. Nurses
4. Administrative Assistants
5. Real Estate Agents
For Men:
1. Physicians
2. Police Officers
3. Lawyers
4. Real Estate Agents
5. Engineers

Who Cheats? Docs and Stay at Home Moms! (via MeFi)

(Image: The Seventh Commandment, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from pasukaru76's photostream)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

This survey is obviously BS. I’m a lawyer and there is definitely some infidelity here (especially among the men) but I also worked in the restaurant world before law school and there it was the norm. In fact, I can think of only a handful of people in that business that DIDN’T cheat. Yeah, restaurant/hospitality definitely at the top; I would also expect to see construction and fire department up there too.
Anonymous

Real Estate pimps and madams gettin all the action. :-D
robetler

As a future male educator, I welcome this information with open arms and a loose zipper.
Anonymous

What they really need are the numbers of cheaters who hold particular jobs normalized to the percent of the population that holds that jobs, that would take away the effects of job popularity. Then you could really get a sense of a type of work that is more likely to cheat, rather than just how popular that type of job is.
- Kimber7
  
  Yes I completely agree. That would be far more statistically valid & quite frankly more interesting, too! Oh, just by the way I am an RN, but currently a Stay @ Home wife. However; no this isn’t an advertisement, LOL… I did a double minor in Psychology & Sociology, so I’ve always found such things fascinating.
blueelm

I agree with the previous problems about the implications of this “study” but even if I completely took it seriously it would still only suggest that people in these professions have enough trouble meeting people or do not look at work for partners.

I bet lots and lots of people in other jobs cheat but do so without the aid of the online registry. This I’m just assuming because of the sheer number of office extramarital affairs that have blown up enough to get noticed in my years of corporate employment. If there’s love amongst the developers and PMs, I bet you anything there’s love amongst the janitors, or the stockbrokers, or the salespeople, or the psychologists… etc.
ackpht

I suspect the causal factors are not the professions per se, but various combinations of ego, charisma, and opportunity. The only common denominator is a lack of empathy.

And I’d wager that most of the “engineers” in this survey were people who trained in technical professions with the aim of getting into management- which makes them a different animal in my view.
Anonymous

AshleyMadison.com? REALLY? Many of the profiles are not even REAL people (unless you count paid staff whose sole purpose is to get people to BUY CREDITS).

I’m just going to leave this here:

http://ashleymadisonsucks.com/
Anonymous

I have a hard time believing that rock star, comedian, or any other variety of traveling entertainer doesn’t belong on the top of this list
- Kimber7
  
  I would also agree with this post re traveling entertainers. But from my personal experience; I’ll also add that infidelity among Married Men is quite common among many other frequent biz travelers. As I said earlier I’m an RN, I finished college & married in my early 20′s. I was divorced @ 31 & didn’t remarry until abt 10 yrs later. During my 30′s I traveled quite a bit by myself, with other single girlfriends, & with various friends & family. I had frequent invitations from Men I met along the way for dinner drinks etc…Some that I accepted. In several cases I only learned later in the evening the men were indeed married. I specifically recall 2 Airline Pilots, & a Senior Executive with a National Furniture Manufacturing & Retail Ent that admitted they were married & living with their spouses & children after several drinks. Several other “Road Warriors” were less frank, stating they were separated etc…
Anonymous

I don’t know how engineers made the list. I’m an engineer and work with zero women. I’m fairly certain that isn’t out of the ordinary.
Anonymous

Engineers!? I suppose that probably means software engineers, and that probably means people sitting on the web all day, getting bored, and filling out profiles. If they’re actually meeting anybody though is a lot more questionable. Some of the highest profile cheaters probably just don’t register on sites like Ashley Madison because they’ve found more effective and discrete ways to find hook-up’s. For example politicians and married entertainers probably aren’t going to be on there because they have a public reputation but both careers are infamous for infidelity.
Teller

According to the Teller Poll:

The occupation with the highest rate of infidelity: Porn Star.
- The Lizardman
  
  That brings in way too many problems with differing ideas of fidelity
pete_darby

Well, crap. My partner is a home educating ex-nurse (and caring for an elderly relative), thereby scoring big on numbers one to three on the women’s cheating chart.

Then again, it also means she’s never got enough time to fit an affair into…
MelSkunk

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised about my engineering ex-husband, then… :/

Real estate agents though, it doesn’t surprise me. They meet a LOT of people all the time.. the only thing that does is that they’d need a website.
- MS_Bitey_Beast
  
  I understand just what you mean, Melskunk, about engineering.
  
  Don’t you hate it when some one says they love you and are being honest and truthful. Only to find out they were ‘engineering’ the whole time?
  
  I understand that betrayal leaves a bad taste in your mouth for a long time. But don’t worry, karma always comes back 3 fold on people who lie and cheat.
desiredusername

Engineers? Really?
Pantograph

One more reason to hate real estate agents:

Their life is one big hump-a-thon.
Anonymous

Interesting! However, the reality is that, at least for men, the most adulterous professions are in the entertainment industry. Actors, musicians, directors, producers. They’re not on this study because they don’t have to go to a website to find opportunities to cheat on their spouses – the opportunities come to them. So, this study is probably better described as “professions who WANT to cheat on their spouses the most.”
zarniwooporiginal

Isn’t this a survey of what people looking to cheat on their spouses on a dating website SAY their job is?
- Ben Morris
  
  Exactly what I was thinking – look at how all the male professions have some sort of power or status associated (of course, real power and status probably correlate to adultery too).
  - Anonymous
    
    Engineers have neither power or status.
- NefariousNewt
  
  It would seem to be a “highly unscientific” sample… I’m pretty sure that even if a lot of folks are brazen enough to sign up on this site in the first place, they’re either a) wary about giving away details that would allow their partner to track them down or b) looking to pump up their profile with information that will make it easier to score.
johnphantom

Yeah zarni, and this: “…author Charles Orlando interviewed 1,200-plus women and 400+ men…”

The data generated from this “survey” is from far too small of a pool to get any sort of realistic numbers.
- Anonymous
  
  Actually, that’s plenty to have statistical power.
Anonymous

Where are the Pool Cleaners, and French Maids?
aelfscine

Now, now, everyone! I don’t think anyone would ever stoop so low as to say ‘Hey, I’m a sexy fireman who rescues cats from trees!’ when then they’re on a site to make an anonymous profile so they can screw someone behind their spouse’s back. These are honest Americans we’re talking about here.

Another hilarious (and almost equally useless) bit of sleuthing would be to see how old these people say they are.
Pantograph

Hey hey, let’s not spoil a good story with reality.
sing it, baby

Maybe that’s why my doctor said “It’s time for your injection” but wasn’t holding a syringe.
J France

FiOS, hey! I cannot wait for my government to finally pay for and roll that shit out (it’s happening right now).

I hope we get widgets!!

That is what this article is about, right?
BadIdeaSociety

Any time there is an article about adultery statistics I remind myself why homosexual marriage legislation will take a much, much longer time to gain traction in the US.

AshleyMadison.com is a site where people go on-line to have affairs. There are many things that cannot be extracted from their statistics:

1) Are their clients creating honest profiles?

2) Are their clients actually single?

3) Are their clients who are actually in marriages having affairs doing so against their spouses’ wishes?

4) If an AshleyMadison.com user is caught cheating, will they (like Tiger Woods) owe me and anyone other than his or her spouse an apology?
- cinemajay
  
  Re. #2. I believe they target married people not single:
  
  http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/10/opinion/oe-daum10
dhalgren

I personally can’t get enough of those Stay-at-home moms.
jorgen83

What about base rates? If more people were professional golfers (to name something totally unrelated) I guess that would rank a little higher…
ab3a

Those of you who wonder about the Engineers at the bottom of Male list, I wonder about that too.

The silly thing is this: we don’t have actual sample numbers next to each of these “top 5″ categories. For all we know, this could be a statistical fluke. Engineers may be only a few entries different than accountants.

Oh, wait…
Anonymous

So now we know the cause of the RE bust, they’re too busy doin’ it instead of being out there selling.
camile

Interesting survey by Ashley Madison & Co. I would have guessed flight attendants but its all about statistics and numbers. There are more teachers, stay at home mommies and nurses than there would be flight attendants.

Perhaps they could have surveyed the numbers then statistically compared them to the percentage of those occupations there are and compare how many people cheat in those occupations via proportion and not by basic numbers. Thereby be able to compare apples with apples.
randomcat

I’m no expert on human nature, but I’d be willing to bet that a majority of the women on that site have a different profession than listed: call girl. No idea how that site works… whether a significant number of the girls are actually employed by AshleyMadison.com or if there’s some other arrangement. But I’d guess the list of real ‘customers’ is a sausage-fest just based on the site’s premise and the apparent target market of the site.

Maybe I’m biased or unrealistic, but I think women are more likely to cheat with a real person they’ve met face to face than to sit down at the computer and sign up at some web site like AshleyMadison.com.
Anonymous

Well, I guess it’s a good thing that I decided against getting my real estate license. I was a stay-at-home mom for more than several years though. Did I miss something?
Anonymous

So, why does the headline of the linked story say “Who Cheats? Docs and Stay at Home Moms!” when it would be more correct to say “Who Cheats? Docs and Teachers!”. Sensationalism I guess.
Truthbetold

There may be no “sample number” and it may not be scientific, but my life experience can vouch for many of these, and in fact, I just finished a two-year affair with a stay-at-home mom. Oh, and randomcat, we met online…
Anonymous

There is NO information here.

This looks like a rank of “what is your profession”

What this probably indicates is that every profession cheats the same.
Moriarty

Ridiculously unscientific for at least four different reasons, by my count. This doesn’t provide any legitimate conclusion further than the actual data: what are the most common professions claimed by members of ashleymadison.com.

Which is a shame, because a list of the most adulterous professions would actually be interesting.
- Anonymous
  
  You’re just going to throw “four reasons” out like that, without any error bars?
- tempestbrewer
  
  Just created an account to post just this. These numbers need to be controlled for popularity of the profession! So pretty much it means nothing right now.
  - TooGoodToCheck
    
    Yep. TempestBrewer / Max / dculberson have correctly identified the major problem with the math here – we don’t have enough data about the non-cheating population to go from the data here and conclude anything about the relationship between profession and ones tendency to cheat (more specifically to cheat via ashley madison).
    
    As an example of how this breaks down, if there were only, say, 10 professional lepidopterists in the world, and all of them were registered ashley madison users, then that would pretty unambiguously be the cheatingest profession, but it still wouldn’t be on this list.
- BadIdeaSociety
  
  I don’t see a value in a “most adulterous profession” study. As much as I think that people shouldn’t cheat on their spouses, I believe that two consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they want. I assume the correlation between career and infidelity is not closely connected as dissatisfaction with one’s spouse and infidelity.
  - Moriarty
    
    The value would be that I might find it interesting. I don’t know that it would have any other value.
Anonymous

I can’t believe “Software Engineers” wasn’t really high up on both lists.
RedShirt77

The more boring a woman’s job the more she screws around. The more interesting and well paid a man’s job, th emore he screws around.

I am sure “has personal assistant” is the highest male cheating job description.
max

Doesn’t like 80% of the employed population work one of those jobs?
- dculberson
  
  Next thing you know, they’ll be calling in sick on Fridays and Mondays 40% of the time!
Miss Cellania

Even if these profiles were legit and truthful, any online survey will omit the huge number of people who don’t go online at all. That is crucial in a survey of occupations, because the reasons many people aren’t online is that they too busy or too broke, possibly because of their careers.
Anonymous

Too, this represents not the most adulterous, but the most interested in adultery but also need a website ’cause they’re unable to find partners on their own. Which really makes you wonder about the RE agents, since they work with similarly inclined members of the opposite sex.
moose_hp

To the people complaining about the sample size, as my understanding in statistics goes that sample size is pretty good, however the universe of the survey is very limited (the universe being adult males and females with Internet connection, interested in cheating their partners using said website), it doesn’t tell us a lot about cheating people outside of that universe.
Anonymous

I’d just like to note that the top five professions for women in affairs just also happen to be the top five jobs that women have. Call me a per capita logistical analyst but…
Chris O

Women #5 + Men #4 = “F#@% Me Your Majesty!!!”
So there you have it: the logical foundation for “American Beauty” has just been proven sound; a real case of Creativity meets Accountability!

Also, we have Attorney for Men; but I wonder where Publishing Agent is for Women?
aref

If I told you I was a liar would you believe me?
Anonymous

Don’t read too much into this. as other comments have noted, this isn’t necessarily a strong study.

Even if it were though, it is a study of cheaters, not of people. You can’t take that data and say “teachers are more likely to cheat,” you could only say “cheaters are more likely to be teachers.” Those aren’t the same statement.