Predicting Women’s Social Media Infidelity: Facebook Addiction, Relationship Satisfaction, and Moral Disengagement

Abstract

The current research explored the predictive power of an adapted version of the Moral Disengagement Scale, focused exclusively on online behaviors, along with age, relationship length and type (i.e., close or long-distance), Facebook addiction, and relationship satisfaction. Our sample consisted of 111 young heterosexual Romanian women aged 18 to 36 (M = 20.64, SD = 3.27). Hierarchical regression analysis suggested that the most important predictor of social media infidelity was Facebook addiction. None of the other considered predictors were significant in our final prediction model. However, a significant negative association emerged between social media infidelity and relationship satisfaction, suggesting that low relationship satisfaction might be a fertile ground for infidelity and social media addiction. Our model accounted for 18.3% of the variance in women’s social media infidelity. Results are discussed considering self-justification mechanisms and self-serving attributions to infidelity.