“Simply put, the more successful you are, the more prone to cheating you are, and Washington is full of successful people looking for something outside their marriage,”

February 24th, 2012

It seems that D.C. may be the best city for cheating.

Then there’s the rest of us — still successful, and still ready to cheat, according to adultery Web site Ashleymadison.com, which says the District is home to nearly 38,000 registered users. The site also named Washington the place with the highest per capita membership in its 13-million-strong user base.

“Simply put, the more successful you are, the more prone to cheating you are, and Washington is full of successful people looking for something outside their marriage,” said Noel Biderman, CEO of Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison, in a statement.

Does being “successful” correlate with cheating in your experience? Why?

Yes, for two distinct reasons. First, most people who achieve a level of success do so from taking professional risks, that for the most part pay off, and this underlying personality trait may then lead these individuals to take personal risks as well.

Second, cheating is directly correlated to opportunity. The more successful you are the more you tend to travel for work and pleasure, and more often removed from your family, interacting with individuals with whom commonalities surface.

Is this accurate? It seems like this is a Freakonomics-style fallacy. I think celebrities and powerful people seem to have affairs simply because it is more likely they get caught, and people know about it. I know I read somewhere that infidelity rates aren’t that much higher for rich people.