Relational betrayal causes severe emotional harm, yet psychological research rarely examines the perpetrator’s viewpoint. A new study reveals that betrayers overwhelmingly accept personal responsibility for their actions instead of rationalising their behaviour through victim-blaming. The research, published in Personal Relationships, demonstrates that perpetrators hold a shared mental model of trust violations, which could aid relationship counselling.
Previous studies on interpersonal transgressions have focused almost exclusively on the victim. This one-sided approach leaves a significant gap in the scientific understanding of why people breach trust. While victim accounts provide valuable information about emotional trauma, they are highly susceptible to systematic biases like the fundamental attribution error, where people attribute actions to bad character rather than external circumstances.
To address this imbalance, lead author Dr. Fanny Lalot from the University of Basel investigated how wrongdoers conceptualise their own misdeeds.
Understanding the internal states, reasoning, and emotions of the perpetrator is essential for a complete psychological model of trust violations. It allows researchers to evaluate whether betrayers act out of cold calculation or impulsive reactions.
The researchers collected personal narratives from 1,131 participants across five nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, France, and Germany.
This diverse sample provided accounts detailing a specific time they had compromised someone’s trust. The analysis revealed that romantic infidelity and general disloyalty were the most frequent transgressions, comprising 31.7% of the stories. Disappointing a person’s expectations accounted for 22.7%, while revealing secrets made up 14.9% and deception stood at 13.0%.
Trust violations occurred across various social dynamics, proving that the phenomenon extends far beyond romantic partnerships. Romantic partners were the targets in 27.3% of the stories, followed closely by friends at 25.7%. Very close friends accounted for 16.6% of the instances, while family members and workplace colleagues made up the remainder.
The distribution of these categories closely mirrored previous data collected from victims. This alignment suggests a robust, cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes a breach of trust.
Psychologists evaluated the causal attributions, which are the explanations people generate to explain the origins of events. Contrary to expectations of a self-serving bias, where individuals deflect blame to protect their self-esteem, participants scored themselves highly for personal responsibility. Wrongdoers routinely acknowledged that the fault lay within themselves rather than blaming the victim or the relationship dynamics.
The only major exception occurred within professional environments. In workplace betrayals, self-blame dropped significantly, and participants blamed the victim nearly as much as themselves.
Across all settings, age played a role. Younger participants more frequently recalled revealing secrets or abruptly cutting ties, whereas older adults predominantly reported romantic unfaithfulness.
The study also mapped interpersonal consequences. Overall, 65% of the victims eventually discovered the transgression, with 47% finding out almost immediately. When perpetrators accepted full internal responsibility, victims were significantly more likely to grant forgiveness and less likely to seek active revenge. Conversely, blaming the victim strongly predicted retaliatory responses.
Memories of these events proved remarkably durable. Up to a third of the sample recalled betrayals that occurred over a decade ago, with many notes indicating ongoing guilt. One participant noted, “it still plays on my mind”.
The study contains several limitations. Because the data relies entirely on free recall, it carries an inherent risk of reporting bias, as participants might consciously or unconsciously downplay their most severe acts of malice. Indeed, extreme behaviours like manipulation and psychological abuse were reported much less frequently by perpetrators than in historical studies of victims.
Additionally, the research only captured the unverified perspective of the wrongdoer, leaving no way to measure objective reality. The samples were also drawn exclusively from Western nations, meaning future research must examine non-Western cultures to test global generalisability.
The researchers suggest that when a perpetrator actively owns their mistake, it satisfies the victim’s need for validation, lowering the drive for retaliation. For clinicians and individuals navigating the aftermath of a broken bond, these findings underline the therapeutic value of full accountability. Rebuilding trust requires the wrongdoer to avoid defensive rationalisations and explicitly acknowledge the emotional damage they caused.
The study, “The Things We Do to Each Other: A Study of Betrayal Narratives From the Betrayer’s Perspective,” was authored by Fanny Lalot, Anna-Marie Bertram, Jakob Schuck, Layaly Maritz, and Armand Bardeau.
