According to a study performed by North Dakota State University and commissioned by PopCap Games, those who cheat at gaming are 3.5 times more likely to cheat at everyday things in the real world. The polling over over 1,200 adults in the U.S. and U.K. also discovered that slightly less than half of all cheaters in social gaming admit to cheating at things in the real world.

“How we behave in virtual space and interact with others in social games often mirrors how we act in the real world,” said Professor Clay Routledge of North Dakota State University’s Department of Psychology.  “With more than 100 million people playing social games regularly, we can expect to see the full range of psychological characteristics represented in the social gaming population – even cheating.”

The study said that women under the age of 40 were the most likely to play games, while men under 40 were more likely to break the rules; gamers in the Midwest part of the U.S. are the most likely to cheat versus any other polled region, with a cheating rate of 29 percent overall. 49 percent of those that admitted to cheating in a video game admitted to cheating in a relationship, while 43 percent admitting to taking magazines from waiting rooms, 51 percent admitted to parking in a handicap space without the proper tags and 53 percent admitting to cheating on tests in school.

“It’s not surprising that online cheating parallels real-world cheating, even if people are just experimenting with the possibilities,” said Dr. Mia Consalvo of Concordia University.  “With more of our daily systems and processes moving online, and being divorced from human contact (downloading music, filing taxes online) the risks either appear to be lesser, or they don’t feel like crimes.”