Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods and other powerful men have become known for their sexual exploits, but a European study found that women who hold executive-level positions may not be any different.

Joris Lammers, a professor from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, studied answers to an anonymous questionnaire given to more than 1,500 business magazine readers ranging from top execs to the clerks in the mailroom. Respondents were asked about their thoughts on power, how confident they were about their own status at work and how willing they were to take risks.

Lammers found that women at the top are just as likely to cheat as their male colleagues. "The strongest predictors are not religion or moral belief but power and opportunity," he told the Daily Mail. "Power can undermine your morality and increase your risk-taking, and the effect of power on women is just as strong as on men."

Women wanting to have an affair outnumber men by 3.5 to 1, according to Rosie Freeman-Jones, who runs a site called Illicit Encounters that helps married people find adulterous hookups.

"Alpha women look for a partner and conduct their encounters in a very business-like fashion," Freeman-Jones said. "They will often grill prospective partners as though they were conducting a job interview."

And for many unfaithful men and women, it's all about the excitement of potentially getting caught.

"Both men and women at the top are addicted to risk," she said. "It is part of the DNA of successful people that they are more prone to take risks and more prone to cheat."

But in spite of the findings, Financial Times columnist and novelist Lucy Kellaway cautions against taking the risk because we still live in a society of double standards.

"Because there are so few women executives, the ones who do succeed are put on a pedestal," she said. "And they have a lot farther to fall."