Premarital Sexual Standards and Sociosexuality: Gender, Ethnicity, and Cohort Differences

In this article, we present results from a “cohort-longitudinal” analysis of sexual attitudes and behaviors based on a large sample of young adults ( N  = 7,777) obtained from a university setting over a 23-year period. We investigated gender, ethnicity, and cohort differences in sexual permissivene...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Archives of sexual behavior 2013-11, Vol.42 (8), p.1395-1405
Main Authors: Sprecher, Susan, Treger, Stanislav, Sakaluk, John K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Attitude
Attitudes
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Coitus
Cultural differences
Female
Gender differences
Gender Identity
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Original Paper
Permissiveness
Psychology
Public Health
Sex Characteristics
Sex Factors
Sexual Behavior
Sexual Behavior - ethnology
Sexual Behavior - psychology
Sexuality - ethnology
Social Sciences
Students - psychology
Surveys and Questionnaires
Universities
Young Adult
Young adults
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this article, we present results from a “cohort-longitudinal” analysis of sexual attitudes and behaviors based on a large sample of young adults ( N  = 7,777) obtained from a university setting over a 23-year period. We investigated gender, ethnicity, and cohort differences in sexual permissiveness, endorsement of the double standard, and sociosexuality. Compared to women, men had more permissive attitudes, particularly about sex in casual relationships, endorsed the double standard to a greater degree, and had a more unrestricted sociosexuality. Black men were generally more permissive than White, Hispanic, and Asian men, whereas ethnic differences were not found among women. Participants from the 1995–1999 cohort were slightly less permissive than those from the 1990–1994 and 2005–2012 cohorts. Although prior meta-analytic studies (e.g., Petersen & Hyde, 2010 ) found reduced gender differences in sexuality over time, our cohort analyses suggest that gender differences in sexual permissiveness have not changed over the past two decades among college students.
ISSN:0004-0002
1573-2800
DOI:10.1007/s10508-013-0145-6