Research published this month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior by Diana Sanchez and Amy Kiefer (2007) indicates that having a negative view of one’s own body is not only unpleasant in general. Body shame, as the negative view is called, also makes it less likely that individuals will enjoy sexual behavior. The study further suggests that the lower levels of sexual enjoyment result from greater self-consciousness about one’s body during sexual interaction with a partner.
Sanchez and Kiefer obtained the responses of 320 individuals to an internet survey. The study was announced through message boards for 150 different U.S. Yahoo groups and 20 e-mail lists for University of Michigan undergraduate and graduate students. Respondents ranged between the ages of 17 and 71 years, 38% of whom were men and 62% were women. The vast majority were involved in a romantic relationship. Those who were not in a relationship were asked to report about their experiences in their most recent sexual relationship.
Body shame was assessed using the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, which includes ratings such as “When I cannot control my weight, I feel like something must be wrong with me”. Sexual self-consciousness was measured with the Body Image Self-Consciousness Scale, consisting of ratings such as “The worst part of having sex is being nude in front of another person”. Sexual enjoyment was evaluated in terms of three different aspects, sexual arousability, difficulty reaching orgasm, and sexual pleasure. Sexual arousability was measured with the Sexual Arousability Scale, with ratings such as indicating how sexually aroused one becomes “When a loved one stimulates your genitals with mouth and tongue”. Difficulty reaching orgasm was determined by two ratings directly asking about the frequency of experiencing orgasm during sexual activity with one’s partner. Sexual pleasure was assessed by three ratings of how pleasurable sexual intercourse, sexual activities, and sexual intimacy with one’s partner are.
Greater shame related to one’s body was associated with a lower likelihood of experiencing sexual arousal and sexual pleasure, as well as a greater tendency to have trouble reaching orgasm. Analyses demonstrated that the negative effect on sexual enjoyment occurred because shame resulted in greater self-consciousness about one’s body during sexual behavior. Sexual self-consciousness had the same detrimental affect on arousability and pleasure for both women and men. However, body shame was more likely to lead to sexual self-consciousness for women than men. In addition, women reported greater body shame and sexual self-consciousness than men.
These results indicate that men and women have the same type of reaction to negative feelings about their body. Yet, women are more susceptible to experiencing such negative feelings.
Although the information collected in the study does not address the way that sexual self-consciousness produces a negative effect on sexual arousability and pleasure, Sanchez and Kiefer suggest several possibilities. First, self-consciousness about one’s body during sex may distract individuals by focusing their attention away from the sexual activities, preventing them from enjoying the pleasure that may result. They may not be able to relax and appreciate the sensations and feelings because they worry about their appearance. A second possibility is that focusing attention on the perceived negative features of one’s body may prevent individuals from focusing on the physical arousal that is occurring, such that they simply do not register and become aware of its pleasurable nature.
The negative views that individuals develop regarding their bodies has been explained by feminist theorists in particular in terms of self-objectification. Self-objectification is the tendency to think of one’s physical self largely in terms of its appearance and to assume the perspective of others who might view one’s body. The tendency leads to the application of cultural standards of what the ideal body should look like. Because U.S. society has created such extreme standards for beauty, especially for women, and because appearance has been elevated to such a high position of importance, women are particularly likely to experience self-objectification and the negative emotions that accompany it.
Sanchez and Kiefer suggest that their results point to possible strategies that may be employed in therapy for couples experiencing sexual difficulties. Individuals might be encouraged to develop the tendency to provide positive feedback about the body of their partner’s if they are found to experience substantial levels of body shame and self-consciousness. Such a strategy may help the individual to cultivate more positive self-images regarding their body, allowing them to enhance their arousal and pleasurable experience during sexual activity over time.
Sanchez, D. T., & Kiefer, A. K. (2007). Body concerns in and out of the bedroom: Implications for sexual pleasure and problems. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 808–820.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Does Early Abstinence Promote Later Mental Health?
Laura Bogart and her colleagues (2007) of the RAND Corporation asked the question in a newly published article in the Journal of Sex Research: “Do adolescents who delay sexual behavior until later in life enjoy better psychological adjustment as adults?”
The issue is of tremendous importance, not only because of the implications for the well-being of individuals throughout their lives. It is also important because faith in the health benefits of abstinence has been a guiding principle in official U.S. policy over the last decade.
As noted by Bogart and colleagues (2007, p. 290):
Of course, these assumptions need to be examined empirically (that is, scientifically) to justify their use as the basis for government policy that determines what young people are being taught in public schools. Yet, only a small number of studies have really even tackled this issue. Furthermore, the ones that have been conducted are limited in their value.
Here’s where an in-depth understanding of scientific methods is very useful. To be a good “consumer” of scientific research, you need to be familiar with the various ways of conducting psychological research. Otherwise, the wrong conclusions may be drawn about the meaning of results that are obtained. Most of the available studies are cross sectional, meaning that they have looked at differences across different people at one point in time.
Cross-sectional studies have in fact found that individuals who are abstinent in adolescence tend to have lower levels of psychological problems. That is, they have “fewer symptoms of depression, stress, conduct disorder, and substance abuse or dependence” (Bogart et al., 2007, p. 290).
The problem with studies based on a group of people at one point in time, of course, is that the research does not reveal the long-term effects of behavior on well-being. Moreover, it is not clear in such studies what causes what. It may be that adolescents who are suffering from stress, difficulties in life, or psychological problems are more likely to engage in sexual behavior, rather than sexual behavior leading to such problems. What are needed are longitudinal studies, those that keep track of the same individuals over a long period of time.
Even the few available longitudinal studies that have been conducted, however, suggest that abstinence during adolescence is associated with better adult mental health. The problem that Bogart and her colleagues have with these studies is that they did not examine factors occurring during the teenage years that are related to both mental health problems and adolescent sexual behavior at the same time. That is, certain conditions occur for teenagers that are known to be linked to both psychological problems during adolescence and a greater likelihood of engaging in early sexual behavior.
It is likely that someone who is troubled as an adolescent will be more likely to have psychological problems later in life as an adult. This person may also be more likely to have engaged in sexual behavior as an adolescent. Therefore, the link between teenage sexual behavior and later adult psychological problems may be due to their mutual connection to the factors that caused them to be troubled as adolescents. The early sexual behavior may not have actually caused the adult psychological problems. This confusion about what causes what in a scientific study is known as confounding. In this situation, it is impossible to know conclusively that one early factor (teenage sex) actually caused a later outcome (adult psychological problems) because of the possibility that some other factor (family problems as a teenager) caused the adult psychological problems.
The study by Bogart and her colleagues is a fine example of a high-quality longitudinal study. They examined a very large group of people (1,917 to be exact) over a 16-year period, starting in middle school at age 13. The final measure of mental health therefore was obtained when the study participants were 29 years old. Another strong point of the study is that an extremely high proportion of individuals examined at age 13 remained in the study at age 29. Beyond the advantage of assessing health over an extended time, factors known to be associated with psychological well-being were also evaluated in the study. These factors occurring during adolescence were (a) educational prospects for participants, (b) the quality of family bonding and parent-child relationships, and (c) the level of rebelliousness, unconventional attitudes and behavior, and substance abuse exhibited by the adolescents.
The first factor that was examined was educational prospects. Research has indicated that, especially for girls, the educational achievement of parents and the educational accomplishments and aspirations of the girls themselves, are associated with lower levels of early sexual behavior, childbirth, and marriage. Girls with greater educational prospect may delay getting involved in sex and relationships so that they can devote their energy and resources to advancing their professional goals. Furthermore, higher socioeconomic status is related to better mental health in adolescence, as well as in adulthood. Greater educational attainment is likewise associated with greater socioeconomic level.
The second factor evaluated in the study was the quality of the family environment and parent-child relationships. Features of family life such as stability in the home, good parent-child communication, and high quality parent-child relationships are linked to greater likelihood of abstinence. The quality of the family environment is additionally associated with greater psychological health and well-being.
The third factor was adolescent rebelliousness and unconventional attitudes and behavior, including substance abuse. These characteristics have been found to relate to both a greater likelihood of early sexual behavior and lower psychological health.
Because all of these factors are associated not only with early sexual behavior, but also with psychological well-being, any one of them could explain why sexual behavior correlates with mental health. It may be that early sexual behavior itself does not lead to poorer mental health. One of the three factors instead may cause both early sexual behavior and poorer mental health.
Sexual behavior was defined in the study as engaging in either penile-vaginal or penile-anal intercourse. Abstinence was defined as not engaging in either of these behaviors before the age of 19 years.
As for the results of the study, it was found that, for women, remaining abstinent prior to 19 was associated with greater mental health at age 29, as previous studies have also found. However, no such link was found for men.
The next step in the analyses was to see if the three other factors explained the relationship between abstinence and mental health for women. When the educational prospects of women as adolescents were taken into account, the association between abstinence and mental health disappeared (meaning, it was no longer statistically significant). Similarly, taking into account the quality of family environment as an adolescent, along with respondents’ rebelliousness, reduced the association between abstinence and mental health, but did not eliminate it completely. All three factors explained a substantial amount of the overlap between abstinence and mental health for women.
The finding that educational prospect eliminated the connection between abstinence and mental health suggests that girls’ educational potential leads to both abstinence and to later mental health, rather than abstinence causing later mental health. Bogart and her colleagues (2007) conclude that “girls who are uninvolved in school, have weak family backgrounds, and exhibit unconventionality may have poor adult mental health, whether or not they abstain from sex in adolescence.”
The results of this high-quality study strongly indicate that adolescent sexual behavior is unrelated to later mental health for men. Furthermore, adolescent sexual behavior is not likely a cause of poorer psychological health for women. Rather, disadvantages and risks associated with the early environment lead to later problems in psychological adjustment. Bogart and her colleagues suggest that programs designed to help adolescents should focus on these background and environmental factors rather than specifically on sexual behavior.
Bogart, L. M., Collins, R. L., Ellickson, P. L., & Klein, D. J. (2007). Association of sexual abstinence in adolescence with mental health in adulthood. Journal of Sex Research, 44, 290-298.
U.S. Department of Heath & Human Services. (1998). Understanding title V of the Social Security Act. Retrieved August 14, 2006, from ftp://ftp.hrsa.gov/mchb/titlevtoday/UnderstandingTitleV.pdf
The issue is of tremendous importance, not only because of the implications for the well-being of individuals throughout their lives. It is also important because faith in the health benefits of abstinence has been a guiding principle in official U.S. policy over the last decade.
As noted by Bogart and colleagues (2007, p. 290):
This belief in the benefits of abstinence was codified in Section 510 of Title V of the 1998 Social Security Act, which established an appropriations program for abstinence education (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1998). To receive federal funds for abstinence education, such programs are required, for example, to teach youth that the benefits of abstinence include “social, psychological, and health gains,” and that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”
Of course, these assumptions need to be examined empirically (that is, scientifically) to justify their use as the basis for government policy that determines what young people are being taught in public schools. Yet, only a small number of studies have really even tackled this issue. Furthermore, the ones that have been conducted are limited in their value.
Here’s where an in-depth understanding of scientific methods is very useful. To be a good “consumer” of scientific research, you need to be familiar with the various ways of conducting psychological research. Otherwise, the wrong conclusions may be drawn about the meaning of results that are obtained. Most of the available studies are cross sectional, meaning that they have looked at differences across different people at one point in time.
Cross-sectional studies have in fact found that individuals who are abstinent in adolescence tend to have lower levels of psychological problems. That is, they have “fewer symptoms of depression, stress, conduct disorder, and substance abuse or dependence” (Bogart et al., 2007, p. 290).
The problem with studies based on a group of people at one point in time, of course, is that the research does not reveal the long-term effects of behavior on well-being. Moreover, it is not clear in such studies what causes what. It may be that adolescents who are suffering from stress, difficulties in life, or psychological problems are more likely to engage in sexual behavior, rather than sexual behavior leading to such problems. What are needed are longitudinal studies, those that keep track of the same individuals over a long period of time.
Even the few available longitudinal studies that have been conducted, however, suggest that abstinence during adolescence is associated with better adult mental health. The problem that Bogart and her colleagues have with these studies is that they did not examine factors occurring during the teenage years that are related to both mental health problems and adolescent sexual behavior at the same time. That is, certain conditions occur for teenagers that are known to be linked to both psychological problems during adolescence and a greater likelihood of engaging in early sexual behavior.
It is likely that someone who is troubled as an adolescent will be more likely to have psychological problems later in life as an adult. This person may also be more likely to have engaged in sexual behavior as an adolescent. Therefore, the link between teenage sexual behavior and later adult psychological problems may be due to their mutual connection to the factors that caused them to be troubled as adolescents. The early sexual behavior may not have actually caused the adult psychological problems. This confusion about what causes what in a scientific study is known as confounding. In this situation, it is impossible to know conclusively that one early factor (teenage sex) actually caused a later outcome (adult psychological problems) because of the possibility that some other factor (family problems as a teenager) caused the adult psychological problems.
The study by Bogart and her colleagues is a fine example of a high-quality longitudinal study. They examined a very large group of people (1,917 to be exact) over a 16-year period, starting in middle school at age 13. The final measure of mental health therefore was obtained when the study participants were 29 years old. Another strong point of the study is that an extremely high proportion of individuals examined at age 13 remained in the study at age 29. Beyond the advantage of assessing health over an extended time, factors known to be associated with psychological well-being were also evaluated in the study. These factors occurring during adolescence were (a) educational prospects for participants, (b) the quality of family bonding and parent-child relationships, and (c) the level of rebelliousness, unconventional attitudes and behavior, and substance abuse exhibited by the adolescents.
The first factor that was examined was educational prospects. Research has indicated that, especially for girls, the educational achievement of parents and the educational accomplishments and aspirations of the girls themselves, are associated with lower levels of early sexual behavior, childbirth, and marriage. Girls with greater educational prospect may delay getting involved in sex and relationships so that they can devote their energy and resources to advancing their professional goals. Furthermore, higher socioeconomic status is related to better mental health in adolescence, as well as in adulthood. Greater educational attainment is likewise associated with greater socioeconomic level.
The second factor evaluated in the study was the quality of the family environment and parent-child relationships. Features of family life such as stability in the home, good parent-child communication, and high quality parent-child relationships are linked to greater likelihood of abstinence. The quality of the family environment is additionally associated with greater psychological health and well-being.
The third factor was adolescent rebelliousness and unconventional attitudes and behavior, including substance abuse. These characteristics have been found to relate to both a greater likelihood of early sexual behavior and lower psychological health.
Because all of these factors are associated not only with early sexual behavior, but also with psychological well-being, any one of them could explain why sexual behavior correlates with mental health. It may be that early sexual behavior itself does not lead to poorer mental health. One of the three factors instead may cause both early sexual behavior and poorer mental health.
Sexual behavior was defined in the study as engaging in either penile-vaginal or penile-anal intercourse. Abstinence was defined as not engaging in either of these behaviors before the age of 19 years.
As for the results of the study, it was found that, for women, remaining abstinent prior to 19 was associated with greater mental health at age 29, as previous studies have also found. However, no such link was found for men.
The next step in the analyses was to see if the three other factors explained the relationship between abstinence and mental health for women. When the educational prospects of women as adolescents were taken into account, the association between abstinence and mental health disappeared (meaning, it was no longer statistically significant). Similarly, taking into account the quality of family environment as an adolescent, along with respondents’ rebelliousness, reduced the association between abstinence and mental health, but did not eliminate it completely. All three factors explained a substantial amount of the overlap between abstinence and mental health for women.
The finding that educational prospect eliminated the connection between abstinence and mental health suggests that girls’ educational potential leads to both abstinence and to later mental health, rather than abstinence causing later mental health. Bogart and her colleagues (2007) conclude that “girls who are uninvolved in school, have weak family backgrounds, and exhibit unconventionality may have poor adult mental health, whether or not they abstain from sex in adolescence.”
The results of this high-quality study strongly indicate that adolescent sexual behavior is unrelated to later mental health for men. Furthermore, adolescent sexual behavior is not likely a cause of poorer psychological health for women. Rather, disadvantages and risks associated with the early environment lead to later problems in psychological adjustment. Bogart and her colleagues suggest that programs designed to help adolescents should focus on these background and environmental factors rather than specifically on sexual behavior.
Bogart, L. M., Collins, R. L., Ellickson, P. L., & Klein, D. J. (2007). Association of sexual abstinence in adolescence with mental health in adulthood. Journal of Sex Research, 44, 290-298.
U.S. Department of Heath & Human Services. (1998). Understanding title V of the Social Security Act. Retrieved August 14, 2006, from ftp://ftp.hrsa.gov/mchb/titlevtoday/UnderstandingTitleV.pdf
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
It Is Sex Only If I Want It to Be Sex, And If I Say It Is Sex
So, you think you know what "having sex" means? From a purely objective, "outsider’s" perspective, many people believe that they know exactly what sexual behaviors are involved in "having sex." However, when it comes down to defining whether you yourself have "had sex," a number of people employ flexible standards that help them preserve the belief that they are virgins. More generally, the movable boundary markers for the concept of "having sex" allows people to preserve their sense of integrity, the belief that their behavior is consistent with their moral standards.
One of the first studies focusing on what it means to "have sex" was conducted by Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch (1999) of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. In this study, penile-vaginal intercourse was viewed by virtually all heterosexual college students (99.5%) as qualifying as having sex. Yet, only 81% considered penile-anal intercourse to be sex. Even more surprising, a majority of heterosexual college students (about 60%) did not view oral-genital sex as constituting sex.
The integrity-protecting nature of the strategic use of the concept of "have sex" was revealed by another finding in the study. Specifically, approximately 75% of individuals who had not yet engaged in penile-vaginal intercourse, but who had already engaged in oral-genital sex, felt that oral-genital sex did not really qualify as "having sex." This proportion was substantially greater than that of all college students who participated in the study, which as presented earlier was 60%. This suggests that individuals may have engaged in oral-genital sex rather than penile-vaginal intercourse as a strategy for avoiding "real sex;" in their minds, they remained technically virgins.
More recently, Zoë Peterson and Charlene Muehlenhard (2007) examined the specific motivations involved in the strategic use of the concept of "having sex." The researchers asked college students to think of their own experiences they considered to be "almost but not quite sex." The primary basis for not viewing the behavior as sex among these individuals was the absence of inserting the penis in the vagina. Other reasons given for distinguishing between behaviors identified as "having sex" and "not sex" were whether genital contact, nudity, sexual arousal, orgasm, or an exchange of body fluids had occurred. The behaviors cited as most difficult to clearly categorize as "sex" or "not sex" were oral-genital sex, brief or partial penile-vaginal penetration, and genital-to-genital contact without penetration.
Students were also asked about experiences that were "just barely sex." Their most frequent explanation for the reason the behavior was just barely sex was that penile-vaginal penetration had occurred.
Peterson and Muehlenhard additionally explored the motivations that underlie the tendency to avoid labeling certain sexual behaviors as "having sex." One strategy for uncovering individuals’ motivation was to ask them how they would have felt if the "not quite sex" behavior had actually been sex. Substantially more students (50%) indicated that they would have experienced negative emotions if the behavior had actually been sex than would have experienced positive emotions (14%).
Women were more likely than men to think that they would experience negative emotions if the behavior had been sex. Men were equally likely to believe that they would have experienced positive emotions as negative emotions. Women tended to be concerned that they would have lost their virginity or would feel bad about themselves, if the behavior had been sex. Men who thought they would have had negative emotions were concerned about having sex with the wrong person or that having sex would have harmed the relationship.
Beyond these motives for not viewing the behavior as sex, others included:
One of the first studies focusing on what it means to "have sex" was conducted by Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch (1999) of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. In this study, penile-vaginal intercourse was viewed by virtually all heterosexual college students (99.5%) as qualifying as having sex. Yet, only 81% considered penile-anal intercourse to be sex. Even more surprising, a majority of heterosexual college students (about 60%) did not view oral-genital sex as constituting sex.
The integrity-protecting nature of the strategic use of the concept of "have sex" was revealed by another finding in the study. Specifically, approximately 75% of individuals who had not yet engaged in penile-vaginal intercourse, but who had already engaged in oral-genital sex, felt that oral-genital sex did not really qualify as "having sex." This proportion was substantially greater than that of all college students who participated in the study, which as presented earlier was 60%. This suggests that individuals may have engaged in oral-genital sex rather than penile-vaginal intercourse as a strategy for avoiding "real sex;" in their minds, they remained technically virgins.
More recently, Zoë Peterson and Charlene Muehlenhard (2007) examined the specific motivations involved in the strategic use of the concept of "having sex." The researchers asked college students to think of their own experiences they considered to be "almost but not quite sex." The primary basis for not viewing the behavior as sex among these individuals was the absence of inserting the penis in the vagina. Other reasons given for distinguishing between behaviors identified as "having sex" and "not sex" were whether genital contact, nudity, sexual arousal, orgasm, or an exchange of body fluids had occurred. The behaviors cited as most difficult to clearly categorize as "sex" or "not sex" were oral-genital sex, brief or partial penile-vaginal penetration, and genital-to-genital contact without penetration.
Students were also asked about experiences that were "just barely sex." Their most frequent explanation for the reason the behavior was just barely sex was that penile-vaginal penetration had occurred.
Peterson and Muehlenhard additionally explored the motivations that underlie the tendency to avoid labeling certain sexual behaviors as "having sex." One strategy for uncovering individuals’ motivation was to ask them how they would have felt if the "not quite sex" behavior had actually been sex. Substantially more students (50%) indicated that they would have experienced negative emotions if the behavior had actually been sex than would have experienced positive emotions (14%).
Women were more likely than men to think that they would experience negative emotions if the behavior had been sex. Men were equally likely to believe that they would have experienced positive emotions as negative emotions. Women tended to be concerned that they would have lost their virginity or would feel bad about themselves, if the behavior had been sex. Men who thought they would have had negative emotions were concerned about having sex with the wrong person or that having sex would have harmed the relationship.
Beyond these motives for not viewing the behavior as sex, others included:
- not wanting to be perceived negatively by others
- not wanting to have cheated on a partner
- not wanting to behave inconsistently with one’s religious beliefs
- not wanting to challenge one’s heterosexual self-concept (p. 266)
Many of the individuals were in fact aware that the way they defined the behavior affected their understanding of the behavior. Peterson and Muehlenhard provided the example of one woman who reported that she had never "had sex" and that she was a virgin:
I gave him a blow job & he in turn gave me oral sex . . . . Now I am ashamed of it and I wish I had never done it. Because I lost all respect for him and myself.
[Why isn’t it sex?] B/c it was not intercourse.[Any conditions under which you WOULD consider the activity to be sex?] Yes. I have classified it as sex before b/c it’s called oral sex but to justify what I did (I’m a Christian) I told myself a lie.
[If it had been sex, how would you feel?] I would have cried afterwards. I would have been giving up something that I can never ever have back and that’s something that I want to give to my husband. I would be in severe depression . . . . (p. 262).
Other individuals provided similar, extremely forthright accounts of reinterpreting sexual behavior as nonsexual. Actually, in some cases, individuals intentionally interpreted an experience as sexual behavior that did not meet their own, earlier stated definition of "real sex." One example of such a case included a three-way sexual encounter that almost occurred, but was interrupted, and never really happened. A second example was what one individual described as "fooling around" while naked with genital contact, but it was not entirely clear whether brief vaginal penetration had taken place. Such individuals, many of them men, wanted to feel that they actually had engaged in sex with someone, or wanted to believe that they had engaged in an exotic sexual experience (e.g., a three-way).
The implications of these findings are profound and far-reaching, both at a personal level and with respect to scientific research. At a personal level, studies have indicated that people rely on discussions with their potential sexual partner to decide whether he or she has been infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). They will consider engaging in sexual behavior if they get the sense that the partner has had little or no previous sexual experience, because they believe the risk for STDs is minimal.
Yet, the research discussed above indicates that a number of people purposefully define their past sexual history in a way that allows them to continue to view themselves as moral or virginal. Other research reveals that some proportion of people admit that they would lie to a potential partner in order to get them to engage in sex. For these reasons, it appears that relying on a partner’s own account of their sexual history is not an extremely safe strategy. Such findings additionally reinforce the idea that scientists must be extremely specific in asking research participants about sexual behavior, targeting particular types of sexual behavior, and avoiding using such emotionally loaded phrases as "having sex."
The bottom line is that sexuality has been so fundamentally condemned on moral and religious grounds throughout Western history that it is fraught with a substantial sense of guilt and anxiety for many individuals. This leads a number of people to feel the need to redefine sexual behavior in which they have engaged in a way that simply makes it "go away." In fact, evidence from a large national survey (Rosenbaum, 2006) indicates that those with conservative religious ideologies, those who had recently become born-again Christians or who had taken virginity pledges, are particularly prone to redefine their sexual histories. Abstinence-only sex education programs may likewise motivate individuals to modify their definitions of their sexual behavior to fit the standards of goodness promoted in such programs.
Peterson, Z. D., & Muehlenhard, C. L. (2007). What is sex and why does it matter? A motivational approach to exploring individuals’ definitions of sex. Journal of Sex Research, 44, 256-268.
Rosenbaum, J. E. (2006). Reborn a virgin: Adolescents’ retracting of virginity pledges and sexual histories. American Journal of Public Health, 96, 1098-1103.
Sanders, S. A., & Reinisch, J. M. (1999). Would you say you "had sex" if . . . ? Journal of the American Medical Association, 281, 275-277.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
“Thou Shalt Not . . .”: Do Conservative Religious Sexual Values Keep Teenagers from Wandering Down “the Primrose Path”?
First off, you might ask, "Just what is ‘the primrose path’ anyhow?" According to Evan Morris, the Word Detective, http://www.word-detective.com,/ the phrase can be attributed to William Shakespeare:
All of this information is a roundabout, literary way of asking the question in the title of whether teenagers raised in families with conservative religious values are less likely to engage in early penile-vaginal intercourse, before they marry. The quote from Shakespeare is also relevant to this question about religious values, because Ophelia accuses her brother of being a hypocrite–that is, believing in sexual restraint before marriage, but nonetheless violating that belief by engaging in premarital sexual behavior himself. Even during the time of Shakespeare, religious leaders who preached the severe, restrictive commandments about sexuality were suspected of being likely to break those commandments in their own personal lives.
This issue presents a perfect opportunity to call upon the scientific method to put popular intuitions about how people behave to the empirical test. The results of a study by Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, were released earlier this month by the Russell Sage Foundation (see an opinion article by him, entitled Preaching to the Choir at http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110010452). Professor Wilcox examined the sexual behavior and relationship patterns of evangelical Christians–those more likely to advocate the importance of sexual restraint–compared to the patterns of non-evangelical individuals. When controlling statistically for demographic differences among his study participants, conservative Christians tended to engage in sexual behavior at virtually the same age as non-conservative participants; the average age was about 17 ½ years (see a commentary by Michael Gerson on this issue at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/26/AR2007072601846.html).
This finding seems to indicate that religious beliefs make no difference in terms of engaging in premarital sexual behavior. However, the issue is more complex than this piece of information would lead you to believe. Dr. Wilcox delved even deeper into factors that might be related to following one’s religious values. He examined evangelical Christians separately based on whether they attend church services each week or whether they attend services rarely or never. Those who attend weekly might be considered devout believers, while those who attend rarely or never Dr. Wilcox referred to as nominal evangelicals–those who are evangelical in name only.
According to Dr. Wilcox, ". . . evangelicals who attend religious services weekly, when compared with average Americans, are less likely to cohabit as young adults (1% vs. 10% of other young adults), to bear a child outside of wedlock (12% vs. 33% of other moms) and to divorce (7% vs. 9% of other married adults divorced from 1988 to 1993)" (see the Preaching to the Choir article). In contrast, "nominal evangelicals have sex before other teens, cohabit and have children outside of wedlock at rates that are no different than the population at large, and are much more likely to divorce than average Americans" (see the Preaching to the Choir article).
These data might lead to the conclusion that those who are strongly dedicated to their religion are more likely to follow the sexual values promoted by that religion. This is possibly a reasonable explanation of the behavior of the devout Christians. Yet, the difficulty with this conclusion is that Dr. Wilcox does not report that he measured their actual beliefs so that he could explicitly show an association between beliefs and sexual behavior. Attendance at church is a proxy, or substitute, for belief in Christian values.
Another factor that may underlie the differences between devout and nominal evangelical Christians is that nominal Christians were more likely to be poor and uneducated. The differences in sexual behavior between the two types of Christians remained even when income and education were taken into account. Consequently, income and education are not the major influences on penile-vaginal intercourse rates.
Rather, Dr. Wilcox speculates that the nominal Christians who participated in his study come from a culture that leads them to engage in sexual behavior patterns that are different from the sexual morality advocated within fundamentalist Christianity. In his own words, "I suspect that many nominal evangelicals are products of a Scotch-Irish ‘redneck’ culture, still found in parts of Appalachia and the South, that . . . has historically been marked by higher levels of promiscuity, violence and impulsive behavior" (see the Preaching to the Choir article).
Dr. Wilcox is arguing essentially that nominal evangelical Christians are influenced more by non-religious cultural values than by fundamentalist religious values. In contrast, devoted evangelicals, who have frequent contact with others advocating more restrictive sexual beliefs, are apparently more motivated to follow those restrictive values.
The issue actually involves even more than the influence of religious values alone, however. In another article that reviews a book by Mark D. Regnerus, Dr. Wilcox points to the finding that teenagers who are Jewish or mainline Protestants (non-evangelical Christians) are also less likely to engage in early sex as adolescents (Hormonographics: Red States, Blue States, and Sex Before Marriage at http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13668&R=1138119DC9). Therefore, it is not only restrictive religious values that cause teenagers to delay penile-vaginal intercourse. Jewish and mainline Protestant adolescents from the middle and upper classes in Regnerus’ study tended to have a stronger future orientation; they had their sights set steadfastly on what they wanted to accomplish in the future, especially related to getting a higher education and advancing professionally. These adolescents viewed early sexual behavior as dangerous, because pregnancy, children, and sexually transmitted diseases would prevent them from accomplishing the bright future they imagined for themselves.
Especially surprising, the lower rates of early penile-vaginal intercourse occurred in spite of the fact that the Jewish and mainline Protestant adolescents tended to have more liberal or permissive sexual beliefs. They did not necessarily believe that it is important to avoid sexual intercourse before marriage. The dominating principle for these individuals however tends to be following a plan of action that will get them to their academic and professional goals. They avoid any diversion that will take them off of that path.
So, the bottom line is that "yes," conservative religious values do tend to keep adolescents off of the "primrose path," meaning engaging in penile-vaginal intercourse. However, this is true primarily in conjunction with attending church regularly, which probably indicates a stronger influence by these values. Yet, it is also true that having a strong desire for academic and professional accomplishment keeps adolescents away from penile-vaginal intercourse, as well. This means that more than one set of values lead individuals to avoid certain types of sexual behavior. The association between personal values and whether adolescents engage in other types of sexual behavior will be an interesting topic for another entry in this blog.
A primrose is a little yellow flower that often adorns gardens. In the quotation above, Ophelia uses the analogy of strolling down the pleasant garden path as a symbol of an extremely pleasant experience. In fact, she is directly referring to sexual pleasure in likening her brother to a libertine, someone who indulges in sexual pleasure for its own sake.As I suspected, "primrose path," like so many of our modern figures of speech, seems to have been coined by William Shakespeare. The first recorded use of the phrase comes in his 1602 play Hamlet, when Ophelia, rebuffing her brother Laertes’ insistence that she resist Hamlet’s advances, accuses Laertes of hypocrisy: "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, and recks [heeds] not his own rede [advice]." http://www.word-detective.com/112402.html
All of this information is a roundabout, literary way of asking the question in the title of whether teenagers raised in families with conservative religious values are less likely to engage in early penile-vaginal intercourse, before they marry. The quote from Shakespeare is also relevant to this question about religious values, because Ophelia accuses her brother of being a hypocrite–that is, believing in sexual restraint before marriage, but nonetheless violating that belief by engaging in premarital sexual behavior himself. Even during the time of Shakespeare, religious leaders who preached the severe, restrictive commandments about sexuality were suspected of being likely to break those commandments in their own personal lives.
This issue presents a perfect opportunity to call upon the scientific method to put popular intuitions about how people behave to the empirical test. The results of a study by Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, were released earlier this month by the Russell Sage Foundation (see an opinion article by him, entitled Preaching to the Choir at http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110010452). Professor Wilcox examined the sexual behavior and relationship patterns of evangelical Christians–those more likely to advocate the importance of sexual restraint–compared to the patterns of non-evangelical individuals. When controlling statistically for demographic differences among his study participants, conservative Christians tended to engage in sexual behavior at virtually the same age as non-conservative participants; the average age was about 17 ½ years (see a commentary by Michael Gerson on this issue at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/26/AR2007072601846.html).
This finding seems to indicate that religious beliefs make no difference in terms of engaging in premarital sexual behavior. However, the issue is more complex than this piece of information would lead you to believe. Dr. Wilcox delved even deeper into factors that might be related to following one’s religious values. He examined evangelical Christians separately based on whether they attend church services each week or whether they attend services rarely or never. Those who attend weekly might be considered devout believers, while those who attend rarely or never Dr. Wilcox referred to as nominal evangelicals–those who are evangelical in name only.
According to Dr. Wilcox, ". . . evangelicals who attend religious services weekly, when compared with average Americans, are less likely to cohabit as young adults (1% vs. 10% of other young adults), to bear a child outside of wedlock (12% vs. 33% of other moms) and to divorce (7% vs. 9% of other married adults divorced from 1988 to 1993)" (see the Preaching to the Choir article). In contrast, "nominal evangelicals have sex before other teens, cohabit and have children outside of wedlock at rates that are no different than the population at large, and are much more likely to divorce than average Americans" (see the Preaching to the Choir article).
These data might lead to the conclusion that those who are strongly dedicated to their religion are more likely to follow the sexual values promoted by that religion. This is possibly a reasonable explanation of the behavior of the devout Christians. Yet, the difficulty with this conclusion is that Dr. Wilcox does not report that he measured their actual beliefs so that he could explicitly show an association between beliefs and sexual behavior. Attendance at church is a proxy, or substitute, for belief in Christian values.
Another factor that may underlie the differences between devout and nominal evangelical Christians is that nominal Christians were more likely to be poor and uneducated. The differences in sexual behavior between the two types of Christians remained even when income and education were taken into account. Consequently, income and education are not the major influences on penile-vaginal intercourse rates.
Rather, Dr. Wilcox speculates that the nominal Christians who participated in his study come from a culture that leads them to engage in sexual behavior patterns that are different from the sexual morality advocated within fundamentalist Christianity. In his own words, "I suspect that many nominal evangelicals are products of a Scotch-Irish ‘redneck’ culture, still found in parts of Appalachia and the South, that . . . has historically been marked by higher levels of promiscuity, violence and impulsive behavior" (see the Preaching to the Choir article).
Dr. Wilcox is arguing essentially that nominal evangelical Christians are influenced more by non-religious cultural values than by fundamentalist religious values. In contrast, devoted evangelicals, who have frequent contact with others advocating more restrictive sexual beliefs, are apparently more motivated to follow those restrictive values.
The issue actually involves even more than the influence of religious values alone, however. In another article that reviews a book by Mark D. Regnerus, Dr. Wilcox points to the finding that teenagers who are Jewish or mainline Protestants (non-evangelical Christians) are also less likely to engage in early sex as adolescents (Hormonographics: Red States, Blue States, and Sex Before Marriage at http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13668&R=1138119DC9). Therefore, it is not only restrictive religious values that cause teenagers to delay penile-vaginal intercourse. Jewish and mainline Protestant adolescents from the middle and upper classes in Regnerus’ study tended to have a stronger future orientation; they had their sights set steadfastly on what they wanted to accomplish in the future, especially related to getting a higher education and advancing professionally. These adolescents viewed early sexual behavior as dangerous, because pregnancy, children, and sexually transmitted diseases would prevent them from accomplishing the bright future they imagined for themselves.
Especially surprising, the lower rates of early penile-vaginal intercourse occurred in spite of the fact that the Jewish and mainline Protestant adolescents tended to have more liberal or permissive sexual beliefs. They did not necessarily believe that it is important to avoid sexual intercourse before marriage. The dominating principle for these individuals however tends to be following a plan of action that will get them to their academic and professional goals. They avoid any diversion that will take them off of that path.
So, the bottom line is that "yes," conservative religious values do tend to keep adolescents off of the "primrose path," meaning engaging in penile-vaginal intercourse. However, this is true primarily in conjunction with attending church regularly, which probably indicates a stronger influence by these values. Yet, it is also true that having a strong desire for academic and professional accomplishment keeps adolescents away from penile-vaginal intercourse, as well. This means that more than one set of values lead individuals to avoid certain types of sexual behavior. The association between personal values and whether adolescents engage in other types of sexual behavior will be an interesting topic for another entry in this blog.
Let Me Welcome You, Too
I would like to welcome you as well to our new blog that explores issues related to sexuality from a scientific perspective. I hope the blog will give you yet another opportunity to examine sexuality in a meaningful way, particularly as it is relevant to yourself. This is a great chance to become actively involved in obtaining the information that is most interesting to you, as well as helping to inform others about what you know about sexuality.
By providing comments, posing questions yourself, and presenting scientific findings that you have heard of, this can be a tremendous sounding board and you can make it especially interesting to you. Possibly you will be able to explore your own ideas and maybe even crystalize how you feel about concerns that you may have. I intend this blog to be your forum, and the way to own it is to contribute your thoughts and interact with others by reacting to their input. Of course, it is important to do so courteously and respectfully. A major aspect of our discussions here will be a focus on scientifically obtained information; that focus to a good extent should help keep us on course in regard to respecting one another.
So, please chime in with your own entries to what we have to offer. Here’s to the launch of what I hope will be a great adventure in understanding sexuality with the help of the scientific method!
By providing comments, posing questions yourself, and presenting scientific findings that you have heard of, this can be a tremendous sounding board and you can make it especially interesting to you. Possibly you will be able to explore your own ideas and maybe even crystalize how you feel about concerns that you may have. I intend this blog to be your forum, and the way to own it is to contribute your thoughts and interact with others by reacting to their input. Of course, it is important to do so courteously and respectfully. A major aspect of our discussions here will be a focus on scientifically obtained information; that focus to a good extent should help keep us on course in regard to respecting one another.
So, please chime in with your own entries to what we have to offer. Here’s to the launch of what I hope will be a great adventure in understanding sexuality with the help of the scientific method!
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Welcome!
We're so excited that you've joined us on this blog!
Check back soon for posts from Craig Hill, author of the SAGE textbook "Human Sexuality". He'll post about news topics, media events, and any new research being done in sexuality, and you'll have an opportunity to respond to him and to others who have posted comments.
We hope you enjoy this blog, and we welcome any comments you may have!
--The SAGE Team
Check back soon for posts from Craig Hill, author of the SAGE textbook "Human Sexuality". He'll post about news topics, media events, and any new research being done in sexuality, and you'll have an opportunity to respond to him and to others who have posted comments.
We hope you enjoy this blog, and we welcome any comments you may have!
--The SAGE Team
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