Understanding human sexuality by Hyde and DeLamater - a summary
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Sexology
Chapter 11
Attraction, love, and communication
The girl next door
Our opportunities to meet people are limited by geography and time.
We tend to be more attracted to people with whom we have had contact several times than we are to people with whom we have had little contact.
Mere-exposure effect: the tendency to like a person more if we have been exposed to him or her repeatedly.
Birds of a feather
We like people who are similar to us.
We are attracted to people who are approximately the same was we are in age, race or ethnicity, and economic and social status.
Homophily: the tendency to have contact with people who are equal in social status.
We are attracted to people whose attitudes and opinions are similar to ours.
Reasons to be attracted to a person similar
Physical attractiveness
Individuals prefer partners who are more physically attractive.
This effect depends on gender to some extent.
Physical attractiveness is more important to males evaluating females than it is to females evaluating males.
Our perception of attractiveness or beauty of another person is influenced by our evaluation of their intelligence, liking, respect, and our own objective attractiveness.
This phenomenon is somewhat modified by our own feelings of personal worth.
The interpersonal marketplace
Whom we are attracted to and pair off with depends a lot on how much we think we have to offer and how much we think we can ‘buy’ with it.
Matching phenomenon: the tendency for men and women to choose as partners people who match them. Who are similar in attitudes, intelligence, and attractiveness.
Generally, the principle seems to be that:
For both men and women, the person’s physical attractiveness is highly correlated with his/her education, income, and a measure of social status.
Attractiveness in high school is associated with greater social integration and favourable treatment by teachers and classmates.
This predicts education, work, and mental health outcomes as the person becomes an adult.
From the laboratory to real life
Perceived similarity: extent to which the individual believes his or her partner is similar on important characteristics.
Both perceived and actual similarity are associated with interpersonal attraction.
Perceived similarity is more important.
The nature and importance of matching varies as relationships develop.
Each individual’s rating on self-worth predicted the level of physical attractiveness of the partner they choose.
Attraction online
Technology has created a new way to meet potential partners.
Social forces at work for the growth of this phenomenon
Users say that one advantage of meeting on the Net is that the technology forces you to focus on the person’s interests and values.
You do not have access to body language and can sometimes not see the person.
Your impressions are heavily influenced by imagination, which can create a powerful attraction to the other.
The downside of meeting online can be the relative lack of information about the person.
The person may bot be at all who she or he claims to be, or how you imagine the person to be in your mind.
The appeal of online dating is that there are hundreds of prospects available with a few clicks of the mouse, giving the users a great sense of control.
If you arrange a date, anything can happen, doubts rise whether to go (most don’t).
Most of those first dates are last dates.
This variety of outcomes reflects the lack of scripts of these dates.
Three classes of influence on relationships success
Online dating can only measure and provide information about variables in the first group.
If a long-term intimate relationship is your goal, online dating is not likely to get you there.
Explaining our preferences
Reinforcement theory: Byrne’s law of attraction
We tend to like people who give us rewards an to dislike people who give us punishments.
Donn Byrne
Our attraction to another person is proportionate to the number of reinforcements that person gives us relative to the total number of reinforcements plus punishments the person gives us.
We like people who are frequently nice to us and seldom nasty.
According to this explanation, we prefer people who are similar because interaction with them is rewarding.
The implicit egotism perspective.
We are attracted to persons who are similar because they activate our positive views of ourselves.
Sociobiology: Sexual strategies theory
Sociobiologists view sexual behaviour within an evolutionary perspective.
Historically, the function of mating has been reproduction.
Men and women who selected mates according to some preferences were more successful than those who chose them based on other preferences.
Younger women are more likely to be fertile than older women.
A physically attractive person is more likely to be healthy and fertile than someone who isn’t.
Some evolutionary analysist have argued that the critical feature of an attractive face is symmetry.
Fluctuating asymmetry: asymmetry of bilateral features that are on average symmetrical in the population.
Asymmetry is said to reflect developmental instability (DI).
DI could have caused other anomalies that could impair reproductive success.
Women must make a much greater investment than men in order to reproduce.
They want to select mates who are reproductively valuable, leading to the preference of good-looking mates.
Men also must have resources in order to invest in children.
Sexual strategies theory asserts that gender differences in mate preferences reflect genetic predispositions based on universal biological roles of men and women in reproduction.
An alternative view is that preferences reflect current sex roles in specific cultures.
Gender differences in mate preferences decline as gender parity increased.
Intimacy is a major component of any close or romantic relationship.
Intimate relationships are important to us for two reasons
Defining intimacy
Intimacy: a quality of relationships characterised by commitment, feelings of closeness and trust, and self-disclosure.
Closeness or sharing has three dimensions
While intimacy must be reciprocal, it need to be equal.
While intimacy has a physical dimension, it need not be sexual.
Intimacy and self-disclosure
Self-disclosure: telling person things about yourself.
Self-disclosure leads to reciprocity.
There is a positive correlation between the extent of a couple’s self-disclosure and their satisfaction with the relationship.
Self-disclosure of sexual likes and dislikes is associated with sexual satisfaction.
Self-disclosure promotes intimacy in a relationship and makes us feel close to the other person.
Self-disclosure and intimacy mutually build on each other.
Triangular theory of love
Love has three fundamental components
Three components of love
Intimacy
The emotional component.
Includes our feelings of closeness and bondedness to the other person.
It is present in many relationships besides romantic ones.
Passion
The motivational component of love.
Physical attraction and the drive for sexual expression.
Physiological arousal.
Passion differentiates romantic love from other kinds of love.
Intimacy and passion are often closely intertwined.
Decision or commitment
The cognitive component.
Has two aspects
The triangular theory
The triangle metaphor allows us to show how the two people in a couple can be well matched or mismatched in the love they feel toward each other.
When there is a good match between the two partner’s love, the partners tend to feel satisfaction with the relationship.
Love in action
Each of the three components of love must be translated into actions.
Evidence for Sternberg’s triangular theory of love
There is support for it.
Attachment theory of love
One hypothesis is that the early attachment profoundly affects us for the rest of our lives, and particularly affects our capacity to form loving attachments to others when we are adults.
According to the attachment theory, adults are characterised, in their romantic relationships, by one of three styles.
Separation from parent in childhood is not related to adult attachment styles.
The person’s perception of the quality of the relationship with each parent predicts the attachment style.
Adults bring to any particular romantic relationship their own personal history of love and attachment.
The forces of that personal history can be strong.
Conflict in some relationships may be caused by a mismatch of attachment styles.
Jealousy is most common among anxious-ambivalent lovers.
Partners with a secure style reported the greatest commitment to and satisfaction with their relationships.
Attachment style affects relationships by affecting the way the partners interact.
Love as a story
Stories about love shape our beliefs about love and relationships, and our beliefs in turn influence our behaviour.
There is more to love than interaction.
What matters is how each partner interprets the interaction.
To make sense out of what happens in our relationships, we rely on our love stories.
Love story: a story about what love should be like, including characters, a plot, and a theme.
According to this view, falling in love occurs when you meet someone with whom you can create a relationship that fits your love story.
We are satisfied with relationships in which we and our partners match the characters of our story.
Many stories have their origins in culture, folk tales, literature, theatre, films and television.
The cultural context interactions with our personal experience and characteristics to create the stories that each of us has.
As we experience relationships, our stories evolve, taking into account unexpected events.
Each person has more than one story, and the stories often form a hierarchy.
Love stories derive their power from the fact that they are self-fulfilling.
We create events in our relationships according to the plot and then interpret those events according to the theme.
Our love relationships are social constructs.
Passionate and companionate love
Passionate love: a state of intense longing for union with the other person and of intense physiological arousal.
Companionate love: a feeling of deep attachment and commitment to a person with whom one has an intimate relationship
Passionate love is often the first stage of a romantic relationship.
As the relationship progresses, a gradual shift to companionate love takes place.
Sexual desire and romantic love may often be independent processes.
Sexual desire is a motivational state leading to a search for opportunities for sexual activity.
It motivates proximity seeking and contact, and leads to feelings of passion.
Romantic love is a motivational state leading to attachment and commitment.
The biology of love
Bodily chemistry and neural activity are the causes of love.
There are specific patterns of neurochemical activity that are associated with mating and pair-bonding.
The frequent presence of the loved one, produced initially by passionate love, triggers the production of prolactin and oxytocin.
Dopamine is important in the experience of love.
Visual stimuli associated with the lover stimulate subcortical activity in the ventral tegmental area, caudate nucleus, and putamen.
These are the areas associated with motivation, reward, and euphoria.
Activity also occurs in areas associated with complex cognitive processing.
Both passionate love and sexual desire activate the same reward-related and higher-order cortical areas in the brain.
But, love is associated with reduced activity in the hypothalamus, amygdala, and somatosensory cortex, compared to sexual desire.
Love is more than sex.
Operational definition: defining some concept or term by how it is measured.
Measuring love
There is a passionate love scale.
Love and adrenaline
Two-component theory of love
Two-component theory of love: the theory that two conditions must exist simultaneously for passionate love to occur.
An emotion consists of a physiological arousal state plus the label the person assigns to it.
Evidence for the two-component theory
Several experiments provide evidence for Berscheid and Walster’s two-component theory of love.
Misattribution of arousal: when a person in a stage of physiological arousal attributes these feelings to love or attraction to the person present.
Cross-cultural research
Cultural values and the meaning of love
Two dimensions in which cultures vary
Cultural influences on mate selection
Beauty varies by culture.
Love and marriage
Individualistic cultures place a high value on romantic love, while collectivist cultures emphasize the group.
In more collectivist countries people marry someone although they don’t love the person.
The pattern of the cross-cultural findings
Some phenomena are similar across cultures (valuing intelligence, kindness, and understanding) and some differ across cultures (love being a prerequisite for marriage).
Communication and relationships
Distressed couples tend to have communication deficits.
Unrewarding, ineffective communication precedes and predicts later relationships problems.
Distressed couples do not differ from non-distressed couples in their communication skills or ability, but some distressed couples use their skills as weapons, to send negative messages.
Four destructive patterns of interaction
Being an effective communicator
It is important to recognize the distinction between
Effective communicator: a communicator whose impact matches his or her intent.
To be an effective communicator, you may need to plan out our strategy.
Good messages
Every couple has problems.
The best way to voice them is to complain rather than to criticise.
‘I’ language: speaking for yourself, using the word ‘I’, not mind reading.
‘I’ language is less likely to make your partner defensive.
Mind reading: making assumptions about what your partner thinks and feels.
Mind reading is more common among distressed couples than among nondistressed couples.
You can avoid this with ‘I’ language or giving and receiving feedback.
Documenting: giving specific examples of the issue being discussed.
An important component of giving good messages.
Another technique in giving good messages is to offer limited choices.
Offer a set of acceptable limited choices.
Leveling and editing
Leveling: telling your partner what you are feeling by stating your thoughts clearly, simple, and honestly.
This is often the hardest step in communication, especially when the topic is sex.
In leveling, keep in mind that the purposes are to
Editing: censoring or not saying things that would be deliberately hurtful to your partner or that are irrelevant.
The trick is to balance levelig and editing.
Listening
One of the most important things is that you must really listen.
Trying to understand what the person is saying.
Good listening involves positive nonverbal behaviours.
Be a non-defensive listener: focus on what your partner is saying and feeling, and don’t immediately become defensive or counter-attack with complains of your own.
The next step is to give feedback.
Often involves brief vocalisations.
Paraphrasing: saying, in your own words, what you thought your partner meant.
It’s also a good idea to ask for feedback form your partner.
Body talk: non-verbal communication
It is important to bee good at reading your partner’s non-verbal messages.
Non-verbal communication: communication non through words, but through the body.
In communicating about sex, we need to be sure that our non-verbal signals help to create the impact we intent rather than one we don’t intent.
Validating
Validation: telling your partner that, given his or her point of view, you can see why he or she thinks a certain way.
A good technique in communication.
It is good to understand the other’s viewpoint.
Validating doesn’t necessarily solve a disagreement, but it has left the door open sot that you can make some progress.
Accentuate the positive
It is also important to communicate positive things about sex.
You will be giving your partner positive reinforcement.
Fighting fair
Arguments are a natural part of a relationship and are not necessarily bad.
It is useful if you and your partner have agreed to a set of rules.
Fighting fair: a set of rules designed to make arguments constructive rather than destructive.
Some basic rules
Checking out sexy signals
One of the problems with verbal and nonverbal sexual communications is that they are often ambiguous.
Check out sexy signals, don’t make any assumptions about the meaning of ambiguous messages.
Sexology
Chapter 1
Sexuality in perspective
Sex and gender
Gender: being male, female, or some other gender such as trans.
Sexual behaviour: behaviour that produces arousal and increases the chance of orgasm.
Religion
Throughout most of recorded history, religion provided most of the information that people has about sexuality.
These religions have profound impact.
Science
The scientific study of sex began in the 19th century, although religious notions continue to influence our ideas about sexuality.
Freud gave a great contribution to the understanding of sex.
Havelock Ellis (1896)
Believed that women, like men, are sexual creatures
He believed that sexual deviations from the norm are often harmless, and he urged society to accept them.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902)
Was interested in ‘pathological’ sexuality.
His work was neither objective nor tolerant, but had a long-lasting effect.
He coined the concepts of sadism, masochism, and paedophilia, and the terms heterosexuality and homosexuality.
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935)
Founded the first sex research institute and journal devoted to the study of sex.
Established a marriage counselling service and gave advice on contraception and sex problems.
The study of sex tends to be interdisciplinary.
The mass media in America today may play the same role that religion did in previous centuries.
Media can have three types of influence
The internet has a powerful mass media influence.
It has potential for both positive and negative effects on sexual health.
Cultural learning accumulates over time.
Culture: traditional ideas and values passed on from generation to generation within a group and transmitted to members of the group by symbols.
Ethnocentrism tends to influence our understanding of human sexual behaviour.
Ethnocentrism: the tendency to regard one’s own ethnic group and culture as superior to others and to believe that it customs and way of life are standards by which other cultures
Sexology
Chapter 2
Theoretical perspectives on sexuality
Sociobiology
Sociobiology: the application of evolutionary biology to understanding the social behaviour of animals, including humans.
Sociobiologists try to understand why certain patterns of sexual behaviour have evolved in humans.
The sociobiologists argues that many of the characteristics we evaluate in judging attractiveness are indicative of the health and vigour of the individual.
These in turn are probably related to the person’s reproductive potential.
Thus, perhaps our concern with physical attractiveness is a product of evolution and natural selection.
Attractiveness is an indicator of health and is more important in mate selection in societies where more people are unhealthy.
From this viewpoint, hanging out, playing sports, getting engaged and similar customs are much like the courtship rituals of other species.
This courtship is an opportunity for each member of the prospective couple to assess each other’s fitness.
An offspring’s changes of survival are greatly increased if the parents bond emotionally and if the parents have propensity for attachment.
An emotional bond may also lead to more frequent sexual interaction. The pleasurable consequences of sex in turn will reinforce the bond.
Parental investment: the behaviour and resources invested in offspring to achieve the survival and reproductive success of their genetic offspring.
Many criticisms of sociobiology have been made
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology: the study of psychological mechanisms that have been shaped by natural selection.
If behaviours evolved in response to selection pressures, it is plausible that cognitive or emotional structures evolved in the same way.
A man who accurately judged whether a woman was healthy and fertile would be more successful in reproducing.
According to sexual strategies, females and males face different adaptive problems in short-term, or casual, mating and in long-term reproduction.
These differences lead to different strategies.
According to the theory, females engage in intrasexual competition to access the males.
Criticisms to evolutionary psychology
Sexology
Chapter 3
Sex research
There are different types of sex research, but basically the techniques vary in terms of the following:
The first thing that researchers have to decide is how the measure the particular aspect of sexuality they want to study.
Self-reports
The most common method for measuring sexuality is self-reports, in which the participants are asked questions about their sexual behaviour.
Self-reports can be collected in a number of ways
Behavioural measures
Several alternatives are available for behavioural measures of sexuality.
Implicit measures
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Measures an individual’s relative strength of association between different pair of concepts with reaction times.
We react quicker to two concepts that we associate strongly.
People cannot fake reaction times.
Biological measures
Genital measures: assess arousal by using devices that measure erection in males and vaginal changes in females.
MRI and fMRI are being used increasingly in sex research.
Two limitations to use of fMRI in sex research
Measures of pupil dilation.
Our pupils dilate when we look at something that is interesting or arousing, or that puts a big load on our brain.
Sampling
An important step in conducting sex research is to identify the appropriate population of people studied.
Generally the scientist is unable to get data for all people in the population so a sample
Sexology
Chapter 4
Sexual anatomy
The female sexual organs can be classified into two categories
External organs
The external genitals of females consist of
Vulva: the collective term of the external genitals of the female.
The appearance of the vulva varies greatly from one women to another.
The clitoris
Clitoris: a highly sensitive sexual organ in the female: the glans is in front of the vaginal entrance, and the rest of the clitoris extends deeper into the body.
It consists of
Female sexual organs and make sexual organs develop from similar tissue before birth.
The female’s clitoris is homologous to the male’s penis, both develop from the same embryonic tissue.
The clitoris has a structure similar to that of the penis in that both have corpora cavernosa.
The clitoris varies in size from one women to the next.
The clitoris is erectile.
Its internal structure contains corpora cavernosa that fill with blood, as the similar structures in the penis do.
The clitoris has a rich supply of nerve endings, making it very sensitive to stroking.
It is the only part of the sexual anatomy with no known reproductive function.
The Mons
Mons pubis: the fatty pad of tissue under the public hair.
The labia
Outer lips: rounded pads of fatty tissue lying on either side of the vaginal entrance. They are covered with public hair.
Inner lips: thin folds of skin lying on either side of the vaginal entrance.
The inner lips extend forward and come together in front, forming the clitoral hood.
The inner and outer lips are well supplied with nerve endings and thus are also important in sexual stimulation and arousal.
Bartholin glands: two tiny glands located on either side of the vaginal entrance.
Seem to have no significant function, but sometimes they become infected.
Fourchette: the place where the inner lips come together behind the vaginal opening.
Perineum: the skin between the vaginal entrance and the anus.
Introitus: the vaginal entrance.
The urinary opening lies about midway between the clitoris and the vaginal opening.
Urine passes through
Sexology
Chapter 5
Sex hormones, sexual differentiation, and the menstrual cycle
Many of the structural differences between males and females arise before birth, during the prenatal period, in a process called prenatal sexual differentiation.
Prenatal period: the time from conception to birth.
Further differences develop during puberty.
Hormones: chemical substances secreted by the endocrine glands into the bloodstream.
Because they go into the blood, their effects are felt rapidly and at places in the body quite distant from where they were manufactured.
The most important sex hormones are
The pituitary gland and the hypothalamus are also important.
These three structures function together.
They influence important sexual functions
Sex hormone systems in males
The pituitary and testes both produce hormones.
The important hormone produced by the testes is testosterone.
Has important functions in:
The pituitary produces several hormones, two of which are important here. These hormones affect the functioning of the testes
Testosterone levels in males are relatively constant.
The hypothalamus, pituitary, and testes operate in a negative feedback loop that maintains these constant levels.
The levels of LH are regulated GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone), which is secreted by the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus monitors the levels of testosterone present, and this way testosterone influence the output of GnRH.
This loop is sometimes called the HPG axis, for hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad axis.
The pituitary’s production of LH stimulates the testes to produce testosterone, but when testosterone levels get high, the hypothalamus reduces its production of GnRH, in turn causing the pituitary to reduce production of
.....read moreSexology
Chapter 7
Contraception and abortion
Both babies and mothers are healthier if pregnancies are spaced three to five years apart.
Hormonal methods of contraception are highly effective and come in a number of forms
The combination pill
Combination birth control pills: birth control pills that contain a combination of estrogen and pregestin (progesterone), both at higher than natural levels.
A women takes the pill for 21 days, and then no pill or a placebo for 7 days, after which she repeats the cycle.
Variations have been introduced.
How it works
The pill works mainly by preventing ovulation.
When a women starts taking the birth control pills, estrogen levels are high. This high level of estrogen inhibits FSH production, and the message to ovulate never sends out.
The high level of progesterone inhibits LH production, further preventing ovulation.
The progestin provides additional backup effects
When the estrogen and progestin are withdrawn, the lining of the uterus disintegrates, and withdrawal bleeding or menstruation occurs.
The flow is typically reduced because the progestin has inhibited development of endometrium.
Effectiveness
Failure rate: the pregnancy rate occurring using a particular method; the percentage of women who will be pregnant after a year of use of the method.
Effectiveness: 100 minus the failure rate.
Two kinds of failure rate
Combination pills are one of the most effective methods of birth control.
The perfect-user failure rate is 0.3 percent.
The typical user failure rate is 9 percent.
Failures occur primarily as a result of forgetting to take a pill for 2 or more days.
If a women forgets the pill for 3 or more days, she should use a condom or abstain from sex until she has taken hormonal pills for 7 days in a row, at which point she will again be well protected.
Side effects
Sexology
Chapter 8
Sexual arousal
Satisfying sexual expression contributes to good physical and mental health.
Sexual response typically progresses in thee stages, according to the Masters and Johnson’s model
Physiological processes that occur during these stages are
Excitement
Excitement: the first stage of sexual response, during which erection in males and vaginal lubrication in females occur.
The basic physiological process that occurs during excitement is vasocongestion.
Erection may be produced by
Erection occurs rapidly, although it may take place more slowly as a result of a number of factors
As the man gets closer to orgasm, a few drops of fluid, secreted by the Cowper’s gland, appear at the tip of the penis.
They may contain active sperm.
In men, the skin of the scrotum thickens, the scortal sac tenses, and the scrotum is pulled up and closer to the body.
For an erection to occur, several arteries must dilate, allowing a strong flow of blood into the corpora. They dilate because the smooth muscle surrounding the arteries relaxes.
At the same time, the veins carrying blood away from the penis are compressed, restricting the outgoing blood flow.
Multiple neurotransmitters are involved in this process
Vasoconstriction makes an erection go away.
An important response of females in the excitement phase is lubrication of the vagina.
Results from vasocongestion.
During excitement, the capillaries in the walls of the vagina dilate and blood flow through them increases.
Vagina lubrication results when fluids seep through the semipermeable membranes of the vaginal walls, producing lubrication as a result of vasocongestion in the tissues surrounding the vagina.
Lubrication begins 10 to 30 seconds after the onset of arousing stimuli.
Can be affected by
Orgasmic platform: a tightening of the entrance to the vagina caused by contractions of the bulbospongiosus muscle (which covers the vestibular bulbs) that occur during the excitement stage of sexual response.
During the excitement phaser, the glans of the clitoris (the tip) swells.
This results form engorgement of its corpora cavernosa.
The crura of the clitoris also
Sexology
Chapter 9
Sexuality and the life cycle: childhood and adolescence
Lifespan development: development from birth through old age.
Scientific data available on the sexual behaviour of children and adolescents
Responses on surveys may be problematic
The studies of child and adolescent sexual behaviour have mostly involved surveys, which have used either questionnaires or interviews.
Virtually no researchers have made systematic, direct observations of children’s sexual behaviour, although some have asked parents to report on their children’s sexual behaviour.
Sigmund Freud first expressed the notion that children – in fact, even infants – have sexual urges and engage in sexual behaviour.
The capacity of the human body to show a sexual response is present from birth.
Reflex erections occur in male fetus for several month before birth and vaginal lubrication has been found in baby girls in the 24 hours after birth.
The first intimate relationship that most children experience is with their mother and their fathers.
The mother-infant relationship involves a good deal of physical contact and engages the infant’s tactile, olfactory, visual, and auditory senses.
Attachment
Attachment: a psychological bond that forms between an infant and the mother, the father, or other caregiver.
The quality of attachment can be very important to the child’s capacity for later sexual and emotional relationships.
The bond begins in the hours immediately following birth and continues throughout the period of infancy.
It is facilitated by cuddling and other forms of physical contact.
Adults’ styles of romantic attachment are similar to the kinds of attachment they remember having with their parents in childhood.
Self-stimulation
Infants have been observed fondling their own genitals.
Sexology
Chapter 10
Sexuality and the life cycle: adulthood
Sexual unfolding
The process of sexual development continues into adulthood.
There is a need to solidify one’s sexual identity and orientation.
Another step toward maturity is identifying our sexual likes and dislikes and learning to communicate them to a partner.
Two more issues are important in achieving sexual maturity
The never married
The never married: adults who have never been married.
The typical person who marries spends several years in the never-married category.
Celibate: unmarried
Chaste: abstaining from sexual intercourse
Serial monogamy: being involved in tow or more sexually intimate relationships prior to marriage.
Common in adolescence.
The attitudes of never-married persons about their status vary widely.
Three types of involuntary celibates
Singleism: the stigmatizing and stereotyping of people who are not in a socially recognized couple relationship.
Predictors of remaining a virgin at age 28
Some young people plan to be celibate but not chaste.
Being single
The person who passes age 25 without getting married gradually enters a new world
Singles scene: institutions for singles that provide opportunities for meeting others.
Technology has expanded the ways in which singles can meet.
Cell phones are not only play a role in meeting and screening potential partners, they are a major by which relationships are maintained and terminated.
Most singles do not have intercourse much.
Motives and the importance of scripts in their interactions with women of men
Sexology
Chapter 11
Attraction, love, and communication
The girl next door
Our opportunities to meet people are limited by geography and time.
We tend to be more attracted to people with whom we have had contact several times than we are to people with whom we have had little contact.
Mere-exposure effect: the tendency to like a person more if we have been exposed to him or her repeatedly.
Birds of a feather
We like people who are similar to us.
We are attracted to people who are approximately the same was we are in age, race or ethnicity, and economic and social status.
Homophily: the tendency to have contact with people who are equal in social status.
We are attracted to people whose attitudes and opinions are similar to ours.
Reasons to be attracted to a person similar
Physical attractiveness
Individuals prefer partners who are more physically attractive.
This effect depends on gender to some extent.
Physical attractiveness is more important to males evaluating females than it is to females evaluating males.
Our perception of attractiveness or beauty of another person is influenced by our evaluation of their intelligence, liking, respect, and our own objective attractiveness.
This phenomenon is somewhat modified by our own feelings of personal worth.
The interpersonal marketplace
Whom we are attracted to and pair off with depends a lot on how much we think we have to offer and how much we think we can ‘buy’ with it.
Matching phenomenon: the tendency for men and women to choose as partners people who match them. Who are similar in attitudes, intelligence, and attractiveness.
Generally, the principle seems to be that:
For both men and women, the person’s physical attractiveness is highly correlated with his/her education, income, and a measure of social status.
Attractiveness in high school is associated with greater social integration and favourable treatment by teachers and classmates.
This predicts education, work, and mental health outcomes as the person becomes an adult.
From the laboratory to real life
Perceived similarity: extent to which the individual believes his or her partner is similar on important characteristics.
Both perceived and actual similarity are associated with interpersonal attraction.
Perceived similarity is more important.
The nature and importance of matching varies as relationships develop.
Each individual’s
Sexology
Chapter 12
Gender and sexuality
Gender is one of the most basic status characteristics.
Gender binary: the classification of people into on of two categories, male or female.
One of the basic ways in which societies codify this emphasis on gender is through gender roles.
Gender role: a set of norms , or culturally defined expectations, that define how people of one gender ought to behave.
Stereotype: a generalization about a group of people that distinguishes them from others.
Gender roles and ethnicity
Gender roles are a product of culture.
Intersectionality: an approach that simultaneously considers the meaning and consequences of multiple categories of identify, difference, and dis-advantage.
According to this approach, we should not consider the effects of gender in isolation.
We should consider the effects of gender, race, social class, and sexual orientation simultaneously.
African Americans
Two factors are especially important in the cultural heritage of African Americans
African American culture emphasized the collective over the individual.
Stereotypes about black women are complex and contradictory.
Black men’s sexuality also has been stereotyped.
The stereotypes tend to be negative.
These stereotypes and discrimination that results can be a source of severe stress.
Latinos
Acculturalisation: the process of incorporating the beliefs and customs of a new culture.
Mexican American culture is based on the Mexican heritage, modified through acculturalsation to incorporate Anglo components.
The family is the central focus of Hispanic life.
In traditional Latin American cultures, gender roles are sharply defined.
Asian Americans
The cultural values of Asian Americans are in some ways consistent with white middle-class American values.
The sexuality of Asian Americans is stereotyped.
The Asian American women has been stereotyped as a sex toy.
American Indians
Some Indian tribes had relatively egalitarian gender roles.
The process of acculturation hand adaptation to Anglo society seems to have resulted in increased male dominance.
Socialization
Socialization: the ways in which society conveys to the individual its norms or expectations for his or her behaviour.
Occurs especially in childhood, as children are taught to behave as they will be expected to in adulthood.
Sexology
Chapter 13
Sexual orientation: Gay, Straight, or Bi?
Sexual orientation: a person’s erotic and emotional orientation toward members of his or own gender or members of the other gender.
Homosexual: a person whose sexual orientation is toward members of the same gender
Heterosexual: a person whose sexual orientation is toward members of the other gender.
Bisexual: a person whose sexual orientation is toward both men and women.
Queer:a self-label used by some LGBs, as well as by some heterosexuals who prefer unusual sexual practices.
Your sexual orientation has implications for the attitudes people have toward you.
Heteronormativity: the belief that heterosexuality is the norm.
Attitudes
Many Americans disapprove of homosexuality.
The gay liberation movement has a slow effect on changing the negative attitudes.
Homophobia: a strong, irrational fear of homosexuals; negative attitudes and reactions to homosexuals.
Antigay prejudice: negative attitudes and behaviours toward gays and lesbians.
Heterosexism: the belief that everyone is heterosexual and that heterosexuality is the norm.
Some prejudice is subtle.
The most extreme expressions of anti gay prejudice occur in hate crimes against LGBs.
Hate crimes against and harassment of sexual minority individuals are common whether physical, emotional, or sexual.
These incidents exact a psychological toll.
In previous decades there were almost no portrayals of gays, so they were invisible in the mass media.
There are now more representations of sexual minorities.
This has mixed results.
Gays and lesbians as a minority group
Like members of other minority groups, LGB people suffer from job discrimination.
Discrimination goes hand in hand with stereotypes.
LGBs, unlike other minorities, can hide their status.
There is a wide variety of experiences.
One of the most important aspects of this variability is whether the person is covert (in the closet) or overt (out of the closet) about his or her homosexuality.
The lifestyle of gay men differs somewhat from that of lesbians, as a result of the different roles assigned to males and females in our society.
There is more discrimination against gay men than
Sexology
Chapter 14
Variations in sexual behaviour
Defining abnormal
Sexual behaviour varies greatly from one culture to the next.
There is a corresponding variation in what is considered to be abnormal.
Statistical definition
An abnormal sexual behaviour is one that is rare.
This definition does not give us insight into the psychological or social functioning of the person.
Sociological approach
A behaviour that violence the norms of society.
Psychological approach
The three criteria of abnormality are discomfort, inefficiency and bizarreness.
Medical approach
Exemplified by the definitions included in the DSM-V.
Paraphilia: intense and persistent unconventional sexual interest.
The normal-abnormal continuum
There is a continuum from normal to abnormal sexual behaviour.
This continuum holds for many of the sexual variations.
Fetishism: a person’s sexual fixation on some object other than another human being and attachment of great erotic significance to that object.
A fetishistic disorder: sexual fantasies, urges, or behaviours involving the use of non-living objects to produce or enhance sexual arousal with or in the absence of a partner, over a period of at least 6 months and causing significant distress.
Inanimate-object fetishes can be roughly divided into two categories
Why do people develop fetishes?
Psychologists are not sure what causes fetishes to develop.
Three theoretical explanations
Fetishism typically develops early in life.
Cross-dressing: dressing as a member of the other gender.
Sexology
Chapter 15
Sexual coercion
Rape: non-consenting oral, anal, or vaginal penetration obtained by force, by threat of force, or when the victim is incapable of giving consent.
Most statistics find that a woman’s lifetime risk of being raped is between 18 and 25 percent.
The impact of rape
Women who experience rape are more likely to show several types of psychological distress
People who have experienced a terrifying event form a memory schema that involves information about the situation and their responses to it.
Because the schema is large, many cues can trigger it and thereby evoke the feelings of terror that occurred at the time.
The schema is probably activated at some level all the time.
The consequences can be far reaching and long lasting.
Most women who experience a sexual assault have negative psychological reactions immediately afterwards.
Many show significant recovery within a year.
A number of factors are associated with worse psychological outcomes
Psychotherapeutic treatments for PTSD are available and they are successful in treating rape survivors.
Some women experience self-blame.
Self-blame is linked to worse long-term psychological outcomes.
Damage to women’s physical health that may result from rape
Rape affects many people besides the victim.
Most women routinely do a number of things that stem from rape fears.
Most women experience the fear of rape, if not rape itself, and this fear restricts their activities.
Spouses or partners of victims may be profoundly affected.
At the same time, they can provide important support.
Not everyone who experiences a serious traumatic event develops PTSD.
Posttraumatic growth: positive life changes and psychological development following exposure to trauma.
Date rape
Date rape is one of the most common forms of rape, especially on college campuses.
In some cases, date rape seems to result from male-female miscommunication.
Marital rape
Marital
.....read moreSexology
Chapter 16
Sex for sale
Prostitutes/commercial sex workers: people who engage in sexual acts in return for payment and do so in a promiscuous, fairly non-discriminating fashion.
Venues for sex work
There are a number of settings or venues in which commercial sexual activity occurs.
The nature of the venue or social/sexual context influences the type of sex worker and client found, the activity that occurs, and its associated risks.
Call girl: the most expensive and exclusive category of prostitutes.
Works out of her own residence, making appointments with clients by a landline, cell phone or online.
Has heavy business expenses.
May have a number of regular customers and may accept new clients only on referral.
She can exercise close control over whom she sees and her schedule.
She usually sees clients in her residence.
She often provides an illusion of intimacy and may provide other services (like accompanying to business and social gatherings).
Brothel: a house of prostitution where prostitutes and customers meet for sexual activity.
In-call services:a residence in which prostitutes work regular shifts, selling sexual services on an hourly basis.
The sexual worker has generally less autonomy than a call girl.
There is usually a manager or madam who determines the conditions of work and the fees to be charged and who collects a substantial percentage of each fee.
Less choice of clients.
Massage parlor: a place where massages, as well as sexual services, can generally be purchased.
Some provide legitimate massage therapy.
Vary greatly in décor and price.
Out-call service: a service that sends a prostitute or sex worker to a location specified by the client to provide sexual services.
Streetwalker: a lower-status prostitute or sex worker who walks the streets selling sexual services.
Generally less attractive and less fashionably dressed than the call girl, and also charges less.
More likely to impose strict time constraints on the customer.
Little control over the condition in which they work, so greater risk.
Strip club: a bar or business that provides (almost) nude dancers and sexualized interactions, not necessarily physical sexual contact.
Exist along a continuum.
The internet and cell phones have had a major impact on the delivery of commercial sexual services.
The same person may work in several different venues over time.
The role of third parties
Pimp: a prostitute’s companion, protector and master.
If she has a pimp, she supports him with her earnings, and in return he may provide her with companionship and sex, bail her out of jail, an provide her with feed, shelter, clothing, and drugs.
May provide protection.
But may also abuse her.
Madam: a woman who manages a
.....read moreSexology
Chapter 17
Sexual disorders and sex therapy
Sexual disorders cause a great deal of psychological distress to the individuals troubled by them and to their partners.
Sexual disorder: a problem with sexual response that causes a person mental distress.
This is a continuum.
Desire disorders
Sexual desire: an interest in sexual activity, leading the individual to seek out sexual activity or to be pleasurably receptive to it.
Hypoactive sexual desire (HSD): a sexual disorder in which there is a lack of interest in sexual activity.
Found in both men and women.
Too little sexual desire is the most common sexual issue reported by women.
But, there are also many circumstances when it is normal for a person’s desire to be inhibited.
The problem is not the individual’s absolute level of sexual desire but a discrepancy between the partners’ levels.
Discrepancy of sexual desire: a sexual disorder in which the partners have considerably different levels of sexual desire.
Female sexual interest/arousal disorder: a diagnosis in the DSM-V that encompasses lack of interest in sexual activity and absent or reduced arousal during sexual interactions.
The diagnosis is limited to women.
Arousal disorders
Female sexual arousal disorder
Female sexual arousal disorder: a sexual disorder in which there is a lack of response to sexual stimulation, including lack of lubrication.
Involves both a subjective, psychological component and a physiological element.
Problems with lubrication become more frequent after menopause.
Erectile disorder
Erectile disorder: the inability to have or maintain an erection.
One result is that the man cannot engage in sexual intercourse.
Psychological reactions to erectile disorder may be severe.
Orgasmic disorders
Premature ejaculation
Premature ejaculation (PE): a sexual disorder in which the man ejaculates too soon and thinks he cannot control when he ejaculates.
In practice it is difficult to specify when a man is a premature ejactulator.
A common problem
.....read moreSexology
Chapter 18
Sexually transmitted infections
Bacterial infections can be cured by antibiotics.
Viral infections cannot be cured, but they can be treated to reduce symptoms.
Chlamydia trachomatis: a bacterium that is spread by sexual contact and infects the genital organ of both males and females.
Symptoms
Treatment
Chlamydia is quite curable.
Treated with axithromycin or doxycycline.
Poorly treated or undiagnosed cases may lead to a number of complications
Prevention
Until a vaccine is available, the most effective tools for prevention is screening.
On individual level, the best way of prevention is the consistent use of a condom.
HPV: human papillomavirus, the virus that causes cervical cancer.
Genital warts: a sexually transmitted infection causing warts on the genitals.
Typically appear 3 to 8 months after intercourse with an infected person.
The majority of people infected with HPV are asymptomatic.
Oral sex can transmit HPV.
Diagnosis
A DNA test can be run on a sample of cells from the cervix to detect the types that are linked to genital cancers.
For warts, diagnosis can be made by inspecting the warts.
But warts are not always produced or visible.
Treatment
Several treatments for genital warts are available.
Chemicals can be applied directly to the warts. Typically this have to be repeated several times, and the warts then fall off.
With cryotherapy the warts are frozen off.
Drugs can be applied.
Many cases of HPV infection go away on their own, but others persist for long periods.
Vaccine
A vaccination against cervical cancer.
Genital herpes: a sexually transmitted infection, the symptoms of which are small, painful bumps or blisters on the genitals.
The great majority is asymptomatic and do not know they are infected.
These persons transmit the disease unknowingly.
Symptoms
Small, painful bumps or blisters on the genitals.
Typically appear within 2 or 3 weeks of infection.
Fever, painful urination, and headaches may occur.
The blisters heal on their own in about 3 weeks in the fist episode of infection.
But the virus continues to live in the body
Sexology
Chapter 19
Ethics, religion, and sexuality
Ethics: a system of moral principles; a ways of determining right and wrong.
Religion is a source of values, attitudes, and ethics.
For believers, religion sets forth an ethical code and provides sanctions that motivate them to obey the rules.
When a particular religion is practices by many people in a society, it helps create a culture, which then influences even those who do not accept the religion.
Hedonism: a moral system based on maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain.
Asceticism: an approach to life emphasizing discipline and impulse control.
Legalism: ethics based on the assumption that there are rules for human conduct and that morality consists of knowing the rules and obeying them.
Situationism: ethics based on the assumption that there are no absolute rules, or at least very few, and that each situation must be judged individually.
Classical Greek philosophy
While nothing in Greek culture rejected sex as evil, the great philosophers did develop a kind of asceticism.
They thought that virtue resulted from wisdom.
To achieve wisdom and cultivate virtue, violent passions must be avoided, and these might well include sex.
Plate believed that love led toward immortality and was therefore a good thing.
But this kind of love was mainly intellectual and more like friendship than sexuality.
Pederasty: sex between an older man and a younger man, or a boy.
Approved especially among the warrior class.
The older man was to serve as the younger one’s teacher and model of courage and virtue.
Ataraxia: a tranquil state between pleasure and pain in which the mind is unaffected by emotion.
Sex was not necessarily seen as evil, but as less important than wisdom and virtue.
Judaism
The basis for Judaism are the old testament of the bible.
The view of sexuality in the Hebrew scriptures is fundamentally positive.
Human sexual differentiation is an integral part of creation, which God calls ‘good’.
Judaism sees sexuality as a gift to be used responsibly and in obedience to God’s will, never as something evil in itself.
The command to marry and to procreate within marriage is clear.
Three themes of sexuality
Fertility cult:a
.....read moreThis is a magazine about Sexology.
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