Women Are Still Penalized for Having More Sexual Partners
New research finds that the sexual double standard persists.
psmag.com
The researchers recruited 4,455 participants via Amazon's Mechanical Turk website who were told they would take part in a study into their "perceptions of others." The team restricted participation to people ages 18 to 35, reasoning that the sexual double standard—in which men are rewarded for sexual activity, while women are punished—would be particularly relevant for young adults.
Each participant was directed "to think about either one male or one female friend or acquaintance whom they (a) knew in their real life, and (b) had information about their sexual history."
Subjects then responded to 20 statements about this person, which evaluated them in terms of their values, success, intelligence, and likability.
Finally, they described the nature of their relationship with the person they were evaluating, and noted "how many people they thought the target individual had engaged in sexual intercourse with."
The results showed a clear pattern. Women were "increasingly derogated as the number of sexual partners increased," but men were not. This pattern held whether the people doing the judging were male or female.
"The sexual double standard was more pronounced as participants' certainty about the target's number of sexual partners increased," the researchers report. Still, the impact of this confidence was very small, meaning that women were judged more harshly even if the participants were relying on rumors or speculation.
Thoughts?