Chloe Brookes
Research Mentor(s): Terri Conley
Department or Program: Psychology, Women’s and Gender Studies
Authors: Chloe Brookes, T. Ariel Yang, Terri D. Conley
Session: Session 1: 12:00pm-12:50pm
Poster: 15
Abstract
Women are classified as enjoying and accepting casual sex less than men, and in our project, we hope to better understand and classify the components that contribute to this phenomenon. In regards to accepting casual sex offers, past studies have attributed the difference between men and women to evolutionary and biological assumptions: men inherently having higher sex drives, women being harder to please, or women’s inability to remain emotionally detached in casual sex settings. Lack of evidence in validating these assumptions drives this project to explore why the acceptance of casual sex differs between men and women beyond the evolutionary and biological assumptions that have for too long dominated the conversation (Piemonte, Conley, and Gusakova, 2019). This study aims to determine if, rather, the anticipation of orgasm (perceived enjoyment of a sexual opportunity) will erase the gender differences in the acceptance of casual sex offers. No study before has linked the orgasm gap between men and women to the lack of female enjoyment in casual sex. To collect our data, men and women were asked to envision and answer a series of questions regarding a potential casual sex scenario with a potential match from their preferred dating app. After collecting data from men and women, we hypothesize that an ANOVA will show a relationship between gender and anticipation of orgasm. We expect results to show that controlling for anticipation of orgasm will render gender insignificant. With our data, we hope to prove that anticipation of orgasm is a viable factor that can contribute to gender differences in the desire to pursue casual sex. This finding would address a misattribution of this gender difference to biology rather than societal shortcomings. Our fervent hope is to shed light on the current androcentric nature of casual sexual encounters–prioritizing male pleasure– and to confront head on the social scripts that perpetuate the ignorance (or disregard) of female pleasure and the framing of males as the sole desirers and, therefore, primary enjoyers of sex (Conley & Klein, 2022). This data contributes to both the fields of both Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies, advancing the outdated idea that women simply don’t want and enjoy sex as much as men.
Conley, T. D., & Klein, V. (2022). Women get worse sex: A confound in the explanation of gender differences in sexuality. Perspectives on psychological science, 17(4), 960-978.
Piemonte, J. L., Conley, T. D., & Gusakova, S. (2019). Orgasm, gender, and responses to heterosexual casual sex. Personality and Individual Differences, 151, 109487.
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