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P1: FNN Archives of Sexual Behavior [asb]

PL186-228369

October 21, 2000

17:7

Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2001

Sadomasochistically Oriented Behavior: Diversity in Practice and Meaning1 Laurence Alison, Ph.D.,2,4 Pekka Santtila, Ph.D.,3 N. Kenneth Sandnabba, Ph.D.,3 and Niklas Nordling, M.Psych3

One hundred and eighty-four subjects (22 women and 162 men) who were members of two sadomasochistically oriented clubs answered a semistructured questionnaire containing items relating to a variety of sexual behaviors. Using a multivariate statistical analysis that geometrically represents the co-occurrence of individual actions as a visual array (Guttman (1954). In Lazarfeld, P. E. (ed.), Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, Free Press, Glencoe, IL.) four qualitatively different sexual scripts emerged: hypermasculinity; administration and receiving of pain; physical restriction; and psychological humiliation. Although similar themes have been suggested before, this study demonstrated their empirical base. Humiliation was significantly associated more with females and with heterosexual orientation in men, while hypermasculinity was associated with males and with homosexual orientation in men. KEY WORDS: sadomasochism; homosexuality; heterosexuality; hypermasculinity; humiliation.

INTRODUCTION The current conceptualization of sadomasochism relies on a label of convenience for a set of related sexual activities of particular subcultures (Haeberle, 1978; Katchadourian and Lunde 1972/1975). Facets include physical restriction and bondage (Baumeister, 1988) and humiliation (Baumeister, 1988; Moser and Levitt, 1987; Weinberg, 1987). Additionally, Weinberg et al. (1984), Lee (1979), and Kamel (1983) refer to a subset of behaviors commonly associated with the gay 1 Research supported by grants from the Rector of Abo ˚ Akademi University and the SETA Foundation. 2 Department

of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom. ˚ Akademi University, Finland. of Psychology, Abo 4 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZA, United Kingdom. 3 Department

1 C 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/01/0200-0001$19.50/0 °


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Alison, Santtila, Sandnabba, and Nordling

male ‘leather’ scene that, to observers, appears to be sadomasochistic in origin. These behaviors include enemas, catheters, anal fisting, and scatological practices, and are sometimes described by the subjects as displays of ‘masculinity and toughness’ (Weinberg et al., 1984, p. 387). The evidence for these facets of pain, restriction, and humiliation and Weinberg et al.’s identification of hypermasculinity (Weinberg et al., 1984) as being related sets of actions remains speculative because there have, to date, been no correlative studies examining the notionally related facets of these groups of sexual behaviors. That is, are the behaviors associated with each of these suggested facets more empirically interrelated with one another than with behaviors of the other facets? Or, more specifically, are there subsets of, for example, physically restrictive acts (handcuffs, straitjackets, use of chains) or pain creating actions (skinbranding, caning, spanking) that are empirically related? This would provide empirical support for the existence of distinct themes within sadomasochistic sexual behavior. The present study sought not to identify these sets of actions as defining of sadomasochism but rather to map out the empirical relationships between the individual acts performed by individuals engaged in the sadomasochistic subculture. The concern was to establish the extent to which individual actions bear an empirical relationship to one another. It is therefore important to bear in mind that while these sets of actions are commonly considered to be sadomasochistic and therefore take on the connotation of ‘describing’ sadomasochists, they are actually a set of descriptions about subsets of interactions that occur between individuals engaged in a variety of behaviors. For example, in Weinberg et al.’s exploration (Weinberg et al., 1984) of the ‘leather’ scene subjects engaged in dressing up in leather, using chains and analy fisting did not consider themselves sadomasochists. Similarly, previous studies have not taken account of the potential preferences that may exist for individuals in engaging in one facet (i.e., the administration or receiving of pain) over another facet (i.e., humiliation). One possibility is that individuals would only engage in a limited set of behaviors and not in others suggesting that sadomasochism is in fact a label for a number of independent phenomena. Another possibility is that individuals emphasize a particular set of behaviors but also engage in other behaviors to a more limited extent. This would suggest that it makes sense to conceptualize sadomasochism as a distinct phenomenon. Also, there have been no investigations exploring whether a preference for one facet over another is related to the sex and the sexual orientation of the subjects, and whether there is a preference for the ‘sadistic’ or the ‘masochistic’ partner to engage in one facet more than any other. Finally, the reasons for an individual developing a preference for a particular set of sadomasochistic sexual behaviors has not been thoroughly clarified. In fact, some recent studies (Nordling et al., 2000; Santtila et al., accepted) have shown evidence for associations between childhood experiences and aspects of sadomasochistic behavior whereas the importance of an ongoing process of adult


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Sadomasochistically Oriented Behavior: Diversity in Practice and Meaning

3

socialization has been stressed by more sociologically oriented researchers. Weinberg et al. (1984) criticized traditional models for ignoring the sadomasochistic subculture. According to them, this subculture provides opportunities for persons to define and elaborate their sexual activities. Also, the finding that the sexual activity that occurs in a sadomasochistic scene is often, but not always, scripted and therefore collaborative (Weinberg, 1987), suggests that individual sexual repertoires are socially constructed. An attempt was made in the present study to explore whether the extent to which the subjects were integrated into the sadomasochistic scene (defined as the frequency of sadomasochistic sessions and involvement with pornographic material of a similar nature) would predict the flexibility of their sexual repertoires within each of the suggested sadomasochistic subthemes. In summary, we were interested in establishing what evidence existed for identifying the facets of sadomasochism previously referred to by others (physical restriction, administration and receiving of pain and psychological and physical humiliation as well as hypermasculinity), the potential relationship that these domains may have with other factors in the individuals’ lives as well as the extent to which the degree of involvement in the sadomasochistic subculture would predict the flexibility of the subjects’ sexual repertoires. It was expected that female subjects would be more likely to engage in behaviors related to humiliation (Messman and Long, 1996) whereas gay male subjects would report more behaviors related to hypermasculinity (Weinberg et al., 1984).

METHOD Subjects One hundred and eighty-four subjects (22 women and 162 men) who were members of two sadomasochistically oriented clubs participated in this study (two subjects were discarded due to lack of responses on questions related to specific sexual behaviors). Ninety-five were recruited from Kinky Club, a club for mainly heterosexual people with a variety of sexual preferences. Ninety-one subjects were recruited from the MSC-Finland association with mainly gay male members. Of the subjects, 43.0% reported being mainly heterosexual, 5.4% bisexual, and 51.6% mainly homosexual. Of all subjects, 27.0% identified themselves as mainly sadistic, 22.7% as both sadistic and masochistic, and 50.2% as mainly masochistic in their sadomasochistic behavior. Subjects were highly educated (over a third had a university degree). They also had a higher income level than the population in general (Statistical Yearbook of Finland, 1993) with half having a monthly income of more than 2000 US dollars. This study group, as with others previously explored (Baumeister, 1988; Spengler, 1977; Weinberg, 1987) is suggestive of a group of subjects who are not psychologically disturbed or dysfunctional but are rather better educated and in a


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generally higher earning bracket than the general population. (For more details on the demographic and sexual characteristics of the males in the study group, see Sandnabba et al., 1999). Materials The Questionnaire Information selected for this study was taken from a larger survey conducted by Sandnabba et al. (1999) in which the authors were investigating the social adaptation and variety of sexual behaviors of sadomasochists. The original questionnaire was designed as a descriptive analysis of the range of behaviors that sadomasochists indulged in and as a descriptive analysis of the study group. For the purposes of the present study the focus was upon the set of activities engaged in and the empirical relationships between them. Concentration was therefore upon elements of behavior within sadomasochistic encounters. This included items pertaining to the various practices of the subjects on a dichotomous basis, that is, had they indulged in a particular behavior at any point during the last 12 months. This list included a number of activities previously listed in studies on the behavior of individuals in the sadomasochistic scene. Additionally, questions (other than the demographic information already outlined) were asked regarding the number of sadomasochistic sessions during the preceding year and the extent to which the subjects had acquired sadomasochistic pornographic magazines during the same time period for the purpose of exploring any relationships between these variables and the sadomasochistic behaviors of the subjects. Statistical Analysis: SSA Based on the joint co-occurrence of behaviors, the 184 questionnaires were analyzed using Smallest Space Analysis (SSA). SSA is a nonmetric multidimensional scaling procedure that represents the associations between variables as the inverse of distances in a statistically derived geometric space—the greater the similarity between two variables the greater their proximity in the corresponding space (Guttman, 1968). SSA is based upon the assumption that the underlying structure of complex behavioral systems is most readily appreciated if the relationship between each and every other variable is examined (Canter and Heritage, 1990). The SSA-I program computes association coefficients between all variables and rank orders them, creating a triangular matrix consisting of association coefficients for each variable against every other variable. It is these rank ordered coefficients, rather than their absolute values that are used to form the spatial representation of variables. By using these rank ordered coefficients, SSA is able to represent the variables in the smallest possible dimensionality.


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5

To find an optimal representation of the variables, SSA-I performs iterations that compare the rank order assigned to the original associations with the rank order of the distances between points in the plot (which the program calculates from a derived association matrix). With each iteration, adjustments are made to the geometric representation in an attempt to minimize the difference between the plot and the original association matrix. The closer the two sets of rank orders are, the better the fit. These iterations continue until the difference between these two matrices is at a minimum. The degree of fit between the geometric representation and the original input similarity data is indicated by Guttman’s coefficient of alienation (Guttman, 1968). The coefficient of alienation ranges from 0 (indicating a perfect fit) to 1. A coefficient of .20–.25 is considered a reasonably good degree of fit (Shye et al., 1994). The resulting configuration of points in the SSA is based solely upon the relationships among variables. Therefore, these points can be examined directly without assuming underlying dimensions as in factor analysis (Canter and Heritage, 1990). Classifying variables through an examination of the regional structure in an SSA is part of an approach to research known as facet theory (Canter, 1985). The elements of ‘facets’ in this case refer to the overall classification of behaviors into ‘types’ (i.e., hypermasculinity, administration of pain, humiliation, and physical restriction). The spatial contiguity of the variables representing these facet elements provides a test of the major underlying differences among these variables as revealed through their co-occurrence in sadomasochistic behaviors, and is therefore a test as to whether the facet structure is empirically supported (Canter et al., 1998). The postulation of facet elements goes beyond simply saying that behaviors belong in particular ‘groups.’ The principle of contiguity states that, “. . . variables which are more similar in their facet structure will also be more related empirically” (Foa, 1965, p. 264). Therefore, variables that share the same facet elements would be more highly correlated and thus should appear closer together in the multidimensional space. This idea can be extended as a general, regional hypothesis. Basically, items that have facet elements in common will be found in the same region of space. Likewise, variables that have very low intercorrelations will appear in different regions of the plot indicating dissimilarity. For further elaboration of the technique, the range of applied fields within which it has been used, and its strengths and weaknesses see Canter (1983), Elizur and Sagie (1999), Guttman (1954), and Shye et al. (1994). RESULTS A two-dimensional solution was employed to represent the association matrix, where the coefficient of alienation was .27. This is a reasonably high coefficient indicating that the fit between the representation and the actual ranked associations


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was not particularly good. However, as Shye (1994, p. 125) states in the past it has been customary to attempt SSA solutions of increased dimensionality whenever the coefficient was considered high . . . This procedure has, however, been found lacking both on technical and on theoretical grounds [since] the coefficient of alienation is sensitive to the number of items processed.

Although our results suggest that the geometric output is not a perfect representation of the variables, the two-dimensional arrangement of variables did approximate the conceptual system of sadomasochism as hypothesized in previous work (Baumeister, 1988; Messman and Long, 1996; Moser and Levitt, 1987; Weinberg et al., 1984). Moreover, employment of a three-dimensional representation did not significantly lower the coefficient of alienation, nor, more importantly did it change the first (two-dimensional configuration) projection of the points. Thus, whilst higher dimensional models may reveal other, more subtle nuances of this set of sexual activities, the two-dimensional model does reflect an interpretable, conceptually and empirically supported model. As Shye (1994, p. 126) states that, “If a regional contiguity pattern in a two-dimensional solution conforms well to a content facet formulated in advance and if evidence for this conformity is accumulated, the purpose of theory construction has been achieved.” Figure 1 therefore shows the projection of the two-dimensional space. Table I displays the behaviors (and frequency of occurrence) separated into the hypothesized polar regions along with their associated Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. These ranged from .71 (humiliation) to .78 (administration of pain) and while not indicative of perfect scales of behavior are reasonably high given, in some of the regions, the relatively small number of items (i.e., only 5 items in humiliation). It is important, however, not to consider these as discrete regions, but rather as a polarizing spectrum of gradual change around the midpoint intersection of all the regions. Thus, cusp variables such as wrestling and bondage in the physical restriction region are associated relatively more with their adjacent hypermasculine region than with mummification, which lies near the cusp of its Table I. The Frequency of the Sexual Behaviors in the Different Regions of the SSA Space with Associated Cronbach’s α Coefficients Hypermasculinity (N = 8, α = .75) Rimming Dildo Cockbinding Watersports Enema Fistfucking Scatologia Catheter

% 77.5 70.2 68.3 50.6 42.7 32.9 18.2 10.4

Administration of pain (N = 7, α = .78)

%

Clothspins Spanking Caning Weights Hot wax Electricity Skinbranding

67.6 64.0 50.7 41.5 34.8 16.4 15.8

Humiliation (N = 5, α = .72)

%

Flagellation Verbal humiliation Gag Faceslapping Knives

81.8 70.1 53.0 37.2 10.9

Physical restriction (N = 9, α = .75)

%

Bondage Handcuffs Chains Wrestle Slings Ice Straitjacket Hypoxyphilia Mummifying

88.4 73.2 70.8 45.1 39.0 31.7 17.0 16.5 13.4


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7

Fig. 1. A two-dimensional Smallest Space Analysis of sadomasochistic behaviors in a sample of 184 subjects.

contiguous set of related variables in the humiliation region. This visual map of the correlation matrix, therefore, reveals evidence of a circular ordering of the variables from hypermasculine, through to the administration of pain, to humiliation, physical restriction and back, full circle to hypermasculine. This also suggests that sadomasochism can be conceptualized as a set of interrelated behaviors where individuals give different emphases to particular themes rather than it being a label of convenience for a number of independent phenomena. To establish whether there were relationships between the subjects’ sex, sexual orientation, and sadomasochistic preference and any of the themes, summary variables reflecting the number of behaviors present in the separate regions of the plot were formed. Thereafter, any differences between the male and female subjects and between the predominantly and exclusively heterosexual male and predominantly and exclusively gay male subjects (bisexual subjects were discarded


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Alison, Santtila, Sandnabba, and Nordling Table II. Number of Sexual Behaviors in the Different Regions of the SSA Space in Groups of Gay Male and Heterosexual Male Subjects and in Groups of Sadistic and Masochistic Subjects Heterosexual (N = 64)

Gay male (N = 89)

Sadistic (N = 42)

Masochistic (N = 80)

Region

M

SD

M

SD

M

SD

M

SD

Hypermasculinity Administration of pain Humiliation Physical restriction

3.17 3.09 2.88 3.91

2.17 2.15 1.32 2.24

4.03 2.74 2.28 3.97

1.95 1.99 1.46 2.11

3.40 2.55 2.40 3.81

2.07 1.99 1.50 2.27

4.05 3.16 2.64 4.02

2.04 2.11 1.49 2.32

from this analysis) and also between the predominantly and exclusively sadistic male and predominantly and exclusively masochistic male (flexible subjects were discarded from this analysis) were explored using the Student’s t-test. (Only male subjects were included in the two latter analyses due to the low number of female subjects in the study group). Female subjects engaged in significantly more of the behaviors in the humiliation region (M = 3.14, SD = 1.70) compared to male subjects (M = 2.56, SD = 1.46), t(182) = 1.70, p < .05, whereas the male subjects engaged in more of the behaviors in the hypermasculinity region (M = 3.75, SD = 2.14) compared to female subjects (M = 2.50, SD = 1.90), t(182) = 2.62, p < .01. The means and standard deviations for the other analyses are presented in Table II. There were significant differences between the hetero- and gay male subjects in terms of their involvement in the hypermasculinity and humiliation regions. As expected, the gay male subjects were more likely to engage in a larger number of the behaviors of the hypermasculinity region (t(151) = 2.57, p < .01) compared to the heterosexual male subjects whereas the latter were more likely to engage in a larger number of humiliation behaviors (t(151) = 2.59, p < .01). In terms of the sadomasochistic preference, there were nonsignificant tendencies for the masochistic male subjects to have engaged in a larger number of behaviors in both the hypermasculinity (t(120) = 1.65, p < .10) and the administration of pain (t(120) = 1.56, p < .12) regions compared to the sadistic male subjects. Next, Pearson’s correlation coefficients were computed between the variables indicating the subjects’ involvement in the sadomasochistic subculture (number of sadomasochistic sessions, use of sadomasochistic pornography) and the number of sexual behaviors within the different regions that the subjects had engaged in during the preceding year (see Table III). As expected, positive and significant associations could be observed. However, the absolute values of the coefficients were not particularly impressive. DISCUSSION Our results are encouraging in supporting previous references to various facets of sadomasochistically oriented behavior. At a broad level, these appear to take


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Table III. Correlations Between Measures of Involvement in Sadomasochistic Subculture and the Number of Behaviors Engaged in the Different Regions of the SSA Space Number of behaviors engaged in the different regions Hypermasculinity Administration of pain Humiliation Physical restriction ∗p

Number of sadomasochistic sessions

Use of sadomasochistic pornographic material

.24∗∗∗ .23∗∗ .18∗ .10

.19∗∗ .24∗∗∗ .21∗∗ .19∗∗

< .05; ∗∗ p < .01; ∗∗∗ p < .001.

on different functions for men and women on the one hand and gay men and heterosexual men on the other. The female subjects significantly preferred themes associated with humiliation whereas the male subjects were more likely to engage in themes related to hypermasculinity. In other words, at opposing poles lie the facets of hypermasculinity and humiliation and in adjacent regions lie the physical aspects of restriction and the administration of pain. Elements of humiliation are significantly preferred by the women and by the heterosexual males in the study group and were revealed in the correspondence between faceslapping, flagellation, the use of a gag, the use of knives and razors, and verbal humiliation. Thus, actions significantly preferred especially by the gay men involved rimming; watersports; cockbinding; fistfucking; scatologia; and the use of dildos, enemas, and catheters. We would suggest that adjacent facets (restriction and pain) to these two regions can take on rather different meanings for each group but are important components of the full picture of sadomasochistic behavior. Our results confirmed that the following acts were associated with one another: subjecting individuals to (sadistic component) or receiving (masochistic component) electric shocks, skinbranding, caning, spanking, the use of hot wax, clothespins, and the use of weights. It is perhaps significant that the more extreme and intense of these experiences (skinbranding and electrocution) are located nearer the hypermasculine region, whereas spanking and caning appear next to the humiliation region. This may be suggestive of subtle variations in the context within which pain is administered and received and the meaning that it has for the different subjects and, potentially, for different sexes and for different sexual orientations. For example, as noted in Lee (1979), Kamel (1983), and Weinberg et al.’s examinations (Weinberg et al., 1984) of the gay ‘leather’ scene an emphasis is placed either upon the masculinity of the activities involved and/or the extent to which the bruises and welts received represent a ‘sign of love and/or surrender’ (Weinberg et al., 1984, p. 387). In contrast, the caning and spanking aspects of pain administration and reception may be more indicative of the associated facet of humiliation and the adoption of a set of activities associated with the ‘illusion of violence’ (Weinberg and Kamel, 1983). As Gebhard (1969) points out, individuals involved in the heterosexual sadomasochistic scene rarely highlight pain as a central facet. As Califia (1979, p. 21) points out, “The basic dynamic of S and M


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is a power dichotomy, not pain.” Our results suggest that the administration and receiving of pain may take on rather different meanings depending upon the context within which it is received and, of course, depending upon the intensity of the sensation delivered/experienced. In other words, pain may, for some individuals, be rather more literal (hypermasculine) than be symbolic (humiliation). Secondly, reference has been made to the physically restrictive acts associated with sadomasochistic practices. Bondage; mummification; hypoxyphilia; the use of straitjackets, chains, handcuffs, slings and ice, as well as wrestling with one’s partner were all located in this region. Significantly, however, bondage, hypoxyphilia, and wrestling are adjacent to the hypermasculinity region whereas mummification, straitjackets, chains, and handcuffs are adjacent to the humiliation region. Once again, this emphasizes the potentially different psychological symbolism of different aspects of restriction for different parties. The advantage of the multivariate scaling analysis presented here is that it represents the relationships between each and every variable and thus allows for refinements and more subtle developments of hypotheses regarding the nature of the domain under investigation. Thus, these findings are not definitive but rather generative of more refined hypotheses regarding associations of particular actions. Subsequent studies could follow up the extent to which different individuals draw upon facets of pain and restriction in order to heighten the intensity of their experiences. This contextualizing of these components clearly has significant psychological meaning for the acting out of the subjects of this particular group but of course, whether this is a generalizable finding to other sadomasochistic groups remains open to question. The particular structure here may be indicative of differences between the styles of the clubs examined rather than between the sexuality of the subjects. Subsequent work would need to clarify this issue and explore a range of homo- and heterosexual-oriented clubs to explore whether the differences established here are an artifact of the club rather than an association with an individual’s sexual preferences. The subjects’ involvement in the sadomasochistic subculture through sexual contacts and pornography was positively associated with greater variability in their sexual behavior. Although the design of the study does not warrant any causal conclusions, the results imply that sadomasochistic behavior is best understood as a product of adult socialization processes where real or imagined sexual contact leads the subjects to adopt new behaviors and sexual scripts. This finding accords well with social constructionistic explanations of sexual behavior (Weinberg, 1987; Weinberg et al., 1984). In this study group, results suggest that for the gay male group the administration and reception of pain was a more intense and real perception and that the symbolic representation of pain was more important for the women and the heterosexual men. Similarly, the restrictive acts in this particular heterosexual group appear to have a more symbolically humiliating association than the more physically intense aspects of restriction located nearer to the hypermasculinity


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region preferred by the gay male subjects. The subtleties of the meanings of these actions, however, will remain speculative until further research is able to explore how individuals employ these facets within their own particular context. This may mean that the outcome of our study provides the basis for developing interviewing protocols or surveys that will help capture the meaning that restriction, pain, humiliation, and masculinization takes on for different subsets of the sadomasochistic population.

REFERENCES Baumeister, R. F. (1988). Masochism as escape from self. J. Sex Res. 25: 28–59. Califia, P. (1979, December 17). A secret side of lesbian sexuality. Advocate: 19–23. Canter, D. V. (1983). The potential of facet theory for applied social psychology. Quality and Quantity, 17: 35–67. Canter, D. V. (ed.). (1985). Facet Theory: Approaches to Social Research, Springer, New York. Canter, D. V., and Heritage, R. (1990). A multivariate model of sexual offense behavior: Developments in ‘offender profiling.’ J. Forensic Psychiat. 1: 185–212. Canter, D. V., Hughes, D., and Kirby, S. (1998). Pedophilia: Pathology, criminality or both? The development of a multivariate model of offense behavior in child sexual abuse. J. Forensic Psychiat. 9: 532–555. Elizur, D., and Sagie, A. (1999). Facets of personal values: A structural analysis of life and work values. Appl. Psychol: Int. Rev. 48: 73–87. Foa, U. G. (1965). New Developments in facet design and analysis. Psychol. Rev. 72: 262–274. Gebhard, P. (1969). Fetishism and sadomasochism. In Masserman, J. H. (ed.), Dynamics of Deviant Sexuality, Grune and Stratton, New York, pp. 71–80. Guttman, L. (1954). A new approach to factor analysis: The circle. In Lazarfeld, P. E. (ed.), Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Guttman, L. (1968). A general nonmetric technique for finding the smallest co-ordinate space for a configuration of points. Psychometrika 33: 469–506. Haeberle, E. (1978). The Sex Atlas, Seabury Press, New York. Kamel, G. W. L. (1983). The leather career: On becoming a sadomasochist. In Weinberg, T. and Kamel, G. W. L. (eds.), S and M: Studies in Sadomasochism, Prometheus, Buffalo, NY, pp. 73–79. Katchadourian, H., and Lunde, D. (1975). Fundamentals of Human Sexuality, 2nd Ed., Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Lee, J. A. (1979). The social organization of sexual risk. Alternative Lifestyles 2: 69–100. Messman, T. L., and Long, P. S. (1996). Child sexual abuse and its relationship to revictimization in adult women: A review. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 16: 397–420. Moser, C., and Levitt, E. (1987). An exploratory-descriptive study of a sadomasochistically oriented sample. J. Sex Res. 23: 322–337. Nordling, N., Sandnabba, N. K., and Santtila, P. (2000). The prevalence and effects of self-reported childhood sexual abuse among sadomasochistically oriented males and females. J. Child Sex. Abuse 9, in press. Sandnabba, N. K., Santtila, P., and Nordling, N. (1999). Sexual behavior and social adaptation among sadomasochistically-oriented males. J. Sex Res. 36: 273–282. Santtila, P., Sandnabba, N. K., and Nordling, N. (in press). Retrospective perceptions of family interaction in childhood as correlates of current sexual adaptation among sadomasochistic males. J. Psychol. Hum. Sex., in press. Shye, S., Elizur, D., and Hoffman, M. (1994). Introduction to Facet Theory: Content Design and Intrinsic Data Analysis in Behavioral Research, Sage Publications, London. Spengler, A. (1977). Manifest sadomasochism of males: Results of an empirical study. Arch. Sex. Behav. 6: 441–456.


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Weinberg, M., Williams, C. J., and Moser, C. (1984). The social constituents of sadomasochism. Soc. Probl. 31: 379–389. Weinberg, T. S. (1987). Sadomasochism in the United States: A review of recent sociological literature. J. Sex Res. 23: 50–69. Weinberg, T. S., and Kamel, G. W. L. (1983). S & M: An introduction to the study of sadomasochism. In Weinberg, T., and Kamel, G. W. L. (eds.), S and M: Studies in Sadomasochism, Prometheus, Buffalo, NY, pp. 17–24.

P1: FZN/FVK Archives of Sexual Behavior [asb]

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Sexual Attitudes and Number of Partners in Young British Men Emil Kupek, Ph.D.1

The relationship between sexual attitudes and number of heterosexual partners in a survey-based and nationally representative random sample of 551 British men aged 16–25 years was examined. The main predictor of the number of partners in the last 5 years was the time since the first sexual intercourse, whereas age, marital status, education, social class, smoking, and alcohol consumption contributed on a smaller but significant level. Sexual attitudes were summarized in terms of three underlying dimensions which could be described as permissiveness, attitudes toward sexual relations of same-sex partners, and importance of orgasm for sex. None of these was a significant predictor of the number of partners in the last 5 years. Both permissiveness and number of partners were associated with the age of first sexual intercourse and other background variables indicating opportunities for social contact. In conclusion, common factors of sexual attitudes and the number of sexual partners are not directly related but rather jointly predicted by a very similar set of background variables such as age, time since first sexual intercourse, social class, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Given the absence of a significant relationship between sexual attitudes and number of young men’s partners, promoting safer sex may be a more sensible strategy than trying to change these attitudes. KEY WORDS: health promotion; sexual attitudes; number of sexual partners; alcohol; covariance structure analysis.

INTRODUCTION Sexual attitudes and behavior have come under the spotlight of mainstream health research since the late eighties. This was principally due to the need to 1 Departamento de Sa´ ude Pública, Centro de Ciências de Saúde, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina,

Campus Universitário, Trindade, 88.040-900 Florianópolis-SC, Brazil; e-mail: kupek@repensul. ufsc.br. 13 C 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/01/0200-0013$19.50/0 °


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Kupek

identify the risk behaviors and attitudes regarding HIV transmission as a basis for successful intervention (see Kim et al., 1977, for a review). Most of the studies focused on specific risk groups defined in terms of high risk behaviors such as substance abuse, unprotected sex with large number of partners or with partners likely to be infected with HIV. Condom use, number of sexual partners, and risk for HIV were principal behavioral items, which were often accompanied with questions on attitudes toward condom use. Particular attention was given to adolescents and young people as a clear target group for behavioral change (Bagnall et al., 1990; Baker et al., 1996; Breakwell and Fife-Shaw 1992a,b; Bryan et al., 1996; Coker et al., 1994; Dunne et al., 1994; Durbin et al., 1993; Leigh et al., 1994; Lowry et al., 1994; McEwan et al., 1992; Sikand et al., 1996). In the early nineties, first results of nationally representative sex surveys based on probability samples from France and Great Britain were published (ACSF 1992; Johnson et al., 1994), whereas some other European countries used less extensive and methodologically more vulnerable types of survey (Matthews et al., 1995). In the US, the General Social Survey provided some basic information on sexual lifestyle (Anderson et al., 1992) for this period. However, these surveys did not pursue an in-depth investigation of the relationship between sexual attitudes, such as their structure, and their relationship toward number of sexual partners. For example, although many questions in the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (BNS) dealing with attitudes, views, and opinions were related to important outcome measures (Johnson et al., 1994), this was done on the level of individual items. The only analysis which looked into global patterns of response in terms of principal components analysis excluded some important sexual attitudes (Johnson et al., 1994, pp. 387–422). Principal component scores were compared in a descriptive way for a range of demographic variables but not to any behavioral outcome. The aim of this work is to build on these findings by expanding the analysis of the structure of sexual attitudes and examining its relationship with number of sexual partners. It was known from previous analyses that a large number of reported sexual partners were associated with respondents’ age, gender, marital status, age of first sexual intercourse, and social class in a multivariate model (Johnson et al., 1994). As the effects of some of these factors on the number of partners were known to be nonlinear (e.g., age) and gender specific, stratified analysis on these variables seemed a more realistic choice than to try to accommodate all these complex effects within one model. In this analysis, young men (16–25 years) were chosen for two reasons. First, young people are known to be more likely to try to change their attitudes and sexual behavior than the older ones are as numerous examples of recent efforts in the context of AIDS prevention campaigns have shown (Freudenberg, 1989; Matthews et al., 1995; Wellings, 1992). This is the practical reason why health promotion is usually aimed at this segment of the population. Second, gender specification was shown to be important


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and maintained throughout previous analyses (Johnson et al., 1994). Young men are a clear target group for promotion of sexual health, which might benefit from the analysis of the relationship between sexual attitudes and number of partners.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS Data for the present study were collected as a part of BNS, which was conducted with a random sample of 18,876 men and women aged 16–59 years living in Great Britain. They were interviewed and invited to complete a questionnaire containing more sensitive questions. The primary aim of the survey was to obtain reliable data on risky sexual behavior and help in developing sexual health education programs. Attitudinal questions with a strong moral judgment were placed towards the end of the questionnaire after the questions on sexual behavior. The final sample achieved was representative of the target population in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, marital, and socioeconomic status (Johnson et al., 1994). A subsection of participants (N = 4548) was randomly selected to receive additional items on sexual attitudes. Data from male participants aged 16–25 years (N = 551) were selected for the present investigation. Overall response rate was 63.3%, which was higher than that of previous studies of sexual behavior in Britain and some other countries and comparable to large social surveys of less sensitive topics (Johnson et al., 1994). The acceptance rate was 71.5% among eligible respondents who could be interviewed. The number of heterosexual partners in the last 5 years was chosen for the behavioral outcome to be related to sexual attitudes and other relevant predictors. Of the 551 men aged 16–25 years, 106 reported having no heterosexual partners in the last 5 years. Of these 106, only 4 reported having a homosexual partner. Internal consistency of answers to different questions and external validation of some self-reports, as well as reasonably low item nonresponse (Kupek, 1998), all indicated good quality of the data. The methodology of the survey is discussed in more detail elsewhere (Johnson et al., 1994; Wadsworth et al., 1993). Covariance structure analysis (CSA) (also known as Structural Equations Model (SEM) and Linear Structural Models (LISREL)) was used to combine factor and regression analyses in one model. This requirement emerged from the need to summarize a large number of attitude items into a small number of interpretable response patterns (factor analysis), whose predictive value to the behavioral outcome can then be tested in a regression model. One type of relationship between sexual attitudes and number of partners is that of mutual influence (no causality implied with this term). CSA was used because more than a single regression equation is needed to express this type of relationship. This method can account


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for the intrinsic dependency structure between the variables, such as number of sexual partners, and the time since first sexual intercourse (both will be zero for those with no partners). Furthermore, CSA can properly account for the fact that factor analysis scores of sexual attitudes are not observed but model-based values and hence cannot be simply regressed on the dependent variable. The latter twostep approach—factor analysis followed by regression—might be a reasonable approximation for eliminating clearly insignificant predictors but underestimates the degrees of freedom used up in the factor analysis model. The capacity of CSA to handle simultaneously both factor analysis and regression allows an external validation of predictive value of common factors with respect to the outcome of interest. Because of the complexity of CSA, several analyses were done in the course of the model building. Transformations and Selection of the Variables Logarithmic transformation of the main outcome variable (number of partners in last 5 years) was used to stabilize its variance and linearize it with respect to the independent variables in the model. A small constant was added to make this transformation possible for respondents with no partners. Among the background variables, respondent’s age and time of sexual activity were continuous. Education was treated as an ordinal scale ranking respondents with degrees, higher education or A-level, O-level or CSE or other (mainly nonBritish) diplomas, and none of the above. Smoking comprised four categories: nonsmokers, ex-smokers, light smokers, and heavy smokers. Alcohol consumption was ranked as none, low, moderate, and high. Marital status originally comprised seven categories: married, cohabiting with opposite-sex partner, cohabiting with same-sex partner, divorced, separated, widowed, and single. As only two respondents lived with same-sex partners, these were combined with those cohabiting with opposite-sex partners. Those divorced, separated, or widowed were treated as being in one category on the grounds that they all have had a live-in relationship in the past. Previous analysis for men (Johnson et al., 1994, p.128) showed that with respect to the number of lifetime partners, these respondents are closer to single men than to the married men. This provided a basis on which to attempt an ad hoc ordinal scale regarding respondents’ experience of a formal (marriage) or at least socially binding live-in relationship (e.g., common friends). Along this line, respondents were ranked highest if married, those cohabiting were given the second rank, those divorced/separated/widowed were placed third, and single men formed the last category. The bias due to treating ordinal scale variables as interval scale was reported to be sufficiently minor in comparison with other possible


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sources of model misspecification (Bentler and Newcomb, 1992) for many practical applications.

Testing Multivariate Normality The assumption of a multivariate normal distribution is important for maximum likelihood estimates of parameters’ variance and chi-square test for overall goodness of fit in CSA to be valid. Both graphical investigations of linearity between ordered Mahalanobis distances and chi-square distribution (Krzanowski, 1988) and correlation were used to demonstrate this assumption (Filliben, 1975; Sharma, 1996).

Factor and Covariance Structure Analysis As the viability of the multivariate normal distribution assumption was confirmed with these data, a maximum likelihood estimation method was used both for factor analysis and CSA. A range of CSA goodness of fit indices as well as the distribution of normalized residuals were examined. Several models were systematically tested for meaningful modifications and the key findings presented. The fit of the factor analysis and regression parts of the model were also examined. SAS software was used (SAS Institute Inc., 1989a). It is important to remember that CSA fits the covariance matrix calculated from the raw data. Although the variables not related by a regression equation appear unconnected in graphical representations of CSA, their covariance is set to the value calculated from the raw data, not to zero as the absence of an arrow might suggest. To avoid excessive statistical details, only p values or the rejection criterion ( p > .05) were provided for some analyses. The covariance matrix used for the CSA is available on request.

RESULTS Basic descriptive statistics for sexual attitudes and the number of partners is given in Table I. The majority (82%) of respondents were single, 9% were married, and 9% cohabited with a partner of the opposite sex. Half of the respondents reported first sexual intercourse between the age of 16 and 20, and 28% said it occurred before the age of 16. Almost one-fifth (19.5%) of the 551 men aged 16–25 years reported having had no heterosexual partners in last 5 years, 20.1% reported one partner, 10.7% reported two partners, 22.5% reported three or four partners, 14.8% reported between five and nine partners, 10.4% said they had had


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Kupek Table I. Percentage of Answers by Response Category (N = 551) Attitudes

1

2

3

4

5

DK/M

Sex before marriage Adultery—marriage Adultery—cohabitation Unfaithfulness—regular partners One-night stands Sex between 2 men Sex between 2 women Abortion Older people want less sex Unfaithfulness is harmless Companionship more imp. than sex Sex, no orgasm not satisfying—men Sex, no orgasm not satisfying—women Sex better with one partner Sex most important part of marriage Sex better in longer relationship

2.3 50.0 33.3 27.8 30.9 57.4 47.7 19.1 0.6 1.6 14.1 5.6 4.2 6.6 2.5 10.5

4.4 34.0 33.9 34.4 20.9 10.7 15.4 14.5 33.1 16.1 52.4 39.4 30.1 36.1 16.0 52.7

11.2 12.1 20.7 21.5 20.3 4.0 6.4 32.5 28.5 10.4 20.4 19.0 22.9 26.8 20.3 21.3

10.2 1.3 4.3 7.8 11.0 4.2 4.6 9.8 24.0 54.4 9.6 28.3 29.7 21.0 50.5 7.1

70.7 1.2 6.6 6.8 15.4 21.6 23.5 18.2 2.8 15.4 0.6 1.7 1.5 2.3 8.0 0.7

1.1 1.3 1.3 1.7 1.6 2.1 2.4 5.8 10.9 2.2 2.8 6.1 11.7 7.2 2.7 7.7

Note. 1: agree strongly; 2: agree; 3: neither agree nor disagree; 4: disagree; 5: strongly disagree; DK/M: “don’t know” and not answered; see Appendix for exact wording of the questions.

ten or more partners, and 1.9% did not respond to this item (for more details see Johnson et al., 1994).

The Structure of Sexual Attitudes: Factor Analysis Factor analysis for attitude variables was a distinctive part of the CSA model, whose results (factor scores) could then be related to the outcome. Three factors were found to be optimal for this model. Two alternative hypotheses—that there was no common factor and that more than three common factors were needed—were both rejected on the basis of the chi-square for the likelihood ratio test ( p < .01) and the drop from the third to fourth eigenvalues (3.8 to 0.8). The factor loadings were rotated to a simple solution according to the varimax criterion (Krzanowski, 1988), which yields uncorrelated factors with variables predominantly loading on one factor (Table II). The first factor had high loadings on attitudes towards unfaithfulness (i.e., in marriage, cohabitation, and with regular partner), one-night stands, the harm caused by unfaithfulness, and whether monogamous sex was valued. This factor was interpreted as permissiveness versus restrictiveness in sexual attitudes as all variables had this in common. Thus, respondents with low scores on this factor evaluated unfaithfulness and one-night stands as wrong, disagreed with the statement that unfaithfulness was harmless, and agreed that sex is better when sticking to one partner. Those with high scores on the permissiveness factor expressed opposite attitudes.


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Table II. Varimax Rotated Factor Pattern (Standard Error) Attitudes

Factor I

Factor II

Factor III

Sex before marriage Unfaithfulness in marriage Unfaithfulness in cohabitation Unfaithfulness—regular partners One-night stands Sex between 2 men Sex between 2 women Abortion Older people want less sex Unfaithfulness is harmless Companionship more imp. than sex Sex, no orgasm not satisfying—men Sex, no orgasm not satisfying—women Sex better with one partner Sex most important part of marriage Sex better in longer relationship

28 (7) 64 (7) 80 (11) 80 (12) 36 (10) 5 (24) 8 (23) 23 (9) 3 (7) −41 (7) 20 (7) 1 (17) 1 (15) 27 (7) −7 (8) 11 (6)

21 (9) 18 (10) 4 (16) 5 (16) 8 (14) 94 (38) 98 (40) 36 (14) 10 (7) −9 (9) −4 (8) 3 (24) 4 (22) 4 (7) 9 (12) 6 (6)

−7 (7) 10 (9) −3 (8) −1 (9) 2 (10) 12 (38) 11 (40) 0 (15) 7 (6) 7 (7) −11 (6) 91 (20) 87 (17) 1 (6) 31 (7) 7 (6)

Note. Values are multiplied by 100 and rounded to the nearest integer. The loadings with the highest contribution are in bold.

The second factor was predominantly determined by attitudes toward sexual relations of same-sex partners. The interpretation of the third factor is importance of orgasm for sex as the loadings for two questions regarding this issue for men and women had far the highest loadings. The model residuals were low and normally distributed. The permissiveness factor accounted for 37% of the variation in attitudes, whereas the homosexual acceptance and importance of orgasm factors accounted for 34% and 29% respectively. Relationship Between Permissiveness and Number of Partners: Covariance Structure Analysis Before CSA modeling, ordinary least squares regression was used to examine the predictive value of factor scores for the number of partners in last 5 years. A bivariate model was fitted for each of the identified factors. Only permissiveness score was statistically significantly related to the outcome ( p = .05), whereas the other two factors’ scores were not ( p = .21 and p = .18 for factors II and III, respectively). Only sexual attitudes, which were identified as key contributors to the permissiveness factor, were selected for the CSA. Background variables known to influence sexual behavior and attitudes (Johnson et al., 1994) were added to the model to explore their effects in a systematic way. As a result of this analysis, a model was found, which satisfied both statistical and interpretational criteria (Fig. 1 and Table III). The factor structure of


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Fig. 1. Relationship between attitudes, number of partners and background variables. (Note: Error terms not displayed.)

permissiveness was retained, but no relationship with the number of partners could be confirmed statistically. They appear unrelated to each other but simultaneously influenced by background variables such as age, time since first sexual intercourse, social class, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Older men with a longer period of sexual activity, higher education and social class, higher alcohol and cigarette consumption, and unmarried men reported more partners in the last 5 years. The only attitude associated with number of partners was that on “one-night stands.” Respondents who were more approving of “one-night stands” reported having more sexual partners. Both observed and latent attitudes were associated with background variables. The higher the age and education, the higher the tolerance of adultery. Also, older men more often agreed that unfaithfulness was harmless. Married men thought that sex was better when sticking to one partner more often than did those who were never married. This attitude was also associated with longer time since first sexual intercourse and lower alcohol consumption. Other possible associations of the background variables with the remaining attitudes in the model were tested and rejected both on the basis of likelihood ratio and univariate t-test ( p > .05). The above model achieved an excellent overall fit. The chi-square value for the likelihood ratio test against independence model (χ 2 = 27.37; df = 41; p = .95)


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Table III. Parameter Estimates for the Model Presented in Fig. 1 Parameter code Factor analysis a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 a6 Background b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7 c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 d7 d8

Raw

Standard error

t-test value

Standardized

1.000 1.145 1.397 1.404 −1.215 0.670

— 0.157 0.180 0.256 0.207 0.148

— 7.305 7.765 5.484 −5.879 4.524

0.546 0.460 0.551 0.451 −0.566 0.326

0.149 0.247 0.041 0.337 −0.046 0.059 −0.142 −0.027 0.099 0.038 0.070 0.054 0.351 0.769 0.908 0.418 −0.269 −0.303 −0.436 0.242

0.049 0.080 0.016 0.121 0.019 0.014 0.033 0.017 0.053 0.013 0.026 0.018 0.179 0.276 0.073 0.141 0.096 0.086 0.155 0.110

3.021 3.096 2.624 2.768 −2.369 4.281 −4.342 −2.795 1.874 2.775 2.657 3.022 1.964 2.780 12.463 2.969 −2.806 −3.532 −2.824 2.194

0.156 0.151 0.142 0.136 −0.128 0.192 −0.176 −0.283 0.126 0.264 0.183 0.223 0.082 0.105 0.687 0.119 −0.119 −0.196 −0.107 0.081

Note. Error term estimates for attitude questions, number of partners, and permissiveness are not displayed as they are of secondary importance here. The value of parameter “a1” was fixed to 1.

clearly rejected the alternative hypothesis that the similarity between the databased and model-based covariances is spurious. The goodness-of-fit index and its adjusted version (Joreskog and Sorbom, 1981; SAS Institute 1989b) were .99 and .98 respectively. Upper bound for root mean square error approximation was only .002 and the probability of close fit was 1.0 (Browne and Cudeck, 1993). The distribution of asymptotically standardized residuals was symmetric and within 95% confidence limits expected on the basis of the sampling variation. Several variations of the model presented were examined and rejected on the basis of the likelihood ratio and univariate t-test, using p < .05 as the criterion: a) no correlation between measurement errors for the attitudes on unfaithfulness in marriage, cohabitation, and regular partnership (χ 2 = 71.73, df = 44), b) no predictive value of attitude on one-night stands on the number of partners (χ 2 = 32.13, df = 42),


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c) including permissiveness factor as predictor of the number of partners in the last 5 years (χ 2 = 24.40, df = 40), d) including number of partners in the last 5 years as predictor of permissiveness (χ 2 = 25.23, df = 40).

DISCUSSION The aim of this work was to examine the structure of sexual attitude and the relationship between sexual attitudes and number of heterosexual partners. Sexual attitudes can be summarized in terms of three underlying factors: permissiveness, acceptance of homosexuality, and importance of orgasm for sex. This result expanded previous analysis of eight sexual attitudes, which included both men and women (Johnson et al., 1994) by showing that additional attitudes could be summarized in terms of the importance of orgasm for sex. Permissiveness and number of partners among young men were not found to be related directly, but were jointly determined by the time since first sexual intercourse, age, and other variables indicating opportunity for social contacts. It should be noted that permissiveness is largely defined in terms of sexual morality by using the strong evaluation word “wrong” in question 39, as well as by large weight given to the items on unfaithfulness (cf. Appendix). Permissiveness was associated with the same background variables as the number of partners except for marital status and education. Smoking, alcohol consumption, earlier age of first sexual intercourse and thus longer time of sexual activity, lower social class, and younger age were all associated with higher permissiveness score. Respondents with longer times since first sexual intercourse reported more partners in the last 5 years. Time since first sexual intercourse was the strongest predictor of the number of partners and explained 47% of the variance of number of partners. Various other studies have found early start of sexual activity strongly associated with number of partners (ACSF, 1992; Coker et al., 1994; Durbin et al., 1993). Higher educational qualifications and social class were also found to be associated with higher number of partners in the last 5 years in our sample. The role of these factors has been suggested for the general population (Johnson et al., 1994). Both factors are associated with a greater opportunity for social contact (e.g., leaving parental home to receive university education elsewhere). Smoking and alcohol consumption were associated with, both, more permissive sexual attitudes and larger number of partners in last 5 years (Table II). This is likely to reflect the degree of acceptance of peer culture norms (e.g., going out to pubs or similar places where social contacts are often made). Other British studies also found social drinking and smoking to be associated with having a boyfriend/girlfriend (Health Education Authority, 1992) and more sexual partners (Bagnall et al., 1990; Breakwell and Millward, 1997; McEwan et al., 1992). Some


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US studies reported similar relationship between drinking and smoking, and having a number of sexual partners (Andersson and Dahlberg, 1992; Lawry et al., 1994; Leonard and Ross, 1997). Because sexual partnership may depend on opportunity for social contacts, it seems reasonable to find more permissive sexual attitudes being associated with indicators of the social context, which typically mediates these contacts. The attitude towards adultery was associated with age and education (Fig. 1). Although 54% of men aged 16–19 years thought sex outside marriage was always wrong, this figure was about 5% lower among men aged 20–25 years. Education made a more palpable difference: 60% among respondents with degrees and 92% among those with no qualifications disapproved of adultery. Liberal attitudes have been found to be associated with higher education (Johnson et al., 1994). They also seem to develop gradually among young men as the association with age suggested. Men who had had first sexual intercourse earlier, were never married, and drank more alcohol were likely to disagree with the statement that monogamy brings a more satisfying sexual life than changing partners (“Sex better with one partner”). They also had more sexual partners and higher permissiveness scores. Thus number of sexual partners and permissiveness are not directly related but both of them are associated with the same background variables that seem to be related to sexual lifestyle—monogamy versus multiple partnerships. The latter was found to be more attractive to the men who did not have a partner or had had first sexual intercourse a short time ago. Among the attitude items, only “one-night stands” showed a small but significant effect on number of partners. This may be due to two main reasons. First, the length of time since initiation of sexual activity, age, and related variables such as marital status, social class, and education would be expected to determine the number of partners to a large extent as they define some important aspects of biological and social framework of sexual behavior. Second, the sexual attitudes analyzed here were fairly general social norms regarding sexual behavior as opposed to more specific attitudes regarding personal action in the near future. Only the latter were shown to have sufficient predictive power regarding behavioral outcomes of interest to inform a successful intervention (Ajzen, 1988, 1991; Terry et al., 1993). However, the knowledge of general norms is a necessary background against which specific conative aspects of the attitudes can be selected. It has been argued that sexual behavior is generally difficult to predict because it is impulsive, interactive (i.e., also depends on partner’s behavior), and is affected by situational factors such as alcohol consumption. For example, only carefully executed studies achieved good prediction of condom use based on sexual attitudes by asking about intention to use a condom (Terry et al., 1993). An additional difficulty is that prediction depends on accuracy of self-reported behavioral outcome, which in turn depends on respondents’ memory and honesty, but the survey


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method still seems a viable method despite its limitations (ACSF, 1992; Breakwell and Fife-Shaw, 1992b; Johnson et al., 1994; Mathews et al., 1995; Siegel et al., 1998). Low to moderate correlations between the three variants of attitudes towards unfaithfulness—in marriage, cohabitation and, regular partnership—significantly contribute to the overall fit of the models examined. Although a common factors model would normally assume these correlations to be zero (Dunn et al., 1993; Joreskog and Sorbom, 1981; Krzanowski, 1988), there are good reasons for this not to hold in this particular case. First, all three items varied the context of the question whereas its core—unfaithfulness—remained the same. Hence any confounding is likely to affect the supposedly unique error variances of these items in a similar way, thus resulting in significant correlations between them. Second, the confounding is probable in this case because only one of the three latent factors found to predict the observed attitudes—permissiveness—was used in CSA modeling. The reason for exclusion of the other two common factors identified in the factor analysis prior to the CSA was their lack of predictive power regarding the number of partners in the last 5 years. Correlated measurement errors in a common factors model indicate that the manifest variables measure something else or something in addition to what has been accounted for by the latent variable (Joreskog, 1993). The two omitted factors regarding tolerance of homosexual behavior and importance of orgasm for sex are known additional sources of variation, which act as confounders in the CSA models examined. There may well be other unknown confounders that enhance this effect. Although some of the above findings might have been anticipated, their empirical confirmation is important in two ways. First, the structure of a wider range of sexual attitudes has been identified and its relationship with number of partners examined for nationally representative data. Second, this may be useful for historic and between-country comparisons. On the other hand, the exploratory nature of the study (i.e., absence of firm hypotheses) and large-scale survey perspective may impose limitations for such comparisons. Sexual attitudes and behavior in this case seem to be parallel developments determined to a large extent by a common social background. If permissiveness is seen as an example of sexual morality, the acquisition of which is supposed to regulate important aspects of sexual behavior, then its impact on partner acquisition among men aged 16–25 years seems to be insignificant in comparison with some general factors that enhance opportunities for social contact. Although there is a widespread agreement in terms of sexual attitudes, this does not correspond to the variations in number of partners. One important implication for sexual health promotion is that normative evaluation of sexual behavior is not likely to change young men’s partner acquisition, so the promotion of safer sex seems a much more meaningful campaign. The fear that such campaigns aimed at STD prevention and/or improving knowledge of contraception methods can make young people


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more promiscuous by changing their sexual attitudes also seems unfounded from this perspective.

APPENDIX: SEXUAL ATTITUDE QUESTIONS 39. From this card, what are your opinions about following sexual relationships a) If a men and a women have sexual relations before marriage, what would your general opinion be? b) What about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than his or her partner? c) What about a person who is living with a partner, not married, having sexual relations with someone other than his or her partner? d) And a person who has a regular partner they don’t live with, having sexual relations with someone else? e) What about a person having one-night stands? What is your general opinion about f) Sexual relations between two adult men? g) And sexual relations between two adult women? h) Lastly, what is your general opinion about abortion? Response options: 1 (always wrong), 2 (mostly wrong), 3 (sometimes wrong), 4 (not wrong at all), 5 (not wrong at all), 8 (depends/don’t know). 40. Now please would you say how far you agree or disagree with each of these things a) It is natural for people to want sex less often as they get older? b) Having a sexual relationship outside a regular one doesn’t necessarily harm that relationship? c) Companionship and affection are more important than sex in marriage or relationship? d) Sex without orgasm, or climax, cannot be really satisfying for men? e) Sex without orgasm, or climax, cannot be really satisfying for women? f) A person who sticks with one partner is likely to have a more satisfying sex life than someone who has many partners? g) Sex is the most important part of any marriage or relationship. h) Sex tends to get better the longer you know someone? Response options: 1 (agree strongly), 2 (agree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (disagree), 5 (strongly disagree), 8 (don’t know).


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is indebted to Jane Wadsworth whose support and insightful comments were indispensable for this work, as well as to other principal investigators of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, Anne Johnson, Julia Field, and Kaye Wellings for making the data available for the analysis. REFERENCES ACSF Principal Investigators and their associates (1992). Analysis of sexual behavior in France (ACSF)—A comparison of two modes of investigation: Telephone survey and face-to-face survey. AIDS. 6: 315–323. Ajzen, I. (1988). Attitudes, Personality and Behaviour, Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behaviour. Organiz. Behav. Human Decision Processes. 50: 179–211. Anderson, J. E., and Dahlberg, L. L. (1992). High-risk sexual behavior in the general population. Results from a national survey, 1988–1990. Sex. Transm. Dis. 19(6): 320–325. Bagnall, G., Plant, M., and Warwick, W. (1990). Alcohol, drugs and AIDS-related risks: Results from a prospective study. AIDS Care. 2(4): 309–317. Baker, S. A., Morrison, D. M., Carter, W. B., and Verdon, M. S. (1996). Using the theory of reasoned action (TRA) to understand the decision to use condoms in an STD clinic population. Health. Educ. Q. 23(4): 528–542. Bentler, P. M., and Newcomb, M. D. (1992). Linear structural modeling with nonnormal continuous variables. Application: Relations among social support, drug use, and health in young adults. In Dwayer, J. H., Feinlieb, M., Lippert, P., and Hoffmeister, H. (eds.), Statistical Models for Longitudinal Studies of Health, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 132–160. Browne, M. W., and Cudeck, R. (1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Bollen, K. A., and Long, J. S. (eds.), Testing Structural Equation Models, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 136–162. Breakwell, G. M., and Fife-Shaw, C. (1992a). Sexual activities and preferences in a United Kingdom sample of 16 to 20-year-olds. Arch. Sex. Behav. 21(3): 271–293. Breakwell, G. M., and Fife-Shaw, C. R. (1992b). Estimating sexual behaviour parameters in the light of AIDS: A review of recent UK studies of young people. AIDS Care. 4(2): 187–201. Breakwell, G. M., and Millward, L. J. (1997). Sexual self-concept and sexual risk-taking. J. Adolesc. 20(1): 29–34. Bryan, A. D., Aiken, L. S., and West, S. G. (1996). Increasing condom use: Evaluation of a theorybased intervention to prevent sexually transmitted diseases in young women. Health. Psychol. 15(5): 371–382. Coker, A. L., Richter, D. L., Valois, R. F., McKeown, R. E., Garrison, C. Z., and Vincent, M. L. (1994). Correlates and consequences of early initiation of sexual intercourse. J. Sch. Health. 64(9): 372– 377. Dunn, G., Everitt, B., and Pickles, A. (1993). Modelling Covariances and Latent Variables Using EQS, Chapman and Hall, London. Dunne, M. P., Donald, M., Lucke, J., Nilsson, R., Ballard, R., and Raphael, B. (1994). Age-related increase in sexual behaviours and decrease in regular condom use among adolescents in Australia. Int. J. STD. AIDS. 5(1): 41–47. Durbin, M., DiClemente, R. J., Siegel, D., Krasnovsky, F., Lazarus, N., and Camacho, T. (1993). Factors associated with multiple sex partners among junior high school students. J. Adolesc. Health. 14(3): 202–207. Filliben, J. J. (1975). The probability plot correlation coefficient test for normality. Technometrics. 17(1): 111–117. Freudenberg, N. (1989). Preventing AIDS: A Guide to Effective Education for the Prevention of HIV Infection, American Public Health Association, Washington.


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Health Education Authority (1992). Tomorrow’s Young Adults, Health Education Authority, London. Joreskog, K. G., and Sorbom, D. (1981). LISREL VI, Uppsala University Press, Uppsala. Joreskog, K. G. (1993). Testing structural equation models. In Bollen, K. A., and Long, J. S. (eds.), Testing Structural Equation Models, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 294–316. Johnson, A. M., Wadsworth, J., Wellings, K., and Field, J. (1994). Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford. Kim, N., Stanton, B., Li, X., Dickersin, K., and Galbraith, J. (1977) Effectiveness of the 40 adolescent AIDS-risk reduction interventions: A quantitative review. J. Adolesc. Health. 20(3): 204–215. Krzanowski, W. J. (1988). Principles of Multivariate Analysis: A User’s Perspective, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Kupek, E. (1998). Determinants of item non-response in a large national sex survey. Arch. Sex. Behav. 27(6): 581–594. Leigh, B. C., Morrison, D. M., Trocki, K., and Temple, M. T. (1994). Sexual behavior of American adolescents: Results from a U.S. national survey. J. Adolesc. Health. 15(2): 117–125. Leonard, L., and Ross, M. W. (1997). The last sexual encounter: The contextualization of sexual risk behaviour. Int. J. STD. AIDS. 8(10): 643–645. Lowry, R., Holtzman, D., Truman, B. I., Kann, L., Collins, J. L., and Kolbe, L. J. (1994). Substance use and HIV-related sexual behaviors among US high school students: Are they related? Am. J. Public Health. 84(7): 1116–1120. Matthews, M., Wellings, K., and Kupek, E. (1995). AIDS/HIV KAB Surveys in the European Community (General Population). London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. McEwan, R. T., McCallum, A., Bhopal, R. S., and Madhok, R. (1992). Sex and the risk of HIV infection: The role of alcohol. Br. J. Addict. 87(4): 577–584. SAS Institute Inc. (1989a). Proc CALIS. In SAS/STAT R User’s Guide, Version 6, Vol. 2, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, pp. 245–366. SAS Institute Inc. (1989b). Introduction to structural equations with latent variables. In SAS/STAT User’s Guide, Version 6, SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC, pp. 137–187. Sharma, S. (1996). Applied Multivariate Techniques, John Wiley and Sons, New York. Siegel, D. M., Aten, M. J., and Roghmann, K. J. (1998). Self-reported honesty among middle and high school students responding to a sexual behavior questionnaire. J. Adolesc. Health. 23(1): 20–28. Sikand, A., Fisher, M., and Friedman, S. B. (1996). AIDS knowledge, concerns, and behavioral changes among inner-city high school students. J. Adolesc. Health. 18(5): 325–328. Terry, D. J., Gallois, C., and McCamish, M. (eds.) (1993). The Theory of Reasoned Action: Its Application to Aids-Preventive Behaviour, Pergamon Press, Oxford. Wellings, K. (1992). Assessing AIDS Prevention in the General Population, Report for the EC Concerted Action ‘Assessment of AIDS/HIV preventive strategies,’ Academic Department of Public Health, St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London. Wadsworth, J., Field, J., Johnson, A. M., Bradshaw, S., and Wellings, K. (1993). Methodology of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. J. R. Statis. Soc. A. 156(3): 407–421.

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Personality, Individual Differences, and Preferences for the Sexual Media1 Anthony F. Bogaert, Ph.D.2

The extent to which personality and individual differences predict preferences for and choices of various forms of sexual media was examined. Personality (e.g., intelligence, aggression) and individual difference factors (e.g., prior sexual experience) were assessed in 160 undergraduate men. These men also indicated their preferences for and choices of various forms of sexual media (e.g., “erotic,” female insatiability, violent). As expected, individual differences were predictive, with, for example, men lower in intelligence and higher in aggressive/antisocial tendencies having a higher preference for violent sexual stimuli than men higher in intelligence and lower in aggressive/antisocial tendencies had. In addition, as much as 50% of the variation in the preference for violent sexual materials was accounted for by an additive combination of individual differences and self-report arousal to these materials. Finally, the results indicated that, when given a choice to view different media materials, the men chose a broad range of media materials, although the “female insatiability” films were more popular than the other sexual films (e.g., “erotic” or violent). Results are discussed in relation to recent research and psychological theories that view adults as active in choosing their own social environments. KEY WORDS: pornography; personality; erotica; insatiability; violence.

INTRODUCTION Increasingly, developmental, personality, and social psychologists (e.g., Buss, 1984; Plomin and Bergeman, 1991; Plomin et al., 1977; Scarr and McCartney, 1 This research was completed in partial fulfilment of the author’s Ph.D. requirements at the University

of Western Ontario. Portions of this manuscript were completed while the author was a postdoctoral fellow with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, Canada. 2 Community Health Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1; e-mail: [email protected]. 29 C 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/01/0200-0029$19.50/0 °


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1983; Snyder and Ickes, 1985) are theorizing that individuals are active in choosing the situations or environments, including media environments, to which they are exposed. Although a vast array of environments is available, people will often be selective, choosing only those environments that are best suited to them and/or are congruent with their dispositions or personalities. This person/choice of environment association has recently been noted for sexuality as well (Money, 1986; Mosher, 1988). Mosher (1988), for example, argues that people will be selective in their sexual media viewing habits, directing their choices to material that is congruent with preexisting sexual scripts, fantasies, and dispositions. Thus, some people will never seek out sexual materials; others may have some inclination and seek out these materials only occasionally; and still others will be very inclined and will seek out these materials on a frequent basis. Also, some people will be more inclined than others to seek out or be interested in specific types of sexual media, including violent portrayals, or female sexual insatiability themes (i.e., sexually eager, nondiscriminating women), the latter of which have been reported to be prevalent in the sexual media (e.g., Brosius et al., 1993). In this study, these ideas are pursued further. Although there has been research on the relation between individual differences (e.g., personality dispositions) and an overall proclivity for the sexual media, there has been a relatively modest amount of work investigating individual difference correlates of interests in specific types of sexual media. This is the first purpose of the present study. In addition, previous sexual media preference research has typically investigated single or relatively few individual differences such as personality (Barnes et al., 1984a), fantasy (Malamuth and McIlwraith, 1988; McIlwraith and Josephson, 1985), positive sexual affect (Fisher et al., 1988), or prior exposure to the sexual media (e.g., Zillmann and Bryant, 1986). This work, though important in its own right, may well be limited because it fails to take a multivariate approach. A multivariate approach (e.g., principal components’ analysis, multiple regression analysis) assesses common content/variation among relevant individual difference predictors and the potential for additive, mediating, and/or interactive processes. Thus, a multivariate approach can provide a more complete, multidimensional account of sexual media preferences. This is the second purpose of the present study.

Individual Differences Theory and research suggests that a range of personality and individual difference variables may play a role in decisions regarding the viewing of sexual materials. The following discussion introduces these variables. First, antisocial tendencies may be relevant to the present investigation. Such constructs as aggressiveness and attraction to sexual aggression, which refer to a man’s belief system that sexual aggression is arousing for both the aggressor and the victim (Malamuth, 1989a,b), may relate to a preference for violent sexual


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materials. Similarly, hypermasculine sex roles (e.g., Mosher and Sirkin, 1984), which consist of three violence-related components (i.e., calloused sexual attitudes, a conception of violence as manly, and a view of danger as exciting), and Eysenck’s third major personality type or psychoticism (e.g., Eysenck and Eysenck, 1976), also interpreted as antisocial personality (e.g., Claridge, 1983), may relate to preferences for violent sexual materials. All four of these constructs predict an interest in or experience with actual sexual violence. For example, aggressiveness has been related to prior and future sexual violence (e.g., Greendlinger and Byrne, 1987), whereas attraction to sexual aggression has been related to the endorsement of rape myths and elevated arousal to rape depictions in a laboratory (Malamuth, 1989a,b). Similarly, hypermasculine sex roles relate to less distaste for realistic portrayals of rape (Mosher and Anderson, 1986), and psychoticism relates to prior exposure to rape depictions (Barnes et al., 1984b). One explanation for why these antisocial tendencies (e.g., attraction to sexual aggression) may relate to an interest in these types of violent sex films is that these films serve as arousing and potentially pleasurable sexual stimuli. For example, some prior research suggests that people may choose to view sexual material because of its stimulation or arousal properties (Brown and Bryant, 1989; Winick, 1971). In addition, more aggressive/antisocial people, relative to less aggressive/antisocial people, may prefer violent sexual content because it is a more familiar and/or a more “cognitively accessible” theme (e.g., Huesmann, 1988). Aggressive/antisocial people (relative to those lower in these characteristics) may also experience these materials with less emotional disturbance (e.g., viewing them as less distasteful, as found by Mosher and Anderson, 1986), and, given that those higher in antisocial tendencies have more experience with violence, these aggressive materials may reinforce or validate their existing strategies of interpersonal relations. Finally, aggressive/antisocial people may be more likely than nonaggressive/antisocial people to choose antisocial or unconventional sexual materials because they may be more likely to be assertive about satisfying unconventional interests and curiosities. Second, dominance motives and related constructs, such as Machiavellianism, which is the tendency to use manipulation, power, and opportunism to achieve personal goals (Christie and Geis, 1970), may also relate to interest in violent sexual themes, in part because domineering and controlling behavior may be important motives in the appreciation of aggressive sexual acts against women and children (e.g., Burgess, 1984; Groth, 1979; Malamuth, 1986). Thus, those high in dominance motives may wish to view power or dominance motives being satisfied because these themes are familiar and/or cognitively accessible, viewed as acceptable and less distasteful, and reinforce existing (or at least desired) strategies of interpersonal relations. Some existing research supports an association between such constructs and exposure to violent films. For example, Tamborini et al. (1987) assessed Machiavellianism, along with masculinity and sensation seeking, and found that all three constructs were positively correlated with preference for graphic


32

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interpersonal violence in mainstream (nonsexual) films and, in combination with prior viewing habits, yielded a Multiple R of .51 in predicting preference for media violence. Such dimensions may also relate to preference for themes of female sexual insatiability, which also have been argued to satisfy dominance, control, and power motives (e.g., Cowen et al., 1988; Matacin and Burger, 1987). Dominance or related motives may be satisfied with these themes because females are portrayed as eager to succumb to, service, and satisfy the sexual interests of males. In addition to aggression/antisocial tendencies and dominance motives, those constructs related to sexual variety/novelty and experience are relevant to the present investigation. In particular, erotophilia/erotophobia or positive-to-negative sexual affect (Fisher et al., 1988), sensation seeking, the need for novel stimulation and arousal (Zuckerman, 1979), previous sexual experience, and previous pornography exposure may relate to general interest in the sexual media but also to more novel forms of it. One cognitive explanation for why these associations could occur is that high prior experience with a given behavior (e.g., prior exposure to the sexual media) provides an individual with highly “accessible” internal cues to the acceptability, normativeness, and rewards of that behavior. In addition, scoring higher on these types of variables should make viewing sexual materials a more positive emotional (e.g., erotophilia) or a more exciting and arousing (e.g., sensation seeking) experience. Some prior research does support the idea that these individual difference variables relate to sexual media preferences. For example, Becker and Byrne (1985) found that erotophiles, relative to erotophobes, are more likely to watch sexually explicit films and to have fewer errors of recall about these materials, and Zuckerman and Litle (1986) found that sensation seeking predicted prior attendance to sexually explicit films, including more novel sexual media forms. In addition, prior exposure to sexual materials relates to an interest in the general sexual media and the portrayal of more novel sexual activities (Kelley and Musialowski, 1986; Reifler et al., 1971; Tamborini et al., 1987; Zillmann and Bryant, 1986). Interestingly, however, some research suggests that men with a high level of sexual experience may view some forms of sexual material (e.g., aggressive) more realistically and hence more critically, perhaps because of having appropriate sexual comparisons (Malamuth and Check, 1983). Given these findings, men high in sexual experience may have a high interest in sexual materials generally, but may have a low interest in more extreme antisocial content within these media (e.g., sexual violence). Finally, intelligence may play a role in sexual media viewing habits. To the present author’s knowledge, no research has addressed directly whether this variable predicts media content preferences. However, given the association between lower intelligence and antisocial behavior (e.g., Giancola and Zeichner, 1994; Huesmann et al., 1987), individuals lower in IQ may prefer more aggressive media portrayals, including aggressive sexual materials, in part because they are more


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familiar and hence more cognitively accessible themes, and because they reinforce preexisting or recognized strategies of coping. They may also be more likely than individuals higher in intelligence to prefer aggressive material, including sexually aggressive material, perhaps because the portrayal of antisocial acts may be viewed less critically (e.g., Burnett, 1991; Jacobvitz et al., 1991). Summary and Objectives In the present investigation, 11 personality and individual difference variables (aggression, attraction to sexual aggression, dominance, erotophilia, hypermasculine sex roles, intelligence, machiavellianism, psychoticism, previous sexual media exposure, sensation seeking, and sexual experience) were used to predict preferences for content in the sexual media. However, given that many of these variables likely share variance, they were first subjected to principal components’ analysis to extract common factors. Then, multivariate analyses (e.g., multiple regression) were used to investigate the extent to which the resulting individual difference factors, alone and in combination, predict preference for and choice of different sexual media materials. In addition, the present study attempted to provide some insight into the consumption rates of various content (e.g., violent, female sexual insatiability themes) in sexually explicit materials. Current content analyses suggest that overt aggression (e.g., rape) is not prevalent whereas other themes such as female sexual insatiability are more common (e.g., Brosius et al., 1993). The present study tested whether similar consumption patterns occur within a laboratory setting. Consumption information (from field and lab studies) provides an ecological context to evaluate the impact of specific types of sexual media materials on society. Thus, if female sexual insatiability themes increase negative attitudes toward women (e.g., Zillmann and Bryant, 1989) and sexual violence can increase aggression (e.g., Donnerstein and Berkowitz, 1981), then consumption studies are necessary to establish whether these content elements are popular enough to have widespread societal effects. METHOD Participants University of Western Ontario undergraduates (160 males) with a mean age of 19.2 years were tested in groups of 5–15. These undergraduates received 2 credits toward their introductory psychology requirements for participating in this research. Men were tested because they are the primary consumers of explicit sexual materials. Some investigators report that men consume at least three times the amount of explicit sexual materials as compared to women (Shepher and Reisman,


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1985). In addition, if sexual materials contribute to men’s antisocial behaviors toward women, as some have argued (e.g., Zillmann and Bryant, 1989), then men should be the primary participants of sexual media studies that investigate or have implications for antisocial effects. Personality Measures To measure aggression and dominance, the 16-item true/false Aggression (e.g., “When I’m irritated I let it be known”) and Dominance (e.g., “I try to control others, rather than permit them to control me”) scales from the Personality Research Form were employed (PRF; Jackson, 1984a). In the present study, internal consistency levels (i.e., alpha coefficients) for these scales were .69–.77, respectively. To measure attraction to sexual aggression, six 11-point items comprising the short form of the Attraction to Sexual Aggression scale (Malamuth, 1989a) were employed. This scale contains items such as, “If you could be assured that no one would know and that you could in no way be punished, how likely are you to engage in rape?” The alpha coefficient for this scale in the present study was .80. To measure sexual affect or erotophilia/erotophobia, the twenty-one-item 7-point scale, The Sexual Opinion Survey (e.g., “Masturbation can be an exciting experience”), was used (Fisher et al., 1988). In the present study, the alpha coefficient for this scale was .76. To measure Machiavellianism, the twenty-item 7-point Mach IV scale (e.g. “Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so”) was used (Christie and Geis, 1970). In the present study, the alpha coefficient for this scale was .76. To assess hypermasculinity, the 30-item forced choice scale, The Hypermasculinity Inventory (e.g., “All is fair in love and war”) was used (Mosher and Sirkin, 1984). The internal consistency value for this scale in the present study was .82. The 24-item true/false Psychoticism (“Do you sometimes like to tease small animals?”) scale was also employed (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975). Originally reported alpha coefficients for this scale were relatively high, although recent studies have observed lower levels (e.g., .49; Malamuth, 1986). In the present study, the alpha coefficient for this scale was .52. To assess sensation seeking, the 40-item forced choice Sensation Seeking Scale (e.g., “I like wild uninhibited parties”) was used (Zuckerman, 1979). In the present study, the alpha coefficient for this scale was .76. Finally, to measure intelligence, four subscales, Spatial (50 items), Digit Symbol (35 items), Similarities (34 items), and Comprehension (28 items), comprising the short-form of the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB; Hill and Jackson, 1984; Jackson, 1984b) were included. The MAB is a timed, multiple choice, group-administered IQ test that is similar to the well-known WAIS-R. In the present study, internal consistency levels for these four scales were .86 and above. Although usually allotted 7 min, participants were restricted to 5 min per subscale because of time constraints. This time-saving


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procedure should have little bearing on the rank ordering of individuals in intelligence (see Jackson, 1984b, pp. 42, 43).3 Sexual Experience Prior (12 items) and current (12 items) sexual experience scales were also constructed (e.g., “Have you ever engaged in oral stimulation of a female’s genitals?” and “In the past two months, have you engaged in oral stimulation of a female’s genitals?,” respectively). Internal consistency values for these scales were .88 and .92, respectively. In addition, number of sexual partners in the participant’s lifetime was assessed and converted to a standard score and then added to the standardized sum of the prior sexual experience scale to form an aggregate measure of past sexual experience. Finally, prior exposure to sexual materials (14 items) in the past year was assessed (e.g., “How often have you seen films or videotapes showing explicit portrayals of sexual intercourse?”). In the present study, the alpha coefficient for this scale was .87. Additional Measure: Social Desirability The 16-item true/false Social Desirability scale (e.g., “I am always prepared to do what is expected of me”) was also used (PRF; Jackson, 1984a). In the present study, the internal consistency value for this scale was .64. This scale assesses the inclination to respond to questionnaires in a socially favorable manner. Given that some of the media material presented may be construed as socially undesirable, this measure was included as a possible control. In addition, this scale was included because, as Jackson (1984a) has pointed out, social desirability deserves some consideration as a valid personality measure of high socialization and social conformity. As such, this construct should relate negatively to preference for unconventional and/or antisocial sexual materials (e.g., sexually violent portrayals). Media Stimuli A review of available content analyses research of sexual materials indicates that a number of themes (e.g., female as sexually insatiable, violence) occur with varying degrees of frequency (e.g., Brosius et al., 1993). To establish an array of sexual media materials for participants’ choices that reflects this diversity, a pool of “promotional” descriptions of fictional films was produced. The primary emphasis 3 Self-report

delinquency and altruism were also assessed in this study, but they had very limited predictability. In addition, prior sexual aggression was assessed in this study, but it had little variation. Thus, these measures are not reported here (but see Bogaert, 1993).


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here was on ecological validity, where different sexual promotional descriptions were patterned after existing promotional materials in the sexual video market (e.g., Videolog, 1991). Two descriptions for each of the five sexual content themes were included: sexually violent; insatiable or sexually eager, nondiscriminating female; erotic or affectionate relationships; child sexuality; and sexual novelty (e.g., bestiality). In addition, two nonsexual control themes were included: violent nonsexual and nonviolent nonsexual media. The promotional descriptions used in the present study are shown in Table I.4 Dependent Measures and Manipulation Checks Participants rated their likelihood of viewing each of the 14 films under four different circumstances. These four viewing circumstances assessed different levels of effort and anonymity/confidentiality involved with viewing, important considerations for potentially socially undesirable materials. In addition, a composite or aggregate of four measures (as opposed to a single measure) increases reliability of measurement (e.g., Epstein, 1979). These likelihood-to-view measures were as follows: (1) renting each on video; (2) seeing each in a movie theatre; (3) ordering each through mail order; and (4) watching each if it happened to appear on late-night television. These ratings were on 7-point scales, where “1” indicated no likelihood of viewing and “7” indicated a high likelihood of viewing. In addition to these likelihood-to-view measures, from detailed descriptions of each film, participants could select two films to view in a supposed future testing session. After making the film selections and these likelihood-to-view ratings, participants used 7-point scales to assess the promotional descriptions for the content manipulations, including explicitness, sexual arousal, violence, affection, female’s eagerness to please men sexually (i.e., female sexual insatiability), novelty, and child sexualization.5 Procedure Volunteer bias (e.g., self-selection) has been reported in sexual research (e.g., Saunders et al., 1985). To reduce the possibility of such bias, participants were not recruited for an overtly sexual study. The present investigation was advertised merely as a “personality” study and as an opportunity to pretest films for future 4 Initially,

the descriptions were rated on various dimensions (e.g., violence, novelty) by a pretest sample of 39 male and female undergraduates. The descriptions differed in predictable ways, with, for example, the sexually violent films being the most violent of the sexual films (see Bogaert, 1993). The bestiality film was taken from Zillmann and Bryant (1986). 5 One procedural note: The students first read a list of all the film descriptions so that they could make their pretest choice. After this, they made their self-report ratings, following a presentation of each film description.


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Table I. Promotional Descriptions by Content Erotic sex Passionate Embrace. XXX. After a month-long separation Wendy and Tom return to one another’s arms for a night of mutual pleasure. The heat and sexual intensity of their passion sets the screen on fire! Explicit sexual behavior. Night Moves. XXX. Jim and Mary have been together for years and they know how to light one another’s sexual fires. See them come to life with passion and hot sexual desire! Explicit sexual behavior. Insatiable sex Lusty Woman. XXX. This woman craves sex! On the job, at home, or anywhere, the lusty action never stops, thanks to the hottest and most willing honey ever! Explicit sexual behavior. Working Girl. XXX. Anytime, anywhere with anyone—that’s her motto! This hot and horny working girl does everything for everybody! Explicit sexual behavior. Violent sex She Wanted It All Along. XXX. Ted manhandles sexy Alice until her pain turns to sexual pleasure. See her get spanked, beaten and mistreated, all in the name of love! Explicit sexual behavior. Spare the Rod and Spoil the Fun. XXX. Bill is on his way to the top, but one thing stands in his way—sweet and sexy Suzy. Her show of resistance is pretty convincing, but that’s nothing that an iron hand and a good stiff beating can’t cure. Soon she’s hot, horny, and begging for more! Explicit sexual behavior. Child sex On My Lap. XXX. Little Sally is the tender and sweet age of seven, but she knows just what to do to turn on her man! It all starts by sitting “on his lap.” Explicit sexual behavior. The Younger the Better. XXX. She’s only eight and still in grade school, but she is well-schooled in the ways of sex! See this little dynamo do her stuff! Explicit sexual behavior. Novel sex Strange Fantasies From the Far East. XXX. You won’t see this anywhere else guys! Fresh from Japan, this stuff is new, weird, and hot! Explicit sexual behavior. Beauties and the Beasties XXX. Get ready for the strange and bizarre! Karen finds ecstasy with a well-endowed specimen of “man’s best friend” whereas Bob finds counting sheep is not nearly as much fun as doing other things to them. Explicit sexual behavior. Violent control Hockey Fight Outtakes. Twenty minutes of the year’s best brawls. Watch the blood and teeth fly! Not rated. World of Boxing. Mohammed Ali, Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, and others do some serious head-bashing. Not rated. Control The MTV Awards. The top 10 videos of the last 5 years are presented, including releases from U2, Peter Gabriel, New Kids on the Block, Tracy Chapman, and more. Not rated. Best of “Saturday Night Live.” Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Bill Murray, and others are highlighted from the classic late night comedy show! Not rated.

research (i.e., “Personality and Pretesting Film Study”). Once they arrived, however, participants were told that the study contained sexual content, and that, along with needing undergraduates to pretest films, the experimenter was interested in “personality and sexual behavior.” The personality questionnaires were administered in the first hour, and the sexual questionnaires, along with ratings of the film descriptions and a question assessing whether the participant was interested in the “future” pretesting session,


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were administered in the second hour. The 14 promotional descriptions were presented to the participants in alphabetical order by title, so that they appeared to be in a “natural” order, as they might be found by browsing through a promotional catalogue or at a video store. Participants were informed that the promotions described real films to be used in future psychological research, but at the present time needed to be assessed for popularity and content, and then anonymously and confidentially pretested (e.g., to assess video quality, believability of the actors, etc.), for which they would receive additional credit. Those who chose to participate in the additional session were asked to indicate which two films they would most like to pretest. Those choosing not to pretest were asked to state why they did not want to participate, and to indicate two films they would have pretested if they had chosen to continue. To enhance the believability of the pretest session, a calender with various times, dates, and locations for pretesting was included. Participants were told that these times and dates could not be changed, so they should plan to arrive promptly to the pretesting session. As an additional procedure to enhance believability, participants were told that they needed to select two films from the array (instead of one) because the experimenter may not be able to schedule their first choice. When the participants finished the questionnaire, they were probed for their awareness of the true purpose of the study (e.g., whether they believed the future pretesting session was real). Finally, participants were given an extensive verbal and written debriefing and thanked for their participation. RESULTS Correlations among the personality and individual differences were consistent with expectations and prior research, with, for example, antisocial and aggression scales being related. Note as well that some of the scales were related to social desirability, particularly Machiavellianism, attraction to sexual aggression, psychoticism, dominance, and prior sexual experience (see Table II).6 Manipulations of Film Description Content Single factor repeated-measure ANOVAs with Scheffe post hoc contrasts, tested for film description differences on the content manipulations. As shown in Table III, the sexual films were rated as the most explicit, the erotic sex films as the most affectionate, the violent sex films and violent nonsexual films as the most violent, the female insatiable sex films (e.g., Lusty Woman) as most likely to have female characters that were the most eager to have sex with many men 6 The

correlations among the individual difference measures in this study have, in part, been reported elsewhere (see Bogaert, 1993, 1996).

—

.34∗∗∗ −.01

.20∗ — −.06 —

.01 .01

4

.19∗ −.03 —

.53∗∗∗ .18∗

5

.05 .12 .39∗∗∗ —

.21∗ .31∗∗∗

6

.17∗ −.07 .22∗∗ .14 —

.17∗ .14

7

−.15 .03 .42∗∗∗ .33∗∗∗ .16∗ —

.28∗∗ .29∗∗∗

8

.07 .13 .46∗∗∗ .18∗ .00 .32∗∗∗ —

.21∗ .07

9

.19∗ .08 .20∗ −.07 .04 .03 .17∗ —

.25∗∗ −.20∗

10

.16∗ −.02 .17∗ .01 .09 .04 .30∗∗∗ .37∗∗∗ —

.10 −.18∗

11

.03 .13 .12 .10 .34∗∗∗ .14 .28∗∗ .01 .12 —

.06 .12

12

.23∗∗ .09 −.11 −.39∗∗∗ −.13 −.35∗∗∗ .02 .24∗∗ .11 −.14 —

−.05 −.48∗∗∗

13

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< .05; ∗∗ p < .01; ∗∗∗ p < .001.

—

1 Aggression 2 Attraction to sexual aggression 3 Dominance 4 Intelligence 5 Hypermasculinity 6 Machiavellianism 7 Prior sexual media exposure 8 Psychoticism 9 Sensation seeking 10 Sexual experience (prior) 11 Sexual experience (current) 12 Erotophilia 13 Social desirability

3

Table II. Correlations Among Individual Difference Variables 2

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Bogaert Table III. Mean Ratings of Film Descriptions and Likelihood-to-View Measures Aggregated Across Content Film content

Content manipulations Explicit Affection Violence Female promiscuity Child sexualized Novelty Arousal Viewing likelihood Video rental Movie viewing Mail order Night TV Combined self-report

Erotic sex

Insatiable sex

Violent sex

Child sex

Novel sex

Violent nonsexual

Control

6.5c 5.0d 1.8a 3.4bc 1.2a 3.4b 5.6d

6.7c 2.8c 2.3b 6.2d 1.2ab 4.1c 5.6d

6.7c 1.8b 6.1e 3.2b 1.2ab 5.6d 4.1c

6.7c 1.7b 4.2d 3.7bc 6.5c 6.3e 3.0b

6.7c 2.1b 3.4c 4.0c 1.4b 6.0de 4.0c

1.4b 1.1a 6.4e 1.3a 1.1a 2.8a 1.0a

1.0a 2.1b 1.5a 1.5a 1.1a 2.7a 1.1a

2.9c 1.6b 1.6b 5.4c 2.9c

3.1c 1.6b 1.7b 5.6c 3.0c

2.2b 1.3ab 1.4ab 4.3b 2.3b

1.6a 1.1a 1.2a 3.1a 1.8a

2.3b 1.4ab 1.4ab 4.7b 2.5b

4.1d 2.4c 2.4c 5.6c 3.6d

4.4d 3.0d 2.3c 5.7c 3.8d

Note. The contrasts occur across film content categories, such that, for example, explicitness scores are compared for the erotic sex films versus the insatiable sex films versus the violent sex films, etc. Means with different superscripts differ at the .05 level, using Scheffe’s test for multiple contrasts. Ratings are on 7-point scales, where 1 is low and 7 is high.

(i.e., nondiscriminant sexual behavior), and the child sex films as most likely to have a “child sexualized.” The violent, child, and novel sex films were generally rated as the most novel of all the films. The erotic and insatiable sex films were equal in arousal and found to be the most arousing of all the films. The sexually violent films and the novel sex films were found to be intermediate in terms of arousal, and the child sex films were the least arousing of the sexual films, but were rated as more arousing than the nonsexual films were. Overall, the promotional descriptions seemed to tap adequately a range of different sexual and nonsexual content from which the participants could make selections and indicate preference.7 Film Preferences As mentioned, the participants were asked whether they would be interested in participating in a future film “pretesting” session. Six men reported suspicion 7 Some

readers may note that some confounding of content occurred. For example, the child sexualization films were rated as more violent than the female insatiability, the novel sex, or the erotic films (although not quite as high as the sexually violent films) were. This is understandable and was considered acceptable because child sexualization, like rape in the sexually violent films, implies coercion; thus, a greater degree of discrimination between the child sexualization and the sexually violent films in level of violence would have lacked ecological validity.


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about the pretesting session (i.e., thought it would not occur) on questions that were designed to assess whether the participants surmised the hypothesis of the study and were eliminated from further analyses. Of the remaining 154 men, 51% chose not to participate in the pretesting session. A lack of interest in the pretesting session partly reflected the fact that participants were tested between November and March, and some would have had fulfilled their introductory course requirements after completing the present study. Indeed, 78% of the “nonpretesting” participants indicated that they did not participate because they did not have the time or because they already had enough credits; 18% indicated that they did not participate because they were not interested in any of the films. As mentioned, all the men were asked to indicate which 2 of the 14 films they would most like to watch (even if they chose not to participate in the future “pretesting” session). Figure 1 presents the percentage of choices made by these participants (i.e., including those who chose not to participate in the future “pretesting” session). In order, they are as follows: female insatiability films (i.e., 26.8%); control (e.g., Best of Saturday Night Live) films (21.3%); violent control films (18.9%); novel sex films (12.2%); erotic films (9.8%); child sex films

Fig. 1. Pretest film choices. “Insatiable” refers to female sexual insatiability films (e.g., “Working Girl”); “Control” refers to nonviolent control films (e.g., “Best of Saturday Night Live”); “Violent” refers to violent nonsexual control films (e.g., “Hockey Fight Outtakes”); “Novel” refers to novel activity sex films (e.g., “Strange Fantasies from the Far East”); “Erotic” refers to affectionate, mutually consenting sex films (e.g., “Passionate Embrace”); “Child” refers to child sex films (e.g., “On My Lap”); and “Violent Sex” refers to violent sex films (e.g., “She Wanted It All Along”).


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(5.9%); and violent sex films (5.6%). Given that there were seven film categories, one might propose that, all else being equal, each film category has approximately a 1 in 7 (or 14.3%) chance of being chosen at random (i.e., its “expected” value). Thus, to give some indication of the relative popularity of each film category, I tested whether its observed value (i.e., % of choices) significantly exceeded or was significantly lower than its expected value, using the z approximation to the binomial test. The insatiable sex films and both control film categories significantly ( p < .05) exceeded their expected values, whereas the erotic, child, and violent sex films were significantly lower than their “expected” values. In addition, I tested whether the percentage of sexual films chosen (i.e., all five sexual categories) differed from its expected or chance value (i.e., 5 of 7 film categories or 71.4%). It was significantly lower (60%) than its expected value.8 I also tested whether the percentage of choices for each film category differed from the other (and not just from their “expected” value). The insatiable sex film choices were chosen significantly ( p < .05) more frequently than all the other film category choices were; the two control film categories were not significantly different from one another but were chosen more frequently than the remainder of the film categories were; and the novel and erotic sex films did not significantly differ from one another but were chosen significantly more frequently than the sexually violent and child sex films were, which did not significantly differ from each other. I also analysed these data, based on whether the men had actually chosen to pretest a film. The “pretesting” participants showed the following pattern: insatiable sex = 31.3%; control = 16.0%; violent control = 13.3%; novel sex = 13.3%; erotic = 12.6%; sexually violent = 8.0%; child sex = 5.3%, with the insatiable sex category significantly exceeding its expected value and the sexually violent and child sex films significantly lower than their expected values. The percentage of sexual films chosen (70.7%) did not significantly differ from its expected value (71.4%). I also tested whether the percentage of choices for each film category differed from one another (and not just from their “expected” value). Again, the insatiable sex film choices were chosen significantly ( p < .05) more frequently than all the other film category choices were; the two control film categories, the erotic sex film category, and the novel sex film were not significantly different from one another but were chosen more frequently than the sexually violent and child sex film categories were, which did not significantly differ from one another. 8 It

is of note that selecting only those who showed some interest/willingness to view the films, that is, those signing up for a pretest and those saying they did not participate because they did not have time or already had enough credits, showed very similar results (insatiable sex = 27.9%; control = 18.9%; violent control = 18.5%; novel sex = 12.9%; erotic sex = 9.4%; child sex = 6.7%; violent sex = 5.5%). The insatiable and the nonviolent control films significantly ( p < .05) exceeded their expected values, and the erotic, child and violent sex films were significantly ( p < .05) lower than their expected values. In addition, the percentage of sexual films chosen (i.e., all four sexual categories) was significantly lower (63%) than its expected or chance value (i.e., 5 of 7 film categories or 71.4%).


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Film choices for the “nonpretesting” participants showed a somewhat different pattern, with the control films, the violent control films, and the insatiable sex films (27.2%, 24.3%, 23.5%, respectively) significantly exceeding their expected values, the novel sex films having an observed value (11%) not differing from its expected value, and the child sex films (6.6%), the erotic sex films (4.4%), and the sexually violent films (2.9%) having observed values less than their expected values. The percentage of sexual films chosen (48.1%) was significantly lower than its expected value (71.4%). I also tested whether the percentage of choices for each film category differed from the other (and not just from their “expected” value). The two control film categories and the insatiable sex film category did not differ but were significantly chosen more frequently than the other film categories were; the novel sex films did not differ from the child sex films, but the novel sex film category was chosen more frequently than the erotic and the sexual violence categories were; the child, the erotic, and sexual violence film categories did not significantly differ from one another. Within each film category (i.e., erotic, insatiable, control, etc.), the four likelihood-to-view measures (i.e., on video, in a theatre, etc.) were moderately related, with the mean correlation between these self-report likelihood ratings having a value of .41 and a mean alpha of .84 (see also Bogaert, 1993). These likelihood ratings for each film category (i.e., four likelihood ratings for each of the two films) were summed. Each participant, then, had seven aggregate self-report likelihood-to-view measures, one for each of the seven categories of films. On these aggregate self-report likelihood-to-view measures, the control films (i.e., the violent control and nonviolent control) were the most popular; the insatiable and erotic sex films, the second most popular; the novel sex and violent sex films, the third most popular; and finally, the child sex films, the least popular (see Table III). However, note that the extreme antisocial sexual films (e.g., violent sex and child sex films), even though they were less popular than the other films, had a modestly high propensity to be viewed under certain conditions, such as “if it happened to appear on late-night television.”

Principal Components’ Analysis of Individual Differences To reduce the number of individual difference predictors and extract more common factors, a principal components’ analysis with varimax rotation was performed. Five components with eigenvalues greater than 1 emerged. The loadings are shown in Table IV and are defined by (1) antisocial tendencies/low desirability, (2) dominance/aggression motives, (3) sexual experience, (4) interest in sexual variation, and (5) intelligence. Participants’ factor scores on each of the five components served as individual difference measures.


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Bogaert Table IV. Factor Structure of Individual Differences with Varimax Rotation Factor I II III IV (Antisocial/low (Dominance/ (Sexual (Sexual V desirability) aggression motives) experience) variation) (Intelligence)

Aggression Attraction to sexual aggression Dominance Intelligence Hypermasculinity Machiavellianism Pornography experience Psychoticism Sensation seeking Sex experience (past) Sex experience (current) Erotophilia Social desirability Eigenvalue Variance (%)

.345 .655

.742 .155

.147 −.319

−.069 .138

.046 −.011

−.232 .025 .526 .628 .139

.761 .019 .496 .144 .337

.075 −.068 .398 −.006 −.042

.222 .029 .023 .145 .701

−.005 .915 .033 .242 −.260

.745 .388 −.120 −.107

−.018 .062 .315 .025

.267 .609 .571 .763

−.065 .104 −.134 .166

.004 .242 −.037 −.164

.139 −.715

−.097 .257

.148 .178

.818 −.205

.250 .178

3.0 23.3

2.0 15.4

1.2 9.4

1.1 8.6

1.1 8.4

Individual Differences and Viewing Preferences As mentioned, the four likelihood-to-view measures (i.e., renting each on video; watching each in a movie theatre; ordering each through mail order; and watching each if it happened to appear on late-night television) for each film category were summed. These aggregate likelihood-to-view measures served as the primary preference criteria. In addition, whether the participant chose to view a sexual film in the putative “future” testing session was used to form a second preference criterion. Recall that all the men were asked to indicate which 2 of the 14 films they would most like to watch (even if they chose not to participate in the future “pretesting” session). For this measure, a score of 2 indicated that the participant had chosen two sexual films to pretest, “1” indicated that he had chosen one sexual film to pretest, and “0” indicated that he had not chosen any sexual film to pretest. This choice variable tested whether the individual differences could discriminate between the actual choice of a sexual film (e.g., erotic, insatiable, violent) and the choice of a nonsexual film (i.e., two control film categories). To maximize the number of cases, both the pretesting and nonpretesting participants (i.e., those not interested in the additional testing session) were included. Multiple regression analyses were conducted by “force entering” each individual difference component (Cohen and Cohen, 1983). Summary statistics for these analyses are shown in Table V. Note that the beta weights in these analyses

.127∗∗∗

.357

∗p

< .05; ∗∗ p < 01; ∗∗∗ p < .001.

.494∗∗∗ .244

−.242

−.110

.058∗∗ .470∗∗∗ .221

.348

−.018

.108

.050∗∗

unique variance contribution of predictor.

.019

.192∗∗∗ .224

.001

−.031

.000

.038∗

.195

.052∗∗

.282

Betaa

b

.012

.121∗∗∗

.000

.012

.079∗∗∗

rs2

.462∗∗∗ .214

−.068

.219

−.019

.258

.306

Betaa

b

.005

.048∗∗

.000

.066∗∗∗

.148∗∗∗

rs2

Child sex

.484∗∗∗ .235

−.080

.316

.091

.315

.148

Betaa

b

.007

.100∗∗∗

.008

.099∗∗∗

.022

rs2

Sexual film

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a Standardized regression coefficient. b Squared semipartial correlation indicating

.535∗∗∗ .286

−.138

b

.096∗∗∗

rs2

Novel sex

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.416∗∗∗ .194

.021

.438

.000

.011

.228

Betaa .309

b

Film type

.021

rs2

Violent sex

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−.143

.012

.003

.108

.143

.012

.109

Betaa

Factor I: antisocial/low desirability Factor II: dominance/ aggression Factor III: sexual experience Factor IV: variation Factor V: intelligence Multiple R R2

b

Betaa

Predictor

rs2

Insatiable sex


Erotic sex

Table V. Summary Statistics for Multiple Regression Analyses on Sexual Film Preferences




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are similar to zero-order correlations because the principal components with varimax rotation are uncorrelated.9 In general, the individual difference components were predictive. For example, for the sexually insatiable films, a Multiple R of .53 occurred, and two components, sexual variation and dominance/aggression motives, contributed uniquely to prediction (both ps < .01). In addition, note that for the sexually violent films, a Multiple R of .49 occurred, and 4 of the 5 individual difference components, that is, antisocial tendencies/low desirability, sexual variation, intelligence (negatively), and dominance/aggression motives, contributed uniquely to prediction (all ps < .05). Note as well that the analysis for the “sexual” choice measure yielded a Multiple R of .48 and had two components, sexual variation and dominance/aggression motives, that contributed uniquely to prediction (both ps < .01). However, a notable exception to these significant results was the sexual experience factor, which was unrelated to any of the film categories. (In addition, the nonsexual control films were unrelated to any of the individual difference factors and are not mentioned further.)10 Multiple regression analyses were also performed with the participant’s selfreport arousal rating for each particular sexual film category (see manipulation checks). These analyses were performed for two reasons. First, they indicated whether the participants’ self-report arousal to each film category contributes to prediction. As mentioned, some research suggests that people choose to view sexual material because of its stimulation or arousal properties (Brown and Bryant, 1989; Winick, 1971). Second, these analyses indicated whether the individual difference components could contribute to prediction over and above self-report arousal for that sexual film category. For example, arousal may mediate the relationship between some individual difference components and viewing preference for certain films; if this is the case, the previously observed relationships should be reduced or eliminated when arousal is controlled. As shown in Table VI, the individual difference components generally contributed to the prediction over and above self-report arousal. Note as well that the inclusion of the self-report arousal measures typically increased prediction beyond that achieved by an additive combination of the components. For example, for the sexually violent films, a Multiple R of .71 (R 2 = .50) occurred and three of the previously significant components, antisocial tendencies/low desirability, intelligence (negatively), and sexual variation, still contributed uniquely. 9 Correlational

analysis among the five factors verified that the five factors were, indeed, uncorrelated (i.e., all correlations were 0.00). 10 I also tested whether a number of interactions between the individual difference factors predicted interest in the sexual media. In particular, there is evidence that the interaction between factors similar to sexual variation and aggression/dominance predict exposure to Penthouse magazine (Malamuth and McIlwraith, 1988). In addition, I thought a number of these individual difference factors (e.g., antisocial/low desirability or aggression/dominance) may be particularly predictive of antisocial sexual content when the participant was lower in intelligence (e.g., an Intelligence × Aggression/Dominance interaction) . However, the addition of these interaction terms did not significantly add to prediction in any of the regression equations (all ps > .05).

.260

.003 .041∗∗ .018

.051 .223 −.134

unique contribution of predictor.

.705∗∗∗ .496

−.193

.129

.085

−.070

.034∗∗ .638∗∗∗ .407

.212

.045

.078

.016∗

.007

.012

.459 .276

Betaa

b

.005

.041∗∗

.002

.006

.186∗∗∗ .076∗∗∗

rs2

Novel sex

.735∗∗∗ .541

−.110

.085

.048

.156

.612 .186

Betaa

b

.012

.007

.002

.023∗

.326∗∗∗ .033∗∗

rs2

Child sex

.516∗∗∗ .266

−.068

.236

.122

.277

.203 .140

Betaa

b

.004

.046∗∗∗

.014

.073∗∗∗

.031∗ .020

rs2

Sexual film

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a Standardized regression coefficient. b Squared semipartial correlation indicating ∗ p < .05; ∗∗ p < 01; ∗∗∗ p < .001.

.661∗∗∗ .429

.017

.056∗∗∗

.003

.111

.027∗

b

.252∗∗∗ .032∗∗

rs2

Film type

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−.129

.167

Betaa .501 .184

b

.150∗∗∗ .026∗

rs2

Violent sex

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.511∗∗∗ .261

.053

.012

.110

.432 .160

.089∗∗∗ .016

.327 .126

Betaa

Self-report arousal Factor I: antisocial/low desirability Factor II: aggression/ dominance Factor III: sexual experience Factor IV: variation Factor V: intelligence Multiple R R2

b

Betaa

Predictor

rs2

Insatiable sex


Erotic sex

Table VI. Summary Statistics for Multiple Regression Analyses on Sexual Film Preferences with Self-Report Arousal




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Although the addition of self-report arousal generally added to prediction and many of the variables remained significant, it is also clear that many of the significant factors were reduced in magnitude, suggesting that self-report arousal may be partly mediating the relation between these individual difference factors and preference for different sexual content. To investigate this possibility further, I used structural equation modeling (i.e., EQS, Bentler, 1989) to test three different models of how the individual differences relate to the preference for insatiable and sexually violent films. (For these analyses, I focussed on these two types of films because the insatiable films are apparently popular and the sexually violent films have been well-studied for antisocial effects.) The models were (1) individual difference variables (including self-report arousal) having fully independent effects on viewing preference; (2) individual difference variables being partly mediated through self-report arousal, and (3) individual difference variables being fully mediated through self-report arousal. The “part mediation” models best accounted for the data, with the “Goodness-of-Fit” indices (i.e., NFI and CFI values) reaching upper bound values of 1.00 relative to .85 or lower for the other models.

DISCUSSION The results of this study support an individual difference and person/choice of environment approach to understanding preferences for types of sexual media. Preferences for viewing sexual films were related to a number of individual difference components and these increased prediction when they were allowed to combine additively. For example, using multiple regression analyses, the results were particularly strong for the sexually violent films, with 50% (R 2 = .50) of the variation being accounted for and three components (i.e., antisocial tendencies/ low desirability, lower intelligence, and sexual variation), along with self-report arousal, contributing uniquely to prediction. Thus, a man who has a combination of such characteristics—that is, a high self-report arousal to such films, is higher in antisocial tendencies (along with lower social desirability), is lower in IQ (e.g., has as an uncritical view of antisocial acts), and has a high interest in sexual variation—would be particularly likely to view sexually violent films. These results replicate and extend previous research investigating individual difference predictors of preferences for and choices of sexual materials, including sexually violent films (e.g., Barnes et al., 1984a; Fisher et al., 1988; Malamuth, 1989a,b; Mosher and Anderson, 1986). Future research should continue to investigate the important role that individual differences play in media preferences, including attempts to replicate the pattern of results in the present study. This is particularly so for the multiple regression analyses, which need replication to demonstrate stability across subject populations. Interestingly, and in contrast to the generally significant results, the “sexual experience” factor, which was primarily defined by current and prior sexual


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experience and sensation seeking, was unrelated to any sexual media preferences. It is of note that similar (nonsignificant) results occurred when the individual scales comprising this factor (e.g., sensation seeking and sexual experience) were used as predictors in these data (see Bogaert, 1993). Perhaps high sexual experience and sensation seeking may indicate a preference for more “active” types of social/ sexual behaviors (e.g., finding new sexual partners), whereas viewing sexual films may be reflective of more restrained, more sedentary types of social/sexual interests and activities. Regardless of the explanation, however, these results give little support to previous studies using these dimensions (e.g., Zuckerman and Litle, 1986). One additional area of future research would be to continue to study intelligence as a predictor of media effects. In the present study, intelligence was a defining variable of a principal component that predicted preference for violent sexual materials. In two recent studies (Bogaert et al., 1999), intelligence was also predictive of actual behavior after viewing different kinds of sexual material (e.g., violent vs. nonviolent), with men lower in intelligence (relative to those higher) being more likely to be sexually suggestive towards a young woman after viewing sexually violent content. Thus, not only might lower intelligence (relative to higher) predispose individuals to choosing more violent sexual media content, but it may also make them more susceptible to it once they have chosen to view it. It would be interesting to assess if such effects also occur, using a wider range of media content. It would also be of interest to assess a wider range of participants (e.g., nonuniversity students) because of the restriction of the range of IQ/intelligence scores that typically occurs with college samples. Future research should also further explore the relationship between aggressive/dominance motives and preference for sexual materials, particularly female insatiability themes. Dominance motives, as mentioned, may be partly satisfied by viewing these “insatiability” themes because women are portrayed as eager to succumb to, service, and satisfy the sexual interests of men. This view is consistent with the position taken by a number of feminist writers (e.g., Cowen et al., 1988; Matacin and Burger, 1987). One possible alternative explanation for this relationship is that men who are more dominant/aggressive (relative to those less dominant/aggressive) are merely more assertive about seeking out fairly common “male-oriented” sexual interests/strategies (e.g., having many willing and eager sexual partners or short-term mates, see Buss and Schmitt, 1993), and thus, are more likely than less assertive men to report a strong interest in such themes. Future research should evaluate the degree to which one or (perhaps) both of these explanations account for this relationship. Future research should also continue to investigate mediating mechanisms underlying the relationship between individual difference factors and preferences for sexual films. Although not the primary focus of the present study, I found some support for a “sexual arousal” mechanism. For example, although self-report arousal generally added to prediction and many of the individual differences remained


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significant once self-report arousal was controlled for, the regression and structural equation analyses indicated that self-report arousal is probably partly mediating the relations between the individual difference factors and preferences for different sexual content. Thus, some men (e.g., those higher in antisocial tendencies or dominance/aggression motives) may select to view antisocial sexual material partly because of its stimulation or arousal properties. Other plausible mediating mechanisms underlying the relationship among and preferences for sexual films include cognitive components (e.g., thoughts, imagery, and memories of aggression-related activities) and/or affective/emotional responses (e.g., lower levels of disgust, fear, anxiety, etc.). These additional mediating mechanisms, along with their possible relations to an arousal mechanism, should be tested in future research. Finally, it is of note that this study, although having a laboratory context and not assessing a full array of sexual and nonsexual themes in the media, did provide some insight into university men’s consumption pattern of (sexual) media materials. The results indicated that, when given a choice to view different media materials, the men chose a broad range of media materials, although the “female insatiability” films were more popular than the other sexual films were (e.g., “erotic” or violent). These data may suggest some limits to the external and ecological (i.e., “real life settings/environments”) validity of experimental studies assessing the impact of more extreme sexual materials (e.g., sexual violence). For example, extending the present findings to some of this well-cited research (e.g., Donnerstein and Berkowitz, 1981; Malamuth, 1981) suggests that only a small percentage (e.g., 5–6%) of the men in these types of studies would have voluntarily placed themselves in a position to view a sexually violent film, given an array of other options from which to choose. In addition, these results do not seem to support some feminist writers (e.g., MacKinnon, 1983) who imply that men are very interested in sexual aggression against women. Moreover, some of the men may have chosen to view some of the extreme materials because it was perceived as being sanctioned (even encouraged) by the experimenter, even though under normal circumstances these men may not have chosen to view such materials. On the other hand, perhaps 5–6% is not a trivial percentage, given the laboratory constraints of the study. Thus, although some men may have chosen to view extreme materials because it was sanctioned by the laboratory context, perhaps other (and even more) men may have been reluctant to choose to view such films in front of the experimenter because such films are perceived as socially undesirable and, ultimately, would have been viewed under unnatural (and potentially uncomfortable) conditions. In addition, it should be noted that the men reported a higher propensity to view such antisocial films under other conditions, such as if it happened to appear on late-night television. Regardless of the interpretation of the consumption rate for these extreme materials, however, future research should focus on or include material that content analyses and preference studies, such as the present one, indicate to be more prevalent and popular within the sexual media (i.e., female insatiability materials).


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I appreciate the helpful comments from Ray Blanchard, Carolyn Hafer and several anonymous reviewers. I also acknowledge the guidance and support provided by my Ph.D. thesis advisors, W. A. Fisher and P. A. Vernon. REFERENCES Barnes, G. E., Malamuth, N. M., and Check, J. V. P. (1984a). Personality and sexuality. Pers. Indiv. Diff. 5: 159–172. Barnes, G. E., Malamuth, N. M., and Check, J. V. P. (1984b). Psychoticism and sexual arousal to rape depictions. Pers. Indiv. Diff. 5: 273–279. Becker, M. A., and Byrne, D. (1985). Self-regulated exposure to erotica, recall errors and subjective reactions as a function of erotophobia and Type A coronary prone behavior. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 48: 760–767. Bentler, P. M. (1989). EQS: Structural Equation Program Manual, BMDP Statistical Software, Inc., University of California, Los Angeles. Bogaert, A. F. (1993). The Sexual Media: The Role of the Sexual Media. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Volunteer bias in males: Evidence for both personality and sexuality differences. Arch. Sex. Behav. 25: 125–140. Bogaert, A. F., Woodard, U., and Hafer, C. L. (1999). Intelligence as a moderator of antisocial pornography effects. J. Sex Res. 36: 283–291. Brosius, H.-B., Weaver, J. W., and Staub, J. (1993) Exploring the social and sexual “reality” of contemporary pornography. J. Sex Res. 30: 161–170. Brown, D., and Bryant, J. (1989). The manifest content of pornography. In Zillmann, D., and Bryant, J. (eds.), Pornography: Research Advances and Policy Considerations, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 3–24. Burgess, A. W. (1984). Child Pornography and Sex Rings, Lexington Books, DC Heath, Lexington, MA. Burnett, J. J. (1991). Examining media habits of the affluent elderly. J. Advert. Res. 31: 33–41. Buss, D. (1984). Toward a psychology of person–environment (PE) correlation: The role of spouse selection. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 47: 361–377. Buss, D. M., and Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychol. Rev. 100: 204–232. Christie, R., and Geis, F. C. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism, Academic Press, New York. Claridge, G. (1983). The Eysenck Psychoticism Scale. In Butcher, J. N., and Speilberger, C. D. (eds.), Advances in Personality Assessment, Vol. 2, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 71–114. Cohen, J., and Cohen, P. (1983). Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Ed., Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Cowen, G., Lee, C., Levy, D., and Snyder, D. (1988). Dominance and inequality in X-rated videocassettes. Psychol. Women Quart. 12: 299–311. Donnerstein, E., and Berkowitz, L. (1981). Victim reactions in aggressive erotic films as a factor in violence against women. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 41: 710–724. Epstein, S. (1979). On stability of behaviour: I. On predicting most of the people much of the time. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 37: 1097–1126. Eysenck, H. J., and Eysenck, S. B. G. (1975). Manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Hodder & Stoughton, London. Eysenck, H. J., and Eysenck, S. B. G. (1976). Psychoticism as a Personality Dimension, Hodder & Stoughton, London. Fisher, W. A., Byrne, D., White, L., and Kelley, K. (1988). Erotophobia–erotophilia as a dimension of personality. J. Res. Pers. 25: 123–151. Giancola, P. R., and Zeichner, A. (1994). Intellectual ability and aggressive behavior in nonclinical– nonforensic males. J. Psychopathology Beh. Assess. 16: 121–130.


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Greendlinger, V., and Byrne, D. (1987). Coercive sexual fantasies of college men as predictors of self-reported likelihood of rape and overt sexual aggression. J. Sex Res. 23: 1–11. Groth, A. N. (1979). Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender, Plenum Press, New York. Hill, T. D., and Jackson, D. N. (1984). Brief form of the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB). (Research Bulletin No. 617), University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. Huesmann, L. R. (1988). An information processing model for the development of aggression. Aggressive Beh. 14: 13–24. Huesmann, L. R., Eron, L., and Yarmel, P. W. (1987). Intellectual functioning and aggression. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 52: 232–240. Jackson, D. N. (1984a). Personality Research Form Manual, Research Psychologists Press, Port Huron, MI. Jackson, D. N. (1984b). Multidimensional Aptitude Battery Manual, Research Psychologists Press, Port Huron, MI. Jacobvitz, R. S., Wood, M. R., and Albin, K. (1991). Cognitive skills and young children’s comprehension of television. J. Appl. Dev. Psychol. 12: 219–235. Kelley, K., and Musialowski, D. (1986). Repeated exposure to sexually explicit stimuli: Novelty, sex, and sexual attitudes. Arch. Sex. Behav. 15: 487–498. MacKinnon, C. (1983). Feminism, marxism, method, and the state: Toward feminist jurisprudence. Signs 8: 635–658. Malamuth, N. M. (1981). Rape fantasies as a function of exposure to violent sexual stimuli. Arch. Sex. Behav. 10: 33–47. Malamuth, N. M. (1986). Predictors of naturalistic sexual aggression. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 50: 953– 962. Malamuth, N. M. (1989a). The Attraction to Sexual Aggression Scale: Part 1. J. Sex Res. 26: 26–49. Malamuth, N. M. (1989b). The Attraction to Sexual Aggression Scale: Part 2. J. Sex Res. 26: 324– 354. Malamuth, N. M., and Check, J. V. P. (1983). Sexual arousal to rape depictions. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 92: 55–67. Malamuth, N. M., and McIlwraith, R. D. (1988). Fantasies and exposure to sexually explicit material. Commun. Res. 15: 753–771. Matacin, M. L., and Burger, J. M. (1987). A content analysis of sexual themes in Playboy cartoons. Sex Roles 17: 179–186. McIlwraith, R. D., and Josephson, W. L. (1985). Movies, books, music, and adult fantasy life. J. Commun. 35: 167–179. Money, J. (1986). Lovemaps, Irvington Press, New York. Mosher, D. L. (1988). Pornography defined: Sexual involvement theory, narrative context, and “goodness-of fit.” J. Psychol. Hum. Sex. 1: 67–85. Mosher, D. L., and Anderson, R. D. (1986). Macho personality, sexual aggression, and reactions to guided imagery of realistic rape. J. Res. Pers. 20: 77–94. Mosher, D. L., and Sirkin, M. (1984). Measuring a macho personality constellation. J. Res. Pers. 18: 150–163. Plomin, R. C., and Bergeman, C. S. (1991). The nature of nurture: Genetic influences on “environmental” effects. Beh. Brain Sci. 14: 705–732. Plomin, R. C., Defries, J. C., and Loehlin, J. C. (1977). Genotype-environment interaction and correlation in the analysis of human behavior. Psychol. Bull. 84: 309–322. Reifler, C. B., Howard, J., Lipton, M. A., Liptzin, M. B., and Widmann, D. E. (1971). Pornography: An experimental study of effects. Am. J. Psych. 128: 575–582. Saunders, D. M., Fisher, W. A., Hewitt, E. C., and Clayton, J. P. (1985). A method for empirically assessing volunteer selection effects: Recruitment procedures and responses to erotica. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 49: 1703–1712. Scarr, S., and McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotypeenvironment effects. Child Dev. 43: 424–435. Shepher, J., and Reisman, J. (1985). Pornography: A sociobiological attempt at understanding. Ethol. Sociobiol. 6: 103–114. Snyder, M., and Ickes, W. (1985). Personality and social psychology. In Lindsey, G., and Aronson, E. (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol II, 3rd Ed., Random House, New York, pp. 883–943.


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Tamborini, R., Stiff, J., and Zillmann, D. (1987). Preference for graphic horror featuring male versus female victimization. Hum. Commun. Res. 13: 529–552. Videolog. (1991). Trade Service Corporation, San Diego, CA. Winick, C. (1971). A study of consumers of explicitly sexual materials: Some functions served by adult movies. In Technical Reports of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, Vol. 4, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, pp. 245–262 Zillmann, D., and Bryant, J. (1986). Shifting preferences in pornography consumption. Commun. Res. 13: 560–578. Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation Seeking: Beyond the Optimal Level of Arousal, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Zuckerman, M., and Litle, P. (1986). Personality and curiosity about morbid and sexual events. Pers. Indiv. Diff. 7: 49–56.

P1: FZN Archives of Sexual Behavior [asb]

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Sexual Functioning After Treatment for Testicular Cancer—Review and Meta-Analysis of 36 Empirical Studies Between 1975–2000 Grieteke Jonker-Pool, M.A.,1,2,7 Harry B.M. Van de Wiel, M.A., Ph.D.,1,3 Harald J. Hoekstra, M.D., Ph.D.,4 Dirk Th. Sleijfer, M.D., Ph.D.,5 Mels F. Van Driel, M.D., Ph.D.,6 Jean P. Van Basten, M.D., Ph.D.,4 and Heimen Schraffordt Koops, M.D., Ph.D4

Literature concerning sexual functioning after treatment for testicular cancer from 1975–2000 is reviewed. After a literature search in Medline and Psylit was conducted, as well as a search for cross-references made, a meta-analysis was performed. To describe sexual functioning, several aspects of the sexual response cycle were used: sexual desire, sexual arousal, erection, and orgasm; ejaculatory function, sexual activity, and sexual satisfaction were used as well. The number of patients included in the studies as well as treatment modalities were taken into account. A total of 36 relevant studies was screened (28 retrospective and 7 prospective studies), concerning 2,786 cases of testicular cancer. Meta-analysis revealed that ejaculatory dysfunction was reported most frequently and was related to surgery in the retroperitoneal area. Erectile dysfunction was related to irradiation, but was reported least frequently. Other sexual functions were not related to treatment modality. Meta-analysis revealed no deterioration of sexual functioning in the course of time, except a decrease in sexual desire and an increase in sexual satisfaction. Retrospective studies reported more sexual dysfunction than did prospective studies. Detailed analysis of separate studies, however, revealed a wide variation in reported sexual morbidity, as well as in assessment methods. Somatic consequences of disease and treatment may reduce ejaculation; however, 1 Department

of Medical Psychology, Groningen University Hospital, The Netherlands. Centre for Health Care Research, Groningen, The Netherlands. 3 Dutch Institute for Social Sexological Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands. 4 Department of Surgical Oncology, Groningen University Hospital, The Netherlands. 5 Department of Medical Oncology, Groningen University Hospital, The Netherlands. 6 Department of Urology, Groningen University Hospital, The Netherlands. 7 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Medical Psychology, Groningen University Hospital, PO Box 30.001, 9700 RB Groningen, The Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected]. 2 Northern

55 C 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/01/0200-0055$19.50/0 °


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Jonker-Pool, Van de Wiel, Hoekstra, Sleijfer, Van Driel, Van Basten, and Koops

other aspects of sexual functioning are not clearly related to disease- or treatmentrelated factors and may instead refer to a psychological vulnerability caused by one’s confrontation with a life-threatening, genito-urinary disease, such as testicular cancer. KEY WORDS: testicular cancer; sexuality; literature review; meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION In the western countries testicular cancer is the most prevalent malignancy in males aged between 20 and 40 (Wingo et al., 1995). Although the disease is relatively rare, its incidence has profoundly increased in the past half century (Harding et al., 1995; Hoff Wanderas et al., 1995). In northern Europe the incidence is 7.5/100,000 inhabitants per year (Adami et al., 1994). In The Netherlands the incidence is 4.7/100,000 inhabitants per year (Visser et al., 1996). Incidence rates in non-Western countries are much lower (Kenya 0.08/100,000 and India 0.2/100,000 inhabitants per year, respectively) (Zimmerman and Kung’u, 1978; Raina et al., 1995). Generally, two types of testicular cancer are distinguished: 40% concerns seminoma tumors (ST) and 60% concerns nonseminoma testicular germ cell tumors (NSGCT). The highest incidence rate of seminomas is between 30 and 35 years of age, whereas nonseminomas are mainly diagnosed between 25 and 29 years of age (Hadu, 1979; Hoff Wanderas et al., 1995). Treatment is based on the histology of the primary tumor and on the results of staging investigations (Fung and Garnick, 1988; Peckham et al., 1983). In the case of a seminoma tumor, hemi-orchiectomy is followed by radiation therapy (RT). A stage I nonseminoma, currently, is successfully treated by hemi-orchidectomy alone, followed by frequent surveillance, the so-called “Wait & See” policy (W&S) (Gels et al., 1995). Disseminated disease is currently treated with cisplatin-based PCT and the resection of only residual retroperitoneal tumor mass (RRRTM). It should be noted that formerly a more invasive resection in the abdominal of retroperitoneal lymph nodes (RPLND) was performed (Gels et al., 1997). With the introduction of cisplatin-based polychemotherapy, followed by tumor-reductive surgery, the survival rate has increased to almost 90% (Gels et al., 1997). This increase in the survival rate has advanced the awareness of the long-term sequelae of diagnosis and treatment. As the disease affects relatively young men, in their genital area, it may not be surprising that in the past decades, several authors have investigated aspects of sexual functioning and fertility after treatment for testicular cancer. Unfortunately, however, it is very difficult to make a clear picture based on the outcomes of the existing studies. For instance, in the literature, loss of sexual desire varies between 2 and 69% and ejaculatory dysfunction between 17 and 100%. This wide range of reported dysfunctioning makes it difficult to use empirical results as a sound basis for patient education and counselling. To create a more


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57

comprehensive picture, it was decided to perform a meta-analysis on the existing data. METHODS Relevant literature was collected by performing a computer-based search (Medline, Psylit) of publications from 1975 to the end of 1999, with the following keywords: testicular cancer, cancer of the testicles, sexual functioning, sexuality, and sexual rehabilitation. As a second step all references given in the selected publications were examined. The following aspects of sexual functioning, based on Masters & Johnson (Masters and Johnson, 1966; Kaplan, 1979) and the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994), were used to screen the literature: loss of sexual desire (libido); male erectile disorder; orgasmic dysfunction (in terms of delay or less intense orgasmic joy); and premature, delayed, or absent ejaculation. Some other relevant aspects of sexual functioning, frequently mentioned in the literature, were added: sexual activity and sexual satisfaction. A meta-analysis of the results was performed to obtain an insight into the ranges of outcomes of the reviewed field and into the eventual sources of heterogeneity. Means were weighted for number of patients included per study. To identify trends, outcomes of dependent (and co-) variables were simply interrelated across studies. RESULTS Entire Patient Population In the literature from 1975, a total of 29 retrospective and 7 prospective studies was found (see Appendix), which concerned, respectively, 2,437 and 338 cases that could be used for meta-analysis. Statistical analysis of the reported data, weighted by the number of patients per study, revealed the following mean scores (in rounded percents) on sexual dysfunctioning for the entire patient population (outcomes of prospective studies in parentheses): – loss of desire: 20% (11%) – male erectile disorder: 11.5% (14%) – orgasmic dysfunction: 20% (9%) – ejaculation disorder: 44% (51%) – decrease in sexual activity: 24% (13%) – sexual dissatisfaction: 19% (18%) The mean age was 35 (30.3) years and the mean follow-up period 6.9 (2.0) years. The mean response rate was 77% (88%). For more detailed results, that is, exact


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Jonker-Pool, Van de Wiel, Hoekstra, Sleijfer, Van Driel, Van Basten, and Koops Table I. Overview of Meta-Analytic Outcomes of 36 Reviewed Studies Number of studies

Total patients n = 2,775 (100%)

Range

Weighted meana

SD

retrospect prospect

29 7

2,437 (88) 338 (12)

16–264 29–76

83.4b 53.5b

57.6 19.7

retrospect prospect Follow-up retrospect prospect Response retrospect prospect Desire retrospect prospect Erection retrospect prospect Orgasm retrospect prospect Ejaculation retrospect prospect Sexual Activity retrospect prospect Sexual retrospect Dissatisfaction prospect

24 5 24 7 25 5 15 4 20 6 13 2 19 5 10 1 16 2

2138 (88) 248 (73) 1988 (82) 338 (100) 2101 (86) 248 (73) 1521 (62) 147 (43) 1792 (74) 239 (77) 1251 (51) 71 (21) 1836 (75) 239 (71) 990 (41) 31 (9) 1400 (57) 93 (28)

20–77 years 17–51 years 0.25–25.5 years 0.25–3 years 43–100% 60–100% 2–69% 10–13% 0–35.2% 0–29% 0–53% 9%–? 17–100% 30–81% 13–40% 13%–? 4–38% 18%–?

34.7 years 30.3 years∗ 6.9 years 2.0 years∗ 76.6% 87.9%∗ 19.6% 11.2%∗ 11.5% 13.8% 19.8% 9.0%∗ 44.2% 51.3%∗ 24.2% 13%∗ 19.1% 18.0%∗

4.1 1.7 4.2 1.1 15.8 18.4 16.5 1.5 10.7 11.5 13 — 24.5 19.4 6.8 — 10.3 —

Age

Indicated are the number of studies in which the concerning variable was reported and the number of patients included in these studies. a Weighted mean: mean score of total of studies, weighted by sample-sizes of the studies involved. b Mean number of patients not weighted by number of patients. ∗ Using t-test to compare means of retro- and pro-spective studies; all means, except concerning erectile dysfunction, were significantly different, p < .001.

percentages, ranges, and standard deviations (SDs), see Table I; note that SD values of the reported sexual functions are broad, and that ranges vary widely between studies. Outcomes of Specific Treatment Modalities The study of outcomes of specific treatment modalities is important because it may highlight differences in sexual morbidity. In part of the studies, outcomes specified per treatment modality were reported. This concerned about half of the patients included in retrospective studies (n = 1,311 out of a total n = 2,437; Table II and Figs. 1–5). Only three out of seven prospective studies reported outcomes specified according to treatment modality; because of this low number the outcomes of these studies cannot be compared. Despite wide ranges and standard deviations (SD) in reported data concerning sexual dysfunction, meta-analysis revealed significant differences between treatments with respect to all sexual variables. The following mean scores (in rounded percentages) were found per specific

a RT:

radiotherapy, PCT: polychemotherapy, RPLND: retroperitoneal lymphnode dissection.

One-way Anova P: Scheffé-test (group-differences with p < .05)

21.4 (13.8): 0–54.5 n = 846 0.0000 5—Rest of groups

50.9 (28.1): 0–100 n = 1108 0.0000 All groups different

15.9 (11.9): 7–44 n = 108 39.9 (14): 0–60 n = 273 28.4 (16.5): 0–64 n = 150 62.2 (21.5): 40.5–95 n = 358 80.5 (27.5): 38–100 n = 193 60 (0) n = 26

Ejaculatory Problems

27 (10.8): 0–40 n = 431 + ? 0.0000 All groups different, except 2 & 4

10.5 (0) n = 59 28.5 (11): 0–39 n = 85 34.3 (10.2): 8–40 n = 103 28.5 (3.9): 26–40 n = 178 0 (0) n=6 n=?

Reduced Activity

16.0 (9.2): 0–33 n = 583 + ? 0.0000 1—2 & 4

n=?

7.5 (1.4): 7–11 n = 75 15.8 (11.8): 7.5–33 n = 126 14.5 (6.2): 0–19 n = 137 19.9 (7.8): 15–33 n = 203 n=?

Sexual Dissatisfaction

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13.52 (10.1): 0–48 n = 1013 0.0000 2—1,3,4,5

23.8 (14.3): 12–42.5 n = 101 22.5 (8.1): 14.5–38 n = 236 28.3 (6): 20–40 n = 67 21.5 (10): 9–39.5 n = 242 10.6 (16.3): 0–54 n = 174 54.5 (0) n = 26

Reduced Orgasm

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22.85 (18.3): 2–69 n = 778 0.0000 All groups different, except 2 & 4

7.4 (10.1): 3.5–33 n = 75 24.8 (18.8): 0–48 n = 175 11.1 (5.8): 0–20 n = 150 11.3 (9.6): 0–31 n = 407 9.7 (8.7): 0–20 n = 180 23.5 (0) n = 26

Loss of Erection

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Total mean treatments number 1–6:

24.8 (16.8): 12–48.5 n = 108 14.1 (8.9): 2–22 n = 131 24.9 (3.6): 21–28.5 n = 137 13.4 (7.1): 2–21 n = 313 65.7 (1.6): 65–69 n = 89 n=?

Loss of Desire


1. Surveillance (patients from 4 studies) n = 108 (8.2%) 2. RTa (patients from 9 studies) n = 417 (32%) 3. PCT (patients from 6 studies) n = 160 (12%) 4. PCT + surgery (patients from 9 studies) n = 404 (31%) 5. RPLND (patients from 6 studies) n = 193 (15%) 6. PCT + RPLND + RT (patients from 1 study) n = 26 (2%)

Total n = 1311 (100%)

Mean % (SD): range available n

Table II. Overview of Outcomes of Sexual Functioning Per Treatment-Modality (Means Weighted by Number of Patients Per Subgroup)

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Sexuality and Testicular Cancer: Literature Review 59


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Fig. 1. Surveillance (4 studies, n = 108).

Fig. 2. Irradiation (9 studies, n = 417).

treatment modality (for more detailed results, i.e., exact percentages, SDs, ranges, and number of observations, see Table II). Surveillance (Concerning Four Studies, n = 108) – loss of desire: 25% – male erectile disorder: 7% – orgasmic dysfunction: 24% – ejaculation disorder: 16% – decrease in sexual activity: 11% – sexual dissatisfaction: 8%


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Fig. 3. PCT (6 studies, n = 160).

Fig. 4. PCT + surgery (9 studies, n = 404).

Compared to the entire patient population, relatively high percentages of loss of sexual desire and orgasmic disorders were reported, especially if we take into account that, medically, orchidectomy followed by surveillance is the least invasive treatment modality. As expected, relatively little (but still some) ejaculatory dysfunction was reported. Radiotherapy (RT) (Concerning Nine Studies, n = 417) – loss of desire: 14% – male erectile disorder: 25% – orgasmic dysfunction: 23% – ejaculation disorder: 40%


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Fig. 5. Surgery (6 studies, n = 193).

– decrease in sexual activity: 29% – sexual dissatisfaction: 16% Results revealed that irradiated patients reported the highest rate of erectile disorders and the lowest rate of loss of desire, compared to other treatment groups. Chemotherapy (PCT) (Concerning Six Studies, n = 160) – loss of desire: 25% – male erectile disorder: 11% – orgasmic dysfunction: 28% – ejaculation disorder: 28% – decrease in sexual activity: 34% – sexual dissatisfaction: 15% Treatment with PCT resulted in a rather “average” pattern of sexual disorders. The outcome of ejaculatory dysfunctioning was low compared to patients treated by RT, whereas the outcome of decrease in sexual activity was relatively high compared to the mean score for the entire population. PCT + Surgery (Retroperitoneal Lymph Nodes, RPLND, or Residual Tumor Mass, RRRTM) (Concerning Nine Studies, n = 404) – loss of desire: 13% – male erectile disorder: 11% – orgasmic dysfunction: 22%


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– ejaculation disorder: 62% – decrease in sexual activity: 29% – sexual dissatisfaction: 20% Like PCT alone, PCT + surgery also resulted in a rather average pattern of reported sexual dysfunctioning. As expected, patients treated by surgery in the abdominal area reported a much higher rate of ejaculatory dysfunctioning compared to patients treated by PCT alone. With respect to these studies it must be noted that surgical therapeutic principles have changed since the introduction of cisplatin in 1977, and that the extent of surgery has evolved from “very radical” to “more concise.” The effect is that in older studies concerning PCT + surgery, patients reported more ejaculatory dysfunction than in the more recent studies. However, the most striking result in this group of patients can be seen in the reported loss of sexual desire: the combination of two invasive treatment modalities lead to less reported loss of sexual desire (13%) than either PCT (25%) or abdominal surgery alone (66%). Retroperitoneal Lymph Node Dissection (RPLND) (Concerning Six Studies, n = 193) – loss of desire: 66% – male erectile disorder: 10% – orgasmic dysfunction: 11% – ejaculation disorder: 81% – decrease in sexual activity: 0% – sexual dissatisfaction: not reported As the table shows, studies about sexual outcome after RPLND-alone reported a very high percentage of ejaculation disorder, probably due to the very radical surgical procedures used in the period that RPLND-alone was the common intervention. Especially, bilateral RPLND implicated the risk for retrograde ejaculation (e.g, Bracken, 1976; Nijman et al., 1987). The high outcome of reported loss of sexual desire in this subgroup of RPLND-treated patients (6%) needs to be interpreted with caution, as this outcome could be based on only two studies (one of them used very small subgroups, Gritz et al., 1989, and the other used rather vague assessment methods, Nijman et al., 1987). PCT + RPLND + RT (Concerning One Study, n = 26) Fossa et al. (1988) offered specified data concerning this combined treatment. Results are depicted here only to provide a picture “as complete as possible,” but


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Jonker-Pool, Van de Wiel, Hoekstra, Sleijfer, Van Driel, Van Basten, and Koops Table III. Correlations Between Outcomes of Variables of 36 Studiesa Desire

Desire Erection Orgasm Ejaculation Activity Dissatisfaction Age Follow-up a Spearson’s

Erection

Orgasm Ejaculate Activity Dissatisfaction Age Follow-up

1

.74∗ .18 .13 .67 .72∗∗ .19 −.06

1

.77∗∗ .03 .59∗ .60∗ −.020 .10

1 .07 .54 .24 .54∗ −.15

1 .07 −.12 .33 .16

1 .48 −.32 −.02

.02 −.18

1 .11

1

Rho Significant if ∗ p < .01, ∗∗ p < .05.

will not be taken into account in the discussion. – loss of desire: not reported – male erectile disorder: 24% – orgasmic dysfunction: 55% – ejaculation disorder: 60% – decrease in sexual activity: not reported – sexual dissatisfaction: not reported The total means across the specified treatment modalities in Table II were 2–7% higher compared to the general means presented in Table I (29 retrospective studies, irrespective of treatment modality). Between treatments, there appeared to be significant differences in reported sexual functioning (Table III, lowest row); it must be noted that the number of patients included per sexual variable is not fixed (due to the fact that the studies vary in their report of sexual variables). Taking into account this variability the following image emerges: – loss of desire appeared to be relatively high in patients treated by Surveillance and PCT-alone (both groups, 25%) – loss of erection was generally low, but highest in patients treated with RT (25%) – reduced orgasm was relatively low in patients treated with RPLND-alone (11%) – ejaculatory problems were high (62–81%) in patients treated with PCT ± surgery, but were also reported by 40% of patients from studies concerning RT – reduced sexual activity was relatively low, especially in patients treated with Surveillance (but still 10.5%) – sexual dissatisfaction generally was reported as being less frequent than was sexual dysfunctioning (

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