Effects of Individual Differences
During our analyses, we included several covariates that one might expect to
influence how people use information about sexual history including religiosity,
sexual disgust, and sociosexuality. Our third prediction regarding the effect of
these individual differences was supported on an overall level. Higher levels of
religiosity and sexual disgust, and more restricted sociosexuality were all
associated with more negative appraisals of targets with a sexual history.
Contrary to our expectation however, the effect of religiosity was not limited
to short-term sexual relationships. Overall, while there was evidence that these
individual differences affect how sexual history information is used more
broadly, these did not seem to enhance or reduce SDS or sexual hypocrisy
effects.Overall, these findings, although original, dovetail neatly with the general
finding in the literature that people rarely express the traditional double
standard when they judge sexually active others. Further, considering both sexes
in both MCs reveals predictable sex differences, where especially men are less
negative toward sexually active women in a short-term context. Sexual
availability is considered attractive and signaling this is an effective way for
women to self-promote or flirt in short-term contexts (The most interesting aspect of these findings may be that so many expect to find
the traditional pattern expressed in modern society. An implicit negative
attitude toward short-term sexual relations might be part of the explanation of
why people continue to believe in the traditional sexual double standard.
Intrasexual competition between women is probably also a driving mechanism,
attempting to downregulate inflation for sexual access. However, the narrative
might be leftover norm expectations from an era when there actually was more
sexual control over women than men, for example because of religiosity. There
are two aspects of the current findings that suggest that this explanation may
be too simple. First, while the participants in the current study are from a
highly secularized society, egalitarian and sexually liberal society compared to
the United States (