Is Sexual Hypocrisy a Specific Form of Sexual Double Standard?
’ behavior
By asking participants to make appraisals for themselves, we were in the unique
position to examine sexual hypocrisy. Generally, we found that the participants
were less willing to pursue an opposite-sex target following sexual history
information but were less cautious when appraising same-sex friends in the same
situation. This was also true for men in the short-term context, although these
men made relatively fewer negative appraisals for self versus male friend
compared to women in both MCs and men in a long-term MC. The reason for this
difference we suspect lies with the relative risk to the participant associated
with the choice. It would pay to be particularly cautious when making decisions
for oneself because one must bear the consequences of that decision. The
consequences for even the most beloved friend will always have less of an effect
on the self. If this explanation holds then further research should find that
appraisals of others’ behavior and choices should track the extent to which
negative consequences would impact the decision maker—such as degree of genetic
relatedness and interdependence (Further, appraisals differed for the three behaviors, suggesting that SDS and
sexual hypocrisy was not similar for promiscuity, self-stimulation, and cheating
& controlling behaviors. The (reversed) SDS effect was more evident for
self-stimulation, and more evident in the short-term context, and the sexual
hypocrisy effect was stronger for women than for men albeit less pronounced for
self-stimulation. Evidently, sexual history is not necessarily best
conceptualized as negative information, sometimes sexual history is clearly
negative (cheating & controlling behavior), however, self-stimulation is
generally not considered negative behavior. The SST perspective highlights the
importance of how both sex of actor and MC will influence appraisals of sexual
history, for example a woman's sexual availability cues will be assessed more
positive for men in a short-term setting than men's sexual availability will be
assessed by women. There is more insight to be garnered about further specific
sex acts.