Abuja - People will lie about their sexual behaviour to match cultural
expectations about how men or women should act – even though they
wouldn’t distort other gender-related behaviours, new research suggests.
The
study found that men were willing to admit that they sometimes engaged
in behaviours seen by college students as more appropriate for women,
such as writing poetry. The same was true for women, who didn’t hide the
fact that they told obscene jokes, or sometimes participated in other
“male-type” deeds.
But when it came to sex, men wanted to be seen
as “real men:” the kind who had many partners and a lot of sexual
experience. Women, on the other hand, wanted to be seen as having less
sexual experience than they actually had, to match what is expected of
women.
Matching stereotypes“There is something
unique about sexuality that led people to care more about matching the
stereotypes for their gender,” said Terri Fisher, author of the study
and professor of psychology atThe Ohio State University’s Mansfield
campus.
“Sexuality seemed to be the one area where people felt
some concern if they didn’t meet the stereotypes of a typical man or a
typical woman.”
Fisher discovered how people would honestly
respond to questions about sexuality and other gender-role behaviours by
asking some study participants questions when they thought they were
hooked up to a lie detector machine.
The study appears in a recent issue of the journal
Sex Roles.Participants were 293 college students between the ages of 18 and 25.
The
students completed a questionnaire that asked how often they engaged in
124 different behaviours (from never to a few times a day). People in a
previous study had identified all the behaviours to be typical of
either males (such as wearing dirty clothes, telling obscene jokes) or
females (such as writing poetry, lying about your weight). Other
behaviours were identified as more negative for males (singing in the
shower) or more negative for females (poking fun at others).
But
some people filled out the questionnaire while they were attached to
what they were told was a working polygraph machine or lie detector. (It
was actually not working.)
The others were connected to the
apparatus before the study began, supposedly to measure anxiety, but the
machine was removed before they completed the questionnaire.
In
general, the results showed that both men and women tended to act as
would be expected for their gender. Men reported more typical-male
behaviours and women reported more typical-female behaviours, regardless
of whether they were attached to the lie detector or not.
But
for non-sexual behaviours, the participants didn’t seem to feel any
added pressure to respond in stereotypical ways for their gender.
In
other words, women who were hooked up to the lie detector and those who
weren’t were equally likely to admit to bench pressing weights – a
stereotypical male activity.
“Men and women didn’t feel compelled
to report what they did in ways that matched the stereotypes for their
gender for the non-sexual behaviours,” Fisher said.
The one
exception was sexual behaviour, where, for example, men reported more
sexual partners when they weren’t hooked up to the lie detector than
whey they were. Women reported fewer partners when they were not hooked
up to the lie detector than when they were. A similar pattern was found
for reports of ever having experienced sexual intercourse.
Men and women different“Men and women had different answers about their sexual behaviour when they thought they had to be truthful,” Fisher said.
This result confirms what Fisher found in an earlier study, back in 2003 – with one important difference.
Back
in 2003, women went from having fewer sexual partners than men (when
not hooked up to a lie detector) to being essentially even to men (when
hooked up to the lie detector.)
In this new study, women actually
reported more sexual partners than men when they were both hooked up to
a lie detector and thought they had to be truthful.
“Society has
changed, even in the past 10 years, and a variety of researchers have
found that differences between men and women in some areas of sexual
behaviour have essentially disappeared,” she said.
Fisher said
the results of the study may actually be stronger than what was found
here. Although half the participants were not hooked up to the lie
detector while completing the questionnaire, they had been hooked up
before they started.
“Some of the participants may have been made
uncomfortable by being attached to the lie detector at first, and that
may have led them to be more forthcoming and truthful than they
otherwise would have been,” she said.
- EurekAlert
culled from : News24
