Moral Purity and Perceived Harm as Constraints on Sex Buying Among American Men

• In Event: New Directions in Moral Criminology

Abstract

Purchasing sex has long been considered an offense against public morality. However, although research suggests personal morality provides a powerful constraint on offending, and people likely vary in the extent to which they experience intuitive moral concerns about bodily and spiritual purity, research has so far neglected the role of moral intuition in understanding sex buying behavior. In the current study, we draw on Moral Foundations Theory to hypothesize that intuitions about moral purity constrain sex buying both directly, by leading people to intuit that it is wrong, and indirectly, by promoting perceptions that it is harmful. We test these hypotheses in a national survey of U.S. men (N=2,433) that includes both direct questioning about prior sex buying and a double list experiment gauging prior sex buying. Results indicate that purity endorsement is associated with reduced sex buying, and that these effects are mediated by perceptions of sex buying as harmful.

Authors

• Jasmine R. Silver, Rutgers University - Newark

• Justin Pickett, University at Albany, SUNY

• J.C. Barnes, University of Cincinnati

• Stephanie Bontrager Ryon, Tarleton State University

• Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, Arizona State University