Not one Sexual Double Standard but Two? Attitudes about Appropriate Sexual Behavior in Dutch Adolescents

• In Event: 1-043 - Sexual Development in Adolescence: The role of Parenting, Popular Media, and Sexual Double Standards

Integrative Statement

Popular belief holds that human sexual behavior is evaluated more liberally (e.g., admiration for having sexual intercourse with multiple persons) for boys than for girls. However, the assessment of this ‘sexual double standard’ is controversial and methodological issues abound. To address these issues, we investigated how well we could measure a true sexual double standard by examining the measurement equivalence of commonly used items to assess sexual double standards in previous research. Dependent on measurement equivalence, we investigated whether there was a sexual double standard. Using data from 455 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 14.51, SD = 0.64), confirmatory factor analyses showed that three scale items were indeed measurement equivalent across sex, and across evaluations of the same and the opposite sex. In addition, factor analyses demonstrated that there was not one, but two sexual double standards. Boys evaluated male sexual behavior more liberally than female sexual behavior, but for girls this was the other way around: they evaluated female sexual behavior more liberally than male sexual behavior. Our findings thus contradict the long-held traditional notion of the existence of only one sexual double standard that favors male sexuality and suppresses female sexuality.

Authors

• Maud Hensums, University of Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Terrence Jorgensen, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geertjan Overbeek, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author