Association of Sexual Attitudes with Sexual Function: General vs. Specific Attitudes

Abstract

Background: Sexual attitudes are related to the expression of sexuality and have been associated with indicators for sexual health. The main aim of this study was to determine the explanatory capacity of general (i.e., erotophilia) and specific (i.e., toward sexual fantasies and masturbation) sexual attitudes on different sexual functioning dimensions (sexual desire, sexual arousal, lubrication/erection, ability to have an orgasm and orgasm satisfaction). Methods: The sample consisted of 2000 heterosexual adults (1044 women, 956 men) aged 18–83 years. Results: The explanatory models for women mainly showed that positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies (β range = −0.35, −0.249) and age (β range = −0.111, 0.086) explained sexual function. The models proposed for men revealed a more diverse pattern, although the variable essential for explaining sexual function was a positive attitude toward sexual fantasies (β range = −0.266, −0.097). Conclusions: These results indicate that specific sexual attitudes, particularly in relation to sexual fantasies, are more sensitive variables than erotophilia in examining sexual health.

Sexual Activity in Peruvian Adolescents: Relevance of Socio-Demographic Variables and Sexual Attitudes

“…Boys showed more positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies, which also agrees with previous studies showing more differences in this attitude for boys [14,42,50,51]. Moreover, boys also showed more negative attitudes toward masturbation, which is congruent with previous studies in Peruvian adolescents [14] and the Spanish population [52][53][54][55]. This may seem contradictory because boys showed more negative attitudes toward masturbation but practised it more frequently.…”

“…A positive attitude toward sexual fantasies, which played a positive role in boys and girls, confirmed previous findings, which indicated a relation between a positive attitude toward sexual fantasies and an interest in sexual activity [42]. This stresses the role of specific attitudes, particularly positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies, as a relevant variable in sexual health [54].…”

“…This may seem contradictory because boys showed more negative attitudes toward masturbation but practised it more frequently. Nonetheless, this finding supports the hypothesis in boys about the compensatory model between masturbation and sexual relationships, which postulates that masturbation may act as a substitute for desired, but not performed, sexual relationships [11,[54][55][56]. A negative attitude toward masturbation showed explanatory capacity in feelings of sexual guilt in adolescents [33].…”

Attitudes toward sexual behaviors: relationship with gender and sexual orientation

“…Numerous studies have evaluated sexual attitudes, using different concepts such as sexual permissiveness, sexual conservatism-liberalism, and erotophobiaerotophilia (Blanc & Rojas, 2017). The main reason sexual attitudes have received so much attention is their relationship with sexual health (e.g., Carvalho et al, 2013;Sanders et al, 2006;Sierra et al, 2021) and sexual activity (e.g., Blanc et al, 2018b;Lemer et al, 2013). On the one hand, people with positive attitudes toward sexuality tend to report more permissive/liberal/erotophilic sexual attitudes than women (e.g., Ojedokun & Balogun, 2008;Ojo, 2014;Scandurra et al, 2022;Sprecher, 2013;Swami et al, 2017;Zuo et al, 2012).…”

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better sexual functioning (e.g., Carvalho et al, 2013;Sierra et al, 2021) and are more likely to use condom (Sanders et al, 2006) than people with negative attitudes toward sexuality. On the other hand, people with positive attitudes toward sexuality engage in a greater variety of sexual behaviors (Blanc, 2021;Blanc et al, 2018b) and more frequently (Lemer et al, 2013) than people with negative attitudes toward sexuality.

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