Truth and consequences: Using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self‐reported sexuality

Abstract

Men report more permissive sexual attitudes and behavior than do women. This experiment tested whether these differences might result from false accommodation to gender norms (distorted reporting consistent with gender stereotypes). Participants completed questionnaires under three conditions. Sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior were negligible in a bogus pipeline condition in which participants believed lying could be detected, moderate in an anonymous condition, and greatest in an exposure threat condition in which the experimenter could potentially view participants responses. This pattern was clearest for behaviors considered less acceptable for women than men (e.g., masturbation, exposure to hardcore & softcore erotica). Results suggest that some sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior reflect responses influenced by normative expectations for men and women.

Gender Differences in Liking and Wanting Sex: Examining the Role of Motivational Context and Implicit Versus Explicit Processing

“…Assuming that liking reflects a more global evaluative dimension, this gender difference may partly reflect socialization experiences. For men, it is socially more accepted to like sexual stimuli whereas women may feel too embarrassed and self-conscious to admit that they like sex a lot (Alexander & Fisher, 2003). Note that men and women did not differ in their liking of sex at the implicit level, which may suggest that implicit measures are less sensitive to self-presentation issues and societal views.…”

“…Furthermore, explicitly asking about one's appraisal of sexual stimuli may be confounded by self-presentation issues and response biases, inclining women to underreport their sexual behaviors (Alexander & Fisher, 2003). Hence, it is both theoretically and methodologically important to complement explicit reports with implicit measures.…”

Effects of Alcohol and Expectancies on HIV-Related Risk Perception and Behavioral Skills in Heterosexual Women.

“…The consistency of this finding across two experiments with women in our lab, and the absence of extreme skew in the same score distributions in men (Maisto, Carey, Gordon, Schum, & Lynch, in press), suggest that there may be a gender difference. Along these lines, it appears that women are more reluctant than men to report sexual interest in contexts that do not provide response anonymity, due to differential societal norms regarding men's and women's sexual behavior (Alexander & Fisher, 2003).…”

“…The consistency of this finding across two experiments with women in our lab, and the absence of extreme skew in the same score distributions in men (Maisto, Carey, Gordon, Schum, & Lynch, in press), suggest that there may be a gender difference. Along these lines, it appears that women are more reluctant than men to report sexual interest in contexts that do not provide response anonymity, due to differential societal norms regarding men's and women's sexual behavior (Alexander & Fisher, 2003).A second limitation of this experiment is that about 80% of the participants were Caucasian. Although the preliminary analyses showed no significant relationships between race and any of the dependent variables, it is critical for basic research on the determinants of safer sex to expand to allow in-depth study of specific subgroups, such as those defined by race or sexual orientation.…”

Higher variability in the number of sexual partners in males can contribute to a higher prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in females

“…Regarding the empirical evidence for wider male sex partner distributions: as mentioned above these data are the result of self-reporting and are likely to suffer from a number of biases, including male over-reporting and female under-reporting (Wiederman, 1997;Alexander and Fisher, 2003;Nnko et al, 2004). It is also possible that the collected data do not adequately reflect sexual encounters resulting from prostitution.…”