Lust? Love? Status?

Abstract

Although an impressive body of knowledge exists about the attitudes toward and correlates of short-term sex, little is known about men's and women's motives for seeking casual sex partners and for engaging in casual sexual encounters. Men and women college students who had entered casual sexual liaisons were asked to describe the reasons or motives that prompted their behavior in a free response, essay format. As expected, men and women generated similar reasons. Specifically, both genders emphasized intraindividual factors (e.g., sexual desire, sexual experimentation, physical pleasure, alcohol use) and factors associated with the casual sex partner (e.g., attractiveness) as reasons for their short-term sexual encounter(s). In addition, however, a number of gender differences were found. Men more than women emphasized social environmental reasons (e.g., status enhancement, normative peer group behavior), whereas women more than men cited interpersonal reasons (e.g., increase probability of long-term commitment from sex partner) for casual sex. These results are in accord with predictions generated by social context and evolutionary models of human mating.

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