8.2: Variability in Sexual Behavior
Women vary more in sexual behavior than men. To what extent is sexual behavior influenced by one’s gender, culture, or age? Across cultures and throughout the lifespan, men tend to demonstrate greater interest in sex than women (Frankenbach et al., 2022). Interestingly, men also report greater different-sex sexual activity than women – a silly and telling statistical impossibility (Mitchell et al., 2018). In contrast, women’s sexual behavior is highly variable: Some women have very high sex drives, some have very low sex drives, and many others fall somewhere in-between.
What explains this variability in women’s (and not men’s) sexual behavior? Erotic plasticity (Baumeister, 2004) refers to the extent to which sexual drive can be influenced by sociocultural factors. Research suggests that women have higher erotic plasticity than men: Women’s sexual interest is more heavily influenced by cultural norms, age, or even day-to-day occurrences than men’s sexual interest. Women also vary more in sexual orientation throughout their lives – they may find themselves attracted to varying genders as they progress through life. In contrast, men are highly consistent in their sexual preferences, tending to find themselves reliably attracted to the same gender throughout the lifespan.
The theory of erotic plasticity assumes differential susceptibility across sexes to sociocultural factors, perhaps owing to evolutionary demands (Baumeister, 2000; Buss, 1989). Yet, it is impossible to disentangle this theory from the fact that most cultures impose heavier restrictions on women’s bodies and sexual behaviors. In other words, men and women may actually be highly similar in erotic plasticity – but women receive considerably higher sexual regulation from society, making cultural changes more consequential for women’s sexuality than for men’s. Similarly, higher variability in women’s sexual orientations may be attributed more to the ways that Western society (a) minimizes women’s sexual decisions (e.g., thinking that a woman dating a woman is just a phase); and (b) polices masculinity norms, forcing men to commit to and justify their sexual preferences.
Asexuality and Aromanticism. As addressed in the Hidden Voices unit on Demographic Differences in Diagnosis Rates, diagnosing a psychological disorder requires properties such as distress or dysfunction. People who suddenly experience a loss in sexual interest may find this loss distressing, and losing sexual interest may upset partners and therefore interfere with close relationship functioning (dysfunction). Accordingly, people in such circumstances may benefit from diagnosis and treatment for a sexual interest or arousal disorder.
What does it mean if someone experiences little sexual interest, but experiences no distress or dysfunction? A growing body of research shows that asexuality – a consistently low or nonexistent interest in sexual activity – describes 0.4% to 3.3% of the North American population (Bogaert, 2013). Asexuality is a self-defined characteristic: Asexual people tend not to differ in physiological arousal compared to allosexual people, but nevertheless simply do not crave sexual experiences (Brotto & Yule, 2011). People in asexual relationships can nevertheless enjoy highly satisfying relationships that they feel motivated to protect (Ma et al., 2024). In contrast, aromantic people are those who find themselves disinterested or even repulsed by romantic relationships. Approximately 40% of people who identify as asexual additionally identify as aromantic (Weiss et al., 2021). The existence of asexuality and aromanticism demonstrates the importance of psychological processes in human experiences: Cognitive and affective experiences play a large role in steering our behaviors, even those that might seem universal.
