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PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCES
Individual Differences in Sociosexuality:
Evidence for Convergent and Discriminant Validity
Jeffry A. Simpson
Texas A&M UniversitySteven W Gangestad
University of
New
Mexico
Individual differences in willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relations were investigated
in
6
studies.
In Study
1,
a
5-item
Sociosexual Orientation Inventory
(SOI) was
developed.
Studies
2,
3,
and 4 provided convergent validity evidence for the SOI, revealing that persons who have an
unrestricted sociosexual orientation tend to
(a)
engage in sex at an earlier point in their relation-
ships,
(b) engage in sex with more than
1
partner at a time, and (c) be involved in relationships
characterized by less investment, commitment, love, and dependency. Study
5
provided discrimi-
nant validity for the SOI, revealing that it does not covary appreciably with a good marker of sex
drive.
Study 6 demonstrated that the SOI correlates negligibly with measures of sexual satisfaction,
anxiety,
and
guilt.
The possible stability of, origins of, and motivational bases underlying individual
differences in sociosexuality are discussed.
Over 5 decades ago, Alfred Kinsey and his associates em-
barked on the most ambitious, comprehensive, and in-depth
study of
the sexual
behavior and practices of human beings that
has ever been conducted. Although Kinsey primarily
was
con-
cerned with documenting population norms
(eg.,
mean rates of
various forms of sexual behavior), one of the most striking fea-
tures
of his data
was
the substantial variability that individuals
displayed across
a
wide array of what he referred to
as
sociosex-
ual attitudes and behaviors (Kinsey, Pomeroy,
&
Martin, 1948;
Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953). Indeed, as more
recent research has corroborated, individuals exhibit consider-
able variability on several sociosexual features that tend to co-
vary, including frequency of actual and preferred sexual inter-
course, number of actual and preferred partners, incidence of
concurrent (e.g, extramaritaO affairs, number of different sex-
ual partners foreseen in
the
future, attitudes toward engaging
in
uncommitted sexual relations, the ease with which uncommit-
ted sexual relationships can be entered into, and the frequency
with which sexual fantasies about partners other than the
current one predominate in one^ thoughts (see Eysenck, 1976,
and Hunt, 1974, for reviews; see Snyder, Simpson, & Ganges-
tad, 1986, for evidence of covariance).
This research
was
supported by National Institute of Mental Health
Grant MH45081 to Jeflry A. Simpson. We thank Lana Aaron, Sheri
Baker, Holly Bogart, Debbie Grudrein, Mindy Hall, Lisa Hutchins,
Margaret Lerma, Jim Lyon, Paul Nicolai, Karen Owens, Faith Short,
Sarah Sloan, Nicole Streetman, and Richard Williams for their assis-
tance during the empirical phases of these investigations.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Jeffry
A.
Simpson, Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University,
College Station,
Texas
77843,
or Steven
W
Gangestad, Department of
Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
87131.
Given that many of these sociosexual
behaviors
and attitudes
strongly covary, Snyder et al. (1986) and Gangestad and Simp-
son (1990) have suggested that they might tap a common indi-
vidual difference dimension reflecting
sociosexual orientation
or
sociosexuality.
Individuals at one end of this dimension—
those who possess a
restricted
sociosexual orientation—typi-
cally insist on commitment and
closeness in a
relationship prior
to engaging in sex with a romantic partner. Restricted individ-
uals
claim,
for instance, that they need closeness before feeling
comfortable with sex, they have had few sexual relationships in
the past
year,
and they rarely if ever
have
had
sex
with
a
partner
on one and only one occasion. Conversely, persons at the other
end of the dimension—those
who
exhibit an
unrestrictedsocio-
sexual
orientation—tend
to
feel relatively comfortable engaging
in sex without commitment or
closeness.
Unrestricted individ-
uals indicate, for example, that they could enjoy sex without
commitment, they have had several different sexual partners in
the past year, and they have engaged in sex with partners once
and only once on several different occasions.
Some of
the
variance underlying sociosexual behaviors and
attitudes can be accounted for
by
gender differences. Men, rela-
tive to
women,
tend to possess more permissive attitudes and to
exhibit more unrestricted behavior with regard to engaging in
uncommitted sexual relations (eg., Buss & Barnes, 1986; Eys-
enck, 1976; Griffit & Hatfield,
1985;
Hendrick, Hendrick, Sla-
pion-Foote, & Foote, 1985). Nonetheless, across virtually all
indexes of sociosexuality, the variability in responses that exists
within
each sex greatly exceeds that which exists
between
men
and women (eg, Eysenck, 1976; Hendrick et al., 1985; Hunt,
1974;
Kinsey etal.,
1948;
Kinsey etal.,1953;Snyderetal., 1986).
Hendrick et al. (1985), for instance, reported a substantial dif-
ference between college men and women in attitudes toward
permissive sex, yet the reliable within-sex variance on permis-
siveness was more than double the between-sex variance.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1991, Vol. 60, No. 6, 870-883
Copyright 1991 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/91/S3.00
870
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