Lay Beliefs About Gender and Sexual Behavior: First Evidence for a Pervasive,Robust (but Seemingly Unfounded) Stereotype

Abstract

Although casual sex is increasingly socially acceptable, negative stereotypes toward women who pursue casual sex remain pervasive. For example, a common trope in television, film, and other media is that women who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem. Despite robust work on prejudice against women who engage in casual sex, little empirical work has focused on the lay theories individuals hold about them. Across six experiments with U.S. adults (N = 1,469), we found that both men and women stereotype women (but not men) who engage in casual sex as having low self-esteem. This stereotype is held explicitly and semi-implicitly; is not driven by individual differences in religiosity, conservatism, or sexism; and is mediated by inferences that women who have casual sex are unsatisfied with their mating strategy—yet the stereotype persists when women are explicitly described as choosing to have casual sex. Finally, the stereotype appears to be unfounded; across experiments, the same participants’ sexual behavior was not significantly correlated with their self-esteem.

Keywords

social perception social cognition self-esteem sex differences sex/gender stereotypes sexual behavior open data

Throughout the last century, women have been working to change laws, norms, and possibilities: Women are increasingly likely to be astronauts, CEOs, professors, Supreme Court justices, and heads of state. In fact, work on cultural change reveals that gender equality has increased dramatically over the past half century in the United States and the United Kingdom (Varnum & Grossmann, 2017). However, such equality seems lacking in one area immediately associated with sex and gender: sexual behavior. In fact, despite an equally dramatic cultural change toward the loosening of sexual norms in many parts of the world, including the shift from traditional dating to so-called hookup culture and casual sex (e.g., Armstrong et al., 2010; Bogle, 2008; Garcia et al., 2012; Monto & Carey, 2014), negative prejudice toward women (vs. men) engaging in increasingly normative casual sex remains pervasive (Bordini & Sperb, 2013; Crawford & Popp, 2003). Whereas negative feelings (prejudice) and behavior (discrimination) associated with the sexual double standard—that “men are socially rewarded and women socially derogated for sexual activity” (Marks & Fraley, 2005, p. 175)—are well studied, lay beliefs (stereotypes) about people who have casual sex have rarely been investigated.¹ Here, we ask what stereotypes people possess about women and men who have casual sex, at what level these stereotypes are evident (i.e., explicit, semi-implicit), which individual differences or other factors drive these lay beliefs, and how closely, if at all, they accord with reality.

At least one stereotype about women who have casual sex is quite pervasive, if empirically untested, and is likely linked to women’s real-world outcomes: that women who have casual sex have low self-esteem. This is a common trope in Western television shows, film, and popular music; some media and pop psychology also endorse the idea that if women pursue casual sex, it is either a consequence or a cause of low self-esteem (e.g., Armstrong et al., 2010; Aubrey, 2004; Eyal & Finnerty, 2009; Stepp, 2007). Even in scientific research, casual sex is sometimes portrayed as psychologically harmful, especially to women (e.g., Eshbaugh & Gute, 2008; McIlhaney & Bush, 2008; Paul, 2006; Paul & Hayes, 2002)—to the extent that “some scholars have even suggested that short-term mating is never advantageous for women and thus [women] never truly desire it, even when they might think they do” (Vrangalova, 2015, p. 946). In reality, the evidence for this link is equivocal (Fielder et al., 2013; Mikach & Bailey, 1999; Vrangalova, 2015; Vrangalova & Ong, 2014). Yet this logic seems to hold that casual sex is not beneficial for women yet some women engage in it anyway, and thus there must be something problematic about them—either as a cause or as a consequence (e.g., women are overly career focused to the exclusion of their romantic lives, or women are trying but failing to attract long-term partners by using short-term sex; Armstrong et al., 2010; Rosin, 2012). Thus, insofar as self-esteem is a barometer of one’s social success (Leary et al., 1995), women who have casual sex must have low self-esteem.

That there is relatively little empirical work on stereotypes such as this (i.e., at the intersection of sex, gender, and sexual behavior) is surprising—and potentially perturbing—for several reasons. For example, among the largest, most consistent real-world gender differences are those surrounding casual sex (e.g., Armstrong et al., 2010; Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Schmitt & International Sexuality Description Project, 2003), yet a wealth of gender-stereotyping research exists on other similarly sized and smaller real-world differences (e.g., attitudes toward men versus women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields). Additionally, stereotypes can drive prejudice and discrimination, making the identification and dissolution of stereotypes potentially useful for mitigating those negative phenomena and thus improving targets’ outcomes. Indeed, other pervasive stereotypes—African American men are dangerous, Muslims are terrorists, women are warm but not competent—harm targets’ real-world outcomes. This stereotype could have important implications for women’s economic, political, and social outcomes—and thus for women’s continued progress toward gender equality. For example, if one is perceived as having low self-esteem, evidence suggests that one will face real-world discrimination in multiple domains: This perception can attenuate the likelihood of being hired for a job, voted into political office, extended social support, sought as a friend, or asked on a date (e.g., Cameron et al., 2016; Cavallo & Hirniak, 2019; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2012).

Statement of Relevance

The existence of a negative stereotype about women (but not men) who engage in what may be culturally normative sexual behavior seems at odds with recent narratives regarding progress toward gender equality. Yet a common trope in popular culture is that women who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem—a stereotype that can impair women’s social, economic, and political outcomes and drive advice attempting to guide (or constrain) women’s sexual behavior. We produce some of the first work to identify and empirically describe this pervasive, persistent, but seemingly unfounded stereotype. This stereotype is not solely attributable to perceivers’ gender, religiosity, conservatism, or sexism. It persists even when women are described as pursuing casual sex because of genuine preference rather than what is often referred to as “a strategy of last resort.” However, our data suggest that this stereotype is unfounded, as across our samples, there was no statistically significant relationship between the sexual behavior and self-esteem of participants.

Thus, because negative beliefs about women who have casual sex remain pervasive (despite major cultural shifts toward both increasing gender equality and increasing normalization of casual sex), because we know surprisingly little about the lay beliefs that people hold regarding individuals who have casual sex (despite a wealth of gender-stereotyping research on nonsexual behavior), and because perceived self-esteem can have important effects on targets’ real-world outcomes, we empirically explored the stereotype that women who have casual sex have low self-esteem. Across six experiments, we found that lay theories linking women’s (but not men’s) casual sex to low self-esteem appear pervasive, persistent, but seemingly inaccurate. Experiments 1 through 4 used distinct, complementary paradigms to demonstrate that people hold this stereotype explicitly and semi-implicitly. Experiments 5 and 6 explored a potential mechanism for the stereotype—expectations that women who have casual sex are not doing so by choice. Across experiments, we tested for potential drivers of this stereotype (e.g., religiosity, conservatism, sexism) and pluralistic ignorance. We used U.S. convenience samples because the United States is a Western country showing both increased gender equality and acceptance of changing sexual norms. The protocols used in all experiments were approved by either the institutional review board at Arizona State University or the institutional review board at Oklahoma State University.

Experiment 1: Do People Stereotype Women (but Not Men) Who Engage in Casual Sex as Having Low Self-Esteem?

Method

Participants

We recruited 182 undergraduate participants (87 women, one did not report gender; mean age = 19.36 years, SD = 2.17) from a large midwestern university to take part in an online study for partial course credit. Of those, 164 participants (81 women) completed the focal tasks, passed the attention checks, and were thus included in analyses. We had no effect sizes on which to base power analyses, so we collected as much data as possible given the total number of credits available to us to entice participation (200 credits); we stopped data collection when credits were exhausted. A sensitivity power analysis using G*Power (Version 3.1.9.6; Faul et al., 2009) suggested that this sample size provided 80% power to detect a medium-sized effect (f = .23).

Procedure and materials

Evidence suggests that people make quick judgments about others’ self-esteem (e.g., Zeigler-Hill et al., 2012), and we took advantage of this here. Participants were instructed that they would be taking part in a study on first impressions:

Every day, each one of us forms first impressions about other people—and we do this based on very little information. For example, we hear about where someone grew up, and we immediately make some inference about that person’s life, family, how he/she is likely to behave.

Participants were then told that they would be reading one short description of a person and would be asked to form a first impression about some feature of that person (e.g., self-esteem, income, ethnicity, height, sexual orientation). In reality, all participants were asked to give their first impressions about the target’s self-esteem.

Target descriptions

Each participant read one of eight descriptions of a target individual varying in gender (woman, man, or unspecified) and sexual behavior (engages in casual sex with many sexual partners, engages in sex with very few committed partners, or no sexual-behavior information provided). We did not include a description for the categories with no gender information and no sexual-behavior information.

First, depending on the target’s gender condition, participants read a basic target description about a woman, a man, or a person (no gender information). For example, when the target was a woman, they read, “Sarah is a young adult who has recently finished college, and has put in a few years at her new PR job. She just turned 28 last month.” When the participant was a man, they read the same scenario about “Mark,” and when no gender information was provided, they read the same scenario about “a person.”

Second, depending on the sexual-behavior condition, each participant read about a target described as having multiple casual-sex partners, described as having few committed-sex partners, or described without any sexual-behavior information. In the casual-sex condition, participants read,

In the last few years, [target] has had a lot of casual hook ups and no-strings-attached sexual partners—[target] has sex with these partners, but isn’t in a committed relationship with any of them. In fact, [target] has now lost count of how many different sexual partners [target] has had.

In the committed-sex condition, participants read,

In the last few years, [target] has had very few sexual partners or casual hook ups—[target] has only had sex with partners when [target] was in a committed, monogamous relationship with them. In fact, [target] only dates one partner at a time and only pursues long-term romantic relationships with them.

Participants in the no-sexual-behavior condition received only the target’s gender information without any sexual-behavior information.

Self-esteem measure

After reading the description, participants were asked to give their impression of the target’s self-esteem, which was defined as “feeling good about oneself and having a solid sense of one’s self-worth” (e.g., Rosenberg, 1989; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2012). Participants responded on an 8-point scale (1 = low self-esteem, 8 = high self-esteem).

Discriminant validity: physical attractiveness

One might wonder whether people simply ascribe various negative features to targets who have multiple casual-sex partners, and research suggests that people can ascribe negative features to others they perceive as having low self-esteem (e.g., Cavallo & Hirniak, 2019; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2012). Thus, to explore such a reverse-halo-effect account of our expected findings, we asked participants to rate how physically attractive they thought the target was using an 8-point scale (1 = very physically unattractive, 8 = very physically attractive).

Robustness and pluralistic ignorance

To assess whether the predicted effects might be driven by the intuitive factors mentioned above, we assessed participants’ own sociosexual behavior (e.g., “With how many partners have you had sex on one and only one occasion?”) and their sociosexual attitudes and desires (e.g., “Sex without love is OK”; “In everyday life, how often do you have spontaneous fantasies about having sex with someone you have just met?”) using the revised Sociosexuality Inventory (SOI-R; Banai & Pavela, 2015; Penke & Asendorpf, 2008; α = .85). Participants responded on 9-point scales. We measured participants’ self-esteem using 10 items from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (e.g., “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself”; Rosenberg, 1989; α = .90), which they answered on 4-point Likert-type scales (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree). We also measured participants’ social, economic, and overall conservatism/liberalism on 100-point sliders (–50 = very conservative, 50 = very liberal, with sliders initially set to 0; α = .89).

We additionally assessed the possibility of pluralistic ignorance: Although participants might use targets’ sexual-behavior information to make inferences about targets’ self-esteem, participants’ own sociosexual behavior might nevertheless be uncorrelated with their own self-esteem.²

Other measures

Finally, we included other exploratory measures and common demographic questions, including ethnicity, age, education level, household income, and whether English was a native language. We did not analyze these in relation to predictions.

Results

Do people stereotype women (but not men) who have casual sex as having low self-esteem?

To investigate this question, we conducted a 3 (target gender: woman, man, unspecified) × 3 (target sexual behavior: multiple casual-sex partners, few committed-sex partners, no sexual-behavior information) analysis of variance (ANOVA). This analysis revealed significant main effects of target gender, F(2, 156) = 3.71, p = .027, η_p² = .045, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [.00, .12], and target sexual behavior, F(2, 156) = 12.56, p < .001, η_p² = .139, 95% CI = [.05, .23], qualified by a significant interaction, F(3, 156) = 6.39, p < .001, η_p² = .109, 95% CI = [.02, .19]. (Recall that there were only eight cells in the design, as we did not include a description with no information about target gender and sexual behavior.)

Probing this interaction revealed that perceptions of women’s self-esteem were significantly influenced by the presence and nature of sexual-behavior information—there was no significant difference between perceptions of target self-esteem for women with no sexual-behavior information given (M = 5.74, SE = 0.35) and women who have sex with few committed partners (M = 6.28, SE = 0.40, p = .313), but both of these targets were perceived as having significantly higher self-esteem than women who had casual sex with multiple partners (M = 3.53, SE = 0.39, p < .001, 95% CI = [−3.25, −1.18] for the mean difference between the casual-sex and no-information conditions and p < .001, 95% CI = [−3.85, −1.65] for the mean difference between the casual-sex and committed-sex conditions; see Fig. 1a). By contrast, perceptions of men’s self-esteem were not significantly influenced by the presence or quality of sexual-behavior information (no information given: M = 6.11, SE = 0.39; casual sex: M = 6.10, SE = 0.37; committed sex: M = 5.74, SE = 0.39; ps > .500).

Fig. 1.

Results from Experiment 1: participants’ mean ratings of targets’ (a) self-esteem and (b) physical attractiveness. Results are shown separately for each sexual behavior of female targets, male targets, and targets for whom no gender information was given. Error bars represent standard errors.

Echoing the pattern for female targets, results showed that the target with the unspecified gender was perceived as having higher self-esteem when engaged in committed sex (M = 6.12, SE = 0.34) than in casual sex (M = 4.15, SE = 0.39, p < .001, 95% CI = [−2.97, −0.97] for the mean difference). Target men and women were perceived as having similar self-esteem in the no-sexual-behavior condition (p = .486, 95% CI = [−1.40, 0.67] for the mean difference between target genders) and committed-sex condition (p = .332, 95% CI = [−0.56, 1.64] for the mean difference between target genders). However, in the casual-sex condition, women were perceived as having much lower self-esteem than men (p < .001, 95% CI = [1.51, 3.63]).

Discriminant validity: physical attractiveness

According to the reverse-halo-effect account, in which people viewing targets negatively (or perceiving them as having low self-esteem) simply ascribe more negative features to targets across the board, people should rate women who have many casual-sex partners as less physically attractive than other targets, particularly women who have fewer committed-sex partners. However, a 3 (target gender: woman, man, unspecified) × 3 (target sexual behavior: multiple casual-sex partners, few committed-sex partners, no sexual-behavior information) ANOVA revealed only a marginal main effect of target sexual behavior, F(2, 156) = 2.68, p = .072, η_p² = .033, 95% CI = [.00, .10], other ps > .250; people rated targets who engage in casual sex as more physically attractive (M = 5.45, SE = 0.18) than ones who engage in committed sex (M = 4.87, SE = 0.18; see Fig. 1b).

Moreover, running counter to the specific predictions derived from a reverse-halo-effect account, results showed that this effect was largely driven by people’s ratings of female targets. Whereas people rated women who engage in casual sex as more physically attractive (M = 5.95, SE = 0.32) than women who engage in committed sex (M = 4.83, SE = 0.33, p = .016, 95% CI = [0.21, 2.02] for the mean difference), people did not rate men who engage in casual sex as different in physical attractiveness (M = 5.10, SE = 0.31) than men who engage in committed sex (M = 4.58, SE = 0.32, p = .245). Women who engage in casual sex were also rated as marginally more attractive than men who engage in casual sex (p = .056, 95% CI = [−0.02, 1.73] for the mean difference between target genders), but this was not the case for women and men who engage in committed sex (p = .580, 95% CI = [−0.65, 1.16] for the mean difference between target genders).

Rerunning the above ANOVA but including participant sex as a factor yielded no significant effects of participant sex, nor were the key results affected by the inclusion of sex.

Is this stereotype solely driven by individual-differences factors, or is it robust against them?

To assess whether the focal effect might be driven by participants’ own sociosexual behavior and desires, self-esteem, or conservatism, we reran the above ANOVA, including each possible driver as a covariate in separate models. Effects were robust against including participants’ own sociosexuality as a covariate, F(1, 155) = 0.33, p = .566, and the comparison between self-esteem for the sexually restricted versus sexually unrestricted woman remained significant, F(1, 155) = 14.26, p < .001. When participants’ own self-reported self-esteem was included as a covariate, the pattern was the same as when it was not included, F(1, 155) = 0.69, p = .409, and the comparison remained significant, F(1, 155) = 13.99, p < .001; the same was true when participants’ conservatism was included—main effect of covariate: F(1, 155) = 1.55, p = .214; comparison: F(1, 155) = 14.07, p < .001.

Pluralistic ignorance

Even as participants inferred differences in targets’ self-esteem as a function of targets’ sexual behavior, there were no statistically significant correlations between participants’ reported sociosexual behavior and self-esteem. Participants’ self-esteem was not significantly correlated with their sociosexual behavior whether we used the pooled sample or separated the sample by sex, rs(164) < .175, ps > .110.

Experiment 2: Do Lay Perceivers Associate Women’s (but Not Men’s) Casual Sexual Behavior With Lower Self-Esteem?

Method

Participants

For Task 2 in a two-part experiment, we recruited 341 U.S adult participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), 315 of whom reported sex and demographic information (144 women; mean age = 35.14 years, SD = 11.27) and were included in analyses. Sample size and stopping rules for data collection were dictated by a power analysis for Task 1, an unrelated task on friendship, in which we aimed to recruit (and paid) 350 total participants. A sensitivity power analysis suggested that our within-subjects design would provide adequate power (80%) to detect small effect sizes (f < .10), assuming a correlation (r) of .5 among repeated measures.

Procedure and materials

To replicate the pattern of results observed in Experiment 1 (i.e., that people associate women’s casual sexual behavior with low self-esteem), we used a distinct but complementary task. After being instructed to take a short break to refresh themselves from Task 1, participants began Task 2. To assess lay perceptions of the association between sexual behavior and self-esteem, we ultimately asked participants in Task 2 to indicate the correlation between two variables (target sexual behavior and self-esteem) using a slider bar (–1 to 1). The initial position of the bars was set to zero.

Following established protocol (Varnum, 2013), we first gave participants the following instructions:

When scientists study the relationship between different variables, say “a” and “b,” these relationships can often be quantified in terms of a correlation coefficient known as “r.” r can range from -1, a perfect negative correlation—meaning that for every increase of one unit in “a,” there is a decrease by one unit of “b,”—to +1, a perfect positive correlation—meaning that for every increase in one unit of “a,” there is an increase by one unit of “b.” 0 means that the two variables are not correlated at all.

They were then told that we “are interested in how strong YOU FEEL that the correlation is between self-esteem and several other variables. Self-esteem refers to feeling good about oneself and having a solid sense of one’s self-worth.” In reality, all participants were assigned to conditions asking about the relationship between sexual behavior and self-esteem.

Target descriptions

Participants were then asked to read and respond to each of six descriptions; 3 (target gender: woman, man, unspecified) × 2 (sexual behavior: casual, committed) design. First, participants read two descriptions, presented in random order, about “a person” (no gender information provided) with casual or committed sexual behavior. Then they read four descriptions about a woman or man with casual or committed sexual behavior, also presented in random order.

The casual-sexual-behavior description asked,

What do you think is the correlation between [target] self-esteem and [target] being “sexually unrestricted” (having short-term and uncommitted sexual relationships, having frequent “hook-ups” with new and different people)?

The committed-sexual-behavior description asked,

What do you think is the correlation between [target] self-esteem and [target] being “sexually restricted” (engaging in sexual activity ONLY when in a long-term and committed monogamous relationship, dating only one person at a time and pursuing long-term romantic bonds)?

Self-esteem

For each description, participants indicated the correlation between the personality characteristic of interest (sexual behavior) and self-esteem on a slider from −1 (low self-esteem) to 1 (high self-esteem). The slider was initially set to zero.

Robustness

As in Experiment 1, we included multiple individual-differences features one might intuitively link to negative beliefs about casual sexual behavior, perhaps especially in women. We again assessed participants’ own sociosexual behavior and sociosexual attitudes and desires using the SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008), modified to include an additional item assessing sociosexual behavior (“With how many different partners have you had a ‘hook up’ within the past 12 months?”; α = .95), following Kurzban et al. (2010). We also assessed participants’ conservatism/liberalism, as in Experiment 1, and we assessed participant religiosity via two face-valid items adapted from Cohen et al. (2006)—“How often do you attend religious services?” and “How much do you practice the requirements of a religion?” (α = .90), which participants rated on 7-point scales (1 = not at all, 7 = very frequently). Participants also completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1997), which assesses hostile sexism (e.g., “Women are too easily offended”) and benevolent sexism (e.g., “Women should be cherished and protected by men”; combined α = .91).

Other measures

We also included additional and explicitly exploratory measures and common demographic questions, including age, education level, household income, and whether English was a native language. We did not analyze these in relation to our predictions.

Results

Do people stereotype women (but not men) who have casual sex as having low self-esteem?

To investigate this question, we ran a 3 (target gender: woman, man, unspecified) × 2 (sexual behavior: casual, committed) within-subjects ANOVA, which yielded significant main effects of target gender, F(2, 618) = 7.53, p = .001, η_p² = .024, 95% CI = [.00, .05], and sexual behavior, F(1, 309) = 44.98, p < .001, η_p² = .127, 95% CI = [.07, .20], qualified by a significant interaction, F(2, 618) = 25.14, p < .001, η_p² = .075, 95% CI = [.04, .12].

Exploring this interaction revealed, first, that people’s inferences about the correlations between committed sexual behavior and self-esteem were stronger and more positive than their inferences about the correlations between casual sexual behavior and self-esteem. This pattern was found when no target gender information was given (casual: mean r = .07, SE = .04; committed: mean r = .38, SE = .03; p < .001, 95% CI = [.23, .40] for the mean difference), and when the target was specified as a woman (casual: mean r = −.02, SE = .03; committed: mean r = .35, SE = .03; p < .001, 95% CI = [.28, .47] for the mean difference), but not when the target was specified as a man (casual: mean r = .21, SE = .03; committed: mean r = .26, SE = .03; p = .251, 95% CI = [−.14, .04] for the mean difference).

More germane, women’s casual sexual behavior evoked stronger and more negative associations with self-esteem relative to either a person’s committed sexual behavior (no gender information provided; p = .002, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.14] for the mean difference) or a man’s casual sexual behavior (p < .001, 95% CI = [0.16, 0.30] for the mean difference). In contrast, men’s casual sexual behavior evoked stronger and more positive associations with self-esteem than did a person’s committed sexual behavior (no gender information provided; p < .001, 95% CI = [0.07, 0.21]). Participants perceived that a woman’s casual sexual behavior was strongly related to low self-esteem, whereas a man’s casual sexual behavior was strongly related to high self-esteem.

Similarly, women’s committed sexual behavior evoked stronger positive associations with self-esteem than did men’s committed sexual behavior (p = .002, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.14] for the mean difference). That is, participants perceived that committed sexual behavior and high self-esteem are more strongly related for women than for men.

We also reran this ANOVA including participant sex as a factor. Overall, we found the same general pattern for both sexes. The ANOVA again yielded main effects of target gender, F(2, 616) = 7.94, p < .001, η_p² = .025, 95% CI = [.00, .05], and sexual behavior, F(1, 308) = 50.45, p < .001, η_p² = .141, 95% CI = [.08, .21], qualified by a significant interaction, F(2, 616) = 26.66, p < .001, η_p² = .080, 95% CI = [.04, .12]. We additionally found a trending effect of participant sex, F(1, 308) = 2.85, p = .093, η_p² = .009, 95% CI = [.00, .04]; an interaction between sexual behavior and participant sex, F(1, 308) = 13.40, p < .001, η_p² = .042, 95% CI = [.01, .09]; and an interaction between target gender and participant sex, F(2, 616) = 3.95, p = .020, η_p² = .013, 95% CI = [.00, .34], all qualified by a significant three-way interaction, F(2, 616) = 3.96, p = .019, η_p² = .013, 95% CI = [.00, .34].

Again, for female targets (and for gender-unspecified targets), participants of both sexes had stronger positive associations between committed sexual behavior and self-esteem than between casual sexual behavior and self-esteem. Again, both sexes also had stronger positive associations between casual sexual behavior and self-esteem for men than for women; however, whereas female participants showed the same associations for female targets and targets whose gender was unspecified—suggesting, perhaps, that women think of themselves and other women when no target gender information is supplied—male participants showed the same associations for male targets and targets whose gender was unspecified—suggesting, perhaps, that men think of themselves and other men when no target gender information is supplied (see Figs. 2a and 2b).

Fig. 2.

Results from Experiment 2: correlation between targets’ sexual behavior and self-esteem as a function of targets’ sexual behavior, as reported by (a) female participants and (b) male participants. Results are shown separately for female targets, male targets, and targets for whom no gender information was given. Error bars represent standard errors.

In terms of sex differences between the associations reported, there were only two instances that reached significance: Compared with women, men made stronger positive associations between the gender-unspecified target’s casual sexual behavior and self-esteem (p < .001, 95% CI = [.16, .42] for the mean difference between women’s and men’s correlations) and stronger positive associations between the female target’s casual sexual behavior and self-esteem (p = .001, 95% CI = [.10, .36] for the mean difference between women’s and men’s correlations). Other sex differences were not significant (ps > .125).

Is this stereotype solely driven by individual-differences factors, or is it robust against them?

Focal effects were robust against participant sociosexual behavior, self-esteem, religiosity, conservatism, and sexism. See the Supplemental Material available online for detailed results.

Experiment 3: Do People Semi-Implicitly Stereotype Women Who Have Casual Sex as Having Low Self-Esteem?

Method

Participants

We had no effect sizes on which to base power analyses to test whether people semi-implicitly (i.e., intuitively) stereotype women (but not men) who engage in casual sex as having low self-esteem. We aimed to recruit 300 U.S. participants, consistent with the work using this paradigm; of those, 276 adult participants (170 women; mean age = 39.02 years, SD = 14.80) were ultimately recruited through MTurk, where they completed an online survey in exchange for a small monetary compensation. A sensitivity power analysis suggested that this sample provided 80% power to detect an odds ratio of 1.87 in a logistic regression.

Procedure and measures

To assess the extent to which participants intuitively related targets’ casual sexual behavior with high or low self-esteem and whether this association differed for male and female targets, we utilized the conjunction fallacy (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). In Tversky and Kahneman’s work, participants were given a vignette about a politically active woman (Linda) and asked which of the following is more likely: (a) Linda is a bank teller, or (b) Linda is a bank teller and a feminist. The detail that Linda is politically active is viewed as representative of feminism, causing many people to rate the second option as more likely, although this is probabilistically impossible.

In our vignettes, we described either a young man (Jason) or a young woman (Sarah) who has had many hookups and no-strings-attached sexual encounters. After reading the vignette, participants were asked which of the following is more likely: (a) “[Sarah/Jason] is an English major,” or (b) “[Sarah/Jason] is an English major and has [high/low] self-esteem.” Selecting “b” was evidence that participants view the detail that the target has had many casual-sex partners as representative of the conjunction option (i.e., either high or low self-esteem). We hypothesized that people would have especially low conjunction rates when the target is female and the self-esteem option is high, which would suggest that people view casual sexual behavior as unrepresentative of a woman with high self-esteem.

Participants completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1997), which assesses both hostile sexism (e.g., “Women are too easily offended”; α = .90) and benevolent sexism (e.g., “Women should be cherished and protected by men”; α = .91). Participants also completed the SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008; α = .86), and we used the behavior subscale of the SOI-R (α = .80) to examine whether the associations that people believed exist between target sexual behavior and target self-esteem reflected the associations genuinely present in our sample. Participants also completed the Rosenberg (1989) Self-Esteem Scale (α = .92).

Results

Do people stereotype women (but not men) who have casual sex as having low self-esteem?

We first examined whether casual sexual behavior is differentially associated with self-esteem for male and female targets. We conducted a logistic regression with target gender (contrast coded) and target self-esteem (i.e., whether the conjunction option included high or low self-esteem, contrast coded). There was a significant effect of target self-esteem, b = −1.43, SE = 0.36, Z = −3.97, p < .001, odds ratio = 0.24, 95% CI = [0.12, 0.48], and a significant Target Gender × Self-Esteem interaction, b = 1.14, SE = 0.50, Z = 2.28, p = .023, odds ratio = 3.12, 95% CI = [1.18, 8.36] (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

Results from Experiment 3: participants’ conjunction-error rates for each combination of target gender and target self-esteem. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.

The nature of this interaction was such that the effect of self-esteem was stronger for female targets than for male targets, and, as predicted, participants were least likely to commit the conjunction fallacy when it involved a female target having high self-esteem. This suggests that people tend to view casual sexual behavior as less representative of high self-esteem in women, compared with men, and implies that people hold intuitive stereotypes about women who have had many casual-sex partners having comparatively lower self-esteem.

Is this stereotype solely driven by individual-differences factors, or is it robust against them?

The focal effects were robust against ambivalent sexism and participants’ own sociosexual behavior. See the Supplemental Material for detailed results.

Pluralistic ignorance

Consistent with the findings of Experiment 1, results showed that the overall correlation between participants’ sociosexual behavior and self-esteem was not significant for the sample as a whole (r = .09, p = .141, 95% CI = [−.01, .12]) or when split by participant sex (men: r = .056, p = .591, 95% CI = [−.14, .24]; women: r = .124, p = .128, 95% CI = [−.03, .27]).

Experiment 4: Do These Stereotypes Hold as a Function of Target Sociosexuality Per Se?

Method

Participants

We aimed to recruit 351 participants, a sample size that would yield 80% power to detect effects (f) of .15 in differences in our focal measure of target self-esteem. We recruited U.S. adult participants from the online TurkPrime platform; 458 who at least began our survey reported sex information (212 women). Of those, 195 (100 women; mean age = 39.36 years, SD = 12.63) passed two stringent checks for bots (nonhuman respondents), which involved responding to open-ended questions, and also passed two stringent attention checks later in the experiment. A sensitivity analysis suggests that this allowed for 80% power to detect effects (f) of .20.

Procedure and materials

Previous experiments drew on popular depictions of women who have casual sex; stimuli dealt with multiple facets of casual sexual behavior—including having many partners and lacking emotional investment in longer-term relationships—that may not be equivalent to sociosexuality per se (e.g., Jackson & Kirkpatrick, 2007; Simpson & Gangestad, 1992; Townsend, 1995). Simpson and Gangestad described “individual differences in willingness to engage in sexual relations without closeness, commitment, and other indicators of emotional bonding” (p. 33). Experiment 4 tested whether these same stereotypes are applied to women (but not men) who scored high on a validated measure of sociosexuality.

After providing answers to open-ended questions about their same- and other-sex friends, which served as a first bot check, participants were informed that they would be receiving a person’s scores on a formal psychological test (e.g., of personality, self-esteem, mate value, sexual behavior) and would have to make inferences as to how that person scored on other tests. In reality, all participants received SOI-R scores from one of four targets—a 26-year-old man (Nick) or woman (Susan) who scored high (sexually unrestricted) or low (sexually restricted). For example, in the female-with-low-sociosexuality condition, participants read the following:

We are going to show you the “Sociosexuality Inventory” scores for SUSAN, a 26 year-old woman in the U.S. This measure assesses “individual differences in willingness to engage in sexual relations without closeness, commitment, and other indicators of emotional bonding” (Simpson & Gangestad, 1992, p. 266). As you’ll see below, SUSAN scores LOW on this measure, indicating that she has a RESTRICTED SOCIOSEXUALITY. This means that Susan is UNLIKELY to have sex in the absence of closeness, commitment, and other indicators of emotional bonding. Below are her EXACT ANSWERS.

Participants then saw Susan’s supposed ratings on the measure (see the Appendix for an example). After viewing the stimuli, participants were asked to write two or three full sentences “describing the person you just learned about. For example, what do they do for a living, what do they look like, and so on.” This served as a second bot check.

Stereotypes of targets

Next, we assessed participants’ stereotypes about targets, first by asking participants to fill out the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1989) as they believed that the person they had just read about would fill it out. Specifically, they were told,

Based on what you read, how do you think THE PERSON YOU READ ABOUT would answer the following questions. To be clear, answer the questions below AS IF YOU WERE THE PERSON YOU READ ABOUT. How would that person respond to the following?

Scores were later reversed so that higher scores indicated higher self-esteem. Second, participants were asked to fill out the eight-item Self-Perceived Mate Value Scale (Landolt et al., 1995; e.g., “I receive many compliments from members of the opposite sex”; 1 = disagree; 7 = agree; α = .95) as they believed the target would. These dependent measures fitted well with our cover story.

Robustness and pluralistic ignorance

Finally, we asked participants to fill out additional demographic and individual-differences measures, including the traditional nine-item SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008; α = .88) assessing sociosexual behavior (three items; α = .75) and attitudes and desires (six items; α = .87). They also completed a 10-point bipolar measure of casual sexual activity—“Which description is more similar to your behavior?”—which used descriptions adapted from studies in this package as anchors. The first anchor read,

In the last few years, you have had very few sexual partners or casual hook ups—you only have sex with people when in committed monogamous relationships. You only date one person at a time and only pursue long-term romantic relationships.

The second anchor read,

In the last few years, you have had a lot of casual hook ups and no-strings-attached sexual partners—you have sex with these people, but aren’t in a committed relationship with any of them. You might have lost count of how many sexual partners you have had.

Participants also filled out the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1989; α = .93).

Results

Do people stereotype women (but not men) who have casual sex as having low self-esteem?

To assess our prediction that people stereotype sexually unrestricted women (but not men) as having low self-esteem (but not low mate value), we ran two 2 (target gender) × 2 (target sociosexuality) ANOVAs. We ran them separately for self-esteem and mate value, to be consistent with reporting of previous results.

For self-esteem, we found a main effect of target gender, F(1, 191) = 12.83, p < .001, η_p² = .063. People stereotyped women as having lower self-esteem (M = 3.22, SE = 0.06) than men (M = 2.92, SE = 0.06), but this was qualified by a significant interaction, F(1, 191) = 9.12, p = .003, η_p² = .046. Exploring this interaction, we found, as predicted, that people stereotype sexually unrestricted women as having lower self-esteem (M = 2.73, SE = 0.08) than sexually unrestricted men (M = 3.28, SE = 0.09), F(1, 191) = 21.54, p < .001, η_p² = .101, 95% CI = [−.79, −.32] for the mean difference, but this was not the case for sexually restricted targets (women: M = 3.10, SE = 0.08; men: M = 3.15, SE = 0.09; p = .690, 95% CI = [−.19, .28] for the mean difference). This implies that people hold the same stereotypes about both sexually unrestricted women and women who engage in casual sex (i.e., the women described in previous experiments). Additionally, people stereotype sexually unrestricted women as having lower self-esteem than either sexually restricted women (p = .001, 95% CI = [−0.60, −0.15] for the mean difference) or sexually restricted men (p = .001, 95% CI = [−0.66, −0.19] for the mean difference).

This pattern is not the same for stereotyped mate value. For mate value, there was only one significant effect—the main effect of target sociosexuality, F(1, 191) = 205.22, p < .001, η_p² = .518. Sexually unrestricted targets were stereotyped as having higher mate value (M = 6.29, SE = 0.16) than sexually restricted targets (M = 3.96, SE = 0.11; other effects, ps > .165). For consistency, we explored simple comparisons. Unlike for self-esteem, there was no statistically significant difference between the stereotyped mate value of either the sexually unrestricted targets—women (M = 6.44, SE = 0.16) or men (M = 6.15, SE = 0.17; p = .218, 95% CI = [−0.74, 0.17] for the mean difference)—or the sexually restricted targets—women (M = 4.05, SE = 0.15) or men (M = 3.88, SE = 0.17; p = .469, 95% CI = [−0.62, 0.29] for the mean difference)—as a function of target gender. However, people did stereotype sexually unrestricted targets as having higher mate value than sexually restricted targets of the same gender, regardless of whether the targets were women, F(1, 191) = 115.59, p < .001, η_p² = .377, 95% CI = [1.95, 2.83] for the mean difference, or the targets were men, F(1, 191) = 91.37, p < .001, η_p² = .324, 95% CI = [−1.80, 2.74] for the mean difference. Again, this argues against a reverse-halo-effect account for the self-esteem findings.

Is this stereotype solely driven by individual-differences factors, or is it robust against them?

Focal effects were robust against participants’ own sociosexuality and self-esteem. See the Supplemental Material for detailed results.

Pluralistic ignorance

First, we found that our novel bipolar measure, which utilized descriptions of casual sexual behavior akin to those describing targets in previous experiments, strongly and positively correlated with people’s self-reported sociosexual behavior, r(195) = .440, p < .001, and sociosexual attitudes and desires, r(195) = .406, p < .001. Neither this bipolar measure nor sociosexual behavior was significantly correlated with self-esteem (ps > .143). However, when separating participants by sex, we found that men’s reported sociosexual behavior was marginally negatively correlated with self-esteem, r(95) = −.194, p = .057 (this correlation for women: p = .858), which seems contrary to stereotypes that men who have more short-term sex have higher self-esteem.

Experiment 5: Do Expectations of Women’s Dissatisfaction With Having Casual (vs. Committed) Sex Drive This Stereotype?

Method

Participants

We recruited 287 undergraduate participants (95 women, seven did not report gender) from a large southwestern university. Of those, 210 (137 women; mean age = 18.66 years, SD = 1.07) completed the focal items and also passed attention checks. Sample size was the maximum we were able to glean given 300 total credits to award participants, and data collection stopped when credits were exhausted. A sensitivity power analysis suggested that this sample would provide 80% power to detect a small to medium effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.34).

Procedure and materials

After completing an unrelated survey, participants were asked to take a moment to reset themselves before continuing to Task 2, our focal task on first impressions. Then, as in Experiment 2, participants were instructed,

We told participants that they would read about one or more targets and that we wanted them to use their gut instincts to make inferences about target traits (here, sexual behavior) and target outcomes. Participants were told that they might be asked about one of the following outcomes: “height, ethnicity, life satisfaction, self-esteem, sexual orientation, and/or undergraduate major.” In reality, all participants read about female targets, were asked to make inferences about that target, and were then asked to assess her self-esteem in two distinct but complementary ways.

Target descriptions

Each participant was randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. In each condition, they read about a young woman named Mary who had just finished college and was working at a new marketing job.

In the casual-sex condition, Mary was described as having “a lot of casual hook ups and no-strings-attached sexual partners—she has sex with these men, but isn’t in a committed relationship with any of them. In fact, she has now lost count of how many different sexual partners she has had.”

In the committed-sex condition, Mary was described as having “had very few sexual partners or casual hook ups—she has only had sex with men when she was in a committed, monogamous relationship with them. In fact, she only dates one man at a time and only pursues long-term romantic relationships.”

Inferences about target satisfaction

We reasoned that people might believe that women who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem, in part because people infer that those women are pursuing that sexual strategy not out of desire or by choice but rather because they cannot successfully pursue the alternative, preferred sexual strategy (i.e., a more-committed sexual strategy). To assess this, participants were asked to rate their agreement with 10 face-valid items (e.g., “Mary probably doesn’t want to be engaging in the sort of sexual relationships that she is”; “Mary is engaging in exactly the sort of sexual relationships that make her happy and fulfilled,” reverse scored) on 9-point Likert-type scales (–4 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree; α = .88). Importantly, we included a number of reverse-coded items in this scale to ensure that item wording would not bias later responses. (Two additional items assessing men’s likely behavior toward Mary were included for exploratory purposes but were left out of the target-satisfaction aggregate because they did not assess Mary’s satisfaction. Including them as items in the target-satisfaction measure does not change the results reported here.)

Two complementary measures of target self-esteem

We assessed participants’ perceptions of Mary’s self-esteem in two distinct and complementary ways. First, we simply asked participants to report their perception of Mary’s self-esteem on a 10-point scale ranging from very low self-esteem to very high self-esteem.

Second, complementing the face-valid item above, we also asked participants to put themselves in Mary’s shoes for a moment. We asked them to respond to a modified version of the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1989), responding to the items as they believed Mary would respond—“Compared to other people of the same age and gender as Mary, would Mary disagree or agree with the following statements”—on a 4-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree). Items (e.g., “On the whole, Mary is satisfied with herself”) were aggregated into one measure of Mary’s Rosenberg Self-Esteem (α = .90).

Robustness and pluralistic ignorance

We also assessed participants’ own sociosexual behavior (α = .89) and attitudes and desires (α = .86) using six items from the SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008; α = .88), and we assessed their self-esteem via the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1989; α = .90).

Other measures

We also assessed participant age, ethnicity, and relationship status, although these variables were not related to a priori predictions or included in analyses.

Results

Do people stereotype women who have casual sex as having low self-esteem?

To assess our prediction that people would expect the woman who engaged in casual sex to have lower self-esteem than the woman who engaged in committed sex, we ran two one-factor ANOVAs—one on the bipolar assessment of Mary’s self-esteem, and one on Mary’s Rosenberg Self-Esteem.

The ANOVA for Mary’s self-esteem yielded a significant effect of target sexual behavior, F(1, 210) = 13.98, p < .001, η_p² = .063, 95% CI = [.01, .13]; people expected Mary to have lower self-esteem when she had casual sex with many partners (M = 5.18, SE = 0.21) than when she had committed sex with few partners (M = 6.30, SE = 0.21). The ANOVA assessing Mary’s Rosenberg Self-Esteem replicated this pattern, also yielding a significant effect of target sexual behavior, F(1, 210) = 7.12, p = .008, η_p² = .033, 95% CI = [.00, .09]; people expected Mary to have lower self-esteem when she had many casual-sex partners (M = 2.81, SE = 0.06) than when she had few committed-sex partners (M = 3.02, SE = 0.06).

We reran the above ANOVA on both Mary’s self-esteem and Mary’s Rosenberg Self-Esteem, respectively, including participant sex as a factor. For Mary’s self-esteem, we again found a significant effect of target sexual behavior, F(1, 206) = 18.92, p < .001, η_p² = .084, 95% CI = [.03, .16], and this effect was qualified by a significant Target Sexual Behavior × Participant Sex interaction, F(1, 206) = 5.97, p = .015, η_p² = .028, 95% CI = [.00, .09]. Both sexes expected Mary to have higher self-esteem when she engaged in committed sex (men: M = 6.00, SE = 0.25; women: M = 6.89, SE = 0.36) than in casual sex (men: M = 5.41, SE = 0.26; women: M = 4.78, SE = 0.35). However, this effect was statistically significant for male participants, F(1, 206) = 17.69, p < .001, η_p² = .079, 95% CI = [.02, .16], and in the same direction but not statistically significant for female participants, F(1, 206) = 2.61, p = .108, η_p² = .013, 95% CI = [.00, .06].

For Mary’s Rosenberg Self-Esteem, we again found a significant effect of target sociosexual behavior, F(1, 206) = 7.94, p = .005, η_p² = .037, 95% CI = [.00, .10], and we also found a significant main effect of participant sex, F(1, 206) = 5.72, p = .018, η_p² = .027, 95% CI = [.00, .08], showing that, regardless of the target’s sexual behavior, men expected Mary to have higher self-esteem (M = 3.04, SE = 0.07) than women did (M = 2.84, SE = 0.05). The interaction was not significant (p > .500), but the pattern of results for this outcome echoes the above pattern: Both male and female participants expected Mary to have higher self-esteem when she had committed sex (men: M = 3.18, SE = 0.10; women: M = 2.93, SE = 0.07) rather than casual sex (men: M = 2.90, SE = 0.09; women: M = 2.75, SE = 0.07); however, this effect was statistically significant for male participants, F(1, 206) = 4.60, p = .033, η_p² = .022, 95% CI = [.00, .07], and in the same direction but only marginally statistically significant for female participants, F(1, 206) = 3.39, p = .067, η_p² = .016, 95% CI = [.00, .07].

Is this stereotype driven by expectations that women who have casual sex are unsatisfied with their sexual behavior?

To explore whether the relationship between Mary’s casual-sex strategy and low self-esteem was driven by inferences that Mary was unsatisfied with her casual sexual strategy, we conducted bootstrapped mediation analyses with 5,000 samples using Model 4 of Hayes’s PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2018). Looking first at the bipolar measure of Mary’s self-esteem, we found a significant indirect effect of sexual-behavior condition on expected self-esteem (β = 0.65, SE = 0.19, 95% CI = [0.30, 1.04]), which rendered the direct effect marginally significant (β = 0.47, SE = 0.24, p = .053, 95% CI = [−0.01, 0.94]). We replicated this finding with Mary’s Rosenberg Self-Esteem. This analysis indicated a significant indirect effect of sexual-behavior condition on Mary’s expected Rosenberg Self-Esteem (β = 0.11, SE = 0.04, 95% CI = [0.04, 0.20]), which here rendered the direct effect nonsignificant (β = 0.10, SE = 0.08, p = .167, 95% CI = [−0.04, 0.25]).

These mediation analyses together suggest that people’s inferences about Mary’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction with her casual-sex strategy mediated the relationship between Mary’s casual-sex strategy and perceptions of her as having low self-esteem.

Is this stereotype solely driven by individual-differences factors, or is it robust against them?

The focal effect was robust against participants’ own sociosexual behavior and self-esteem. For detailed results, see the Supplemental Material.

Pluralistic ignorance

We also examined whether participants’ sociosexual behavior was significantly correlated with their self-esteem and found that it was not, r(210) = .114, p = .099, 95% CI = [−.04, .23]. Examining this separately by sex revealed the same pattern (rs < |.125|, ps > .150).

Experiment 6: Does This Stereotype Persist Even in the Face of Explicit Information That Women Who Have Casual Sex Desire and Enjoy It?

Method

Participants

We recruited 315 undergraduate participants (217 women, four did not report gender) from a large midwestern university. Of those, 283 (200 women) were from the United States and passed attention checks (mean age = 19.04 years, SD = 1.32). Sample size and stopping rules were dictated by a related nonexperimental survey study on friendship for which participant credit was awarded; the present experiment was a second task in that study session. A sensitivity power analysis suggested that this sample provided 80% power to detect a small effect (f = .09) in a mixed-factors ANOVA, assuming a correlation (r) of .5 among repeated measures.

Procedure and design

After completing an unrelated task requiring them to report information about friends, participants were invited to take a moment to reset themselves and then to move on to Task 2. Participants were given the same instructions about correlations that we used in Experiment 2 (Varnum, 2013), and they were then told that the questions they were about to see would ask about the correlations between one of the following features—income, race, gender, relationship status, sexual activity, age—and self-esteem. Participants would be presented with several profiles of people, and they would be asked to report the correlation between those people’s features and their self-esteem. In reality, all participants read two profiles of female targets (Mary, Sarah), which varied only in target sexual behavior. Self-esteem was again defined for participants as “feeling good about oneself and having a solid sense of one’s self-worth.” Each participant was also randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions, reflecting the explicit information participants received as to whether targets were satisfied with their current sexual strategy. Thus, this experiment has a 2 (target sexual behavior: casual, committed) × 3 (target satisfaction condition: no satisfaction information, satisfied, unsatisfied) mixed-factors design.

Target profiles

Each profile began, “[Target] is a young adult who has recently finished college, and has put in a few years at her new marketing job. She just turned 28 last month.” In the casual-sex condition, participants then read,

In the last few years, Sarah has had a lot of casual hook ups and no-strings-attached sexual partners—she has sex with these men, but isn’t in a committed relationship with any of them. In fact, she has now lost count of how many different sexual partners she has had.

In the committed-sex condition, participants read,

In the last few years, Mary has had very few sexual partners or casual hook ups—she has only had sex with men when she was in a committed, monogamous relationship with them. In fact, she only dates one man at a time and only pursues long-term romantic relationships with them.

Each participant read both the casual and committed profiles, counterbalanced, in one of three explicit-satisfaction conditions: no satisfaction information, satisfied, unsatisfied. In the no-satisfaction-information condition, participants received no additional information (i.e., regarding how targets felt about their sexual behavior). In the satisfied condition, participants were explicitly informed that if the target wished, she could easily pursue the opposite sexual strategy but that she is satisfied with her current strategy. The following is an example statement:

If she wanted to, Sarah could have a long-term, monogamous romantic relationship with some of the men that she has hooked up with, but that’s not what she wants. Instead, Sarah wants to keep playing the field and enjoy lots of no-strings-attached sex with a lot of different men.

In the unsatisfied condition, participants were explicitly informed that the target wished to pursue the opposite sexual strategy but has not been able to do so. The following is an example statement:

Mary doesn’t want to keep having sex only when she’s in these long-term monogamous relationships. She wants to play the field and enjoy no-strings-attached sex with a lot of different men, but that’s not what she has been able to find so far. Instead, she ends up only having sex with the committed partner she’s dating at the time.

After each profile presentation, participants responded by marking the correlations they inferred between the target’s sexual behavior and her self-esteem.

Target self-esteem

As in Experiment 2, after each target description, participants were told to indicate the correlation between two variables (target sexual behavior and self-esteem) using a slider bar (–1 to 1). The initial position of the bars was set to zero.

Robustness and pluralistic ignorance

We also assessed participants’ own self-esteem via the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1989; α = .90), and their sociosexual behavior via one item from the SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008), which we modified so it would be more appropriate for college-aged participants (“With how many partners have you had sex or hooked up with within the past 12 months?”), following Kurzban et al. (2010). We assessed their own sociosexual attitudes and desires with the same six items as in previous experiments (α = .88).

Additionally, we again assessed participants’ religiosity using the two items included in Experiment 2 along with six additional items (e.g., “How often do you attend religious services?”; α = .97; adapted from Cohen et al., 2006), which were rated on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). We also assessed participant conservatism/liberalism as in previous experiments (α = .89).

Other measures

Participants again completed a number of other measures unrelated to the focal hypotheses, including sexual orientation, relationship status, country of birth, body size and shape, and whether English was their first language. We did not analyze these variables.

Results

Does this stereotype persist in the face of explicit information that women who have casual sex pursue and enjoy it?

We ran a 2 (target sexual behavior: casual, committed) × 3 (satisfaction condition: no satisfaction information, satisfied, unsatisfied) mixed-factors ANOVA. This yielded significant main effects of target sexual behavior, F(1, 255) = 70.20, p < .001, η_p² = .216, 95% CI = [.13, .30], and satisfaction condition, F(2, 255) = 8.88, p < .001, η_p² = .065, 95% CI = [.02, .13], qualified by a marginally significant interaction, F(2, 255) = 2.96, p = .054, η_p² = .023, 95% CI = [.00, .07].

Exploring this interaction revealed that for each satisfaction condition, people made stronger positive associations between self-esteem and women described as having committed sex than between self-esteem and women described as having casual sex (ps > .001). This finding suggests that regardless of how satisfied or dissatisfied women were described as being with their sexual behavior, people thought the women who pursued committed sex were more likely to have higher self-esteem than the women who pursued casual sex. That is, when women were described as dissatisfied with their sexual behavior, people associated the woman who pursued committed sex (but wished she could have casual sex) more strongly with high self-esteem (M = .19, SE = .05) than the woman having casual sex (but wishing she could have committed sex; M = −.12, SE = .06, p = .001, 95% CI = [0.13, 0.47] for the mean difference). But perhaps the most striking support for the persistence of this stereotype is that when women were described as satisfied with their sexual behavior, people still associated the woman who pursued committed sex more strongly with high self-esteem (M = .39, SE = .05) than the woman who pursued casual sex (M = .04, SE = .05, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.19, 0.51] for the mean difference; see Fig. 4 and Table 1).

Fig. 4.

Results from Experiment 6: correlation between targets’ sexual behavior and self-esteem as a function of female targets’ sexual behavior and their satisfaction with that behavior. Error bars represent standard errors.

Table 1.

Results From Experiment 6: Lay Theories of the Association Between Female Sexual Behavior and Self-Esteem

Sexual behavior	Unsatisfied with sexual behavior	No satisfaction information	Satisfied with sexual behavior
Casual sex	−.115 (.06)	−.187 (.06)	.043 (.06)
Committed sex	.186 (.05)	.386 (.05)	.394 (.05)

Note: The table shows Pearson correlations. Standard errors are given in parentheses.

When we explored beliefs about women who engage in casual sex, people reported greater positive associations between women’s casual sexual behavior and self-esteem when the target was explicitly described as satisfied with her sexual behavior, compared with when no satisfaction information was given (p = .005, 95% CI = [.07, .33] for the mean difference between correlations) or when she was explicitly described as unsatisfied with her sexual behavior (p = .057, 90% CI = [.02, .29] for the mean difference between correlations).

Notably, there was no statistical difference in the perceived associations between the target’s sexual behavior when she was described as unsatisfied or when no satisfaction information was provided (p = .384, 95% CI = [−0.24, 0.09]). This perhaps suggests that people’s default perception is that women who engage in casual sex are unsatisfied with their sex lives and have low self-esteem. This contrasts with findings for women who engage in committed sex: There was no such difference in associations when the target was explicitly described as satisfied with her sexual behavior or when no satisfaction information was given (p = .907, 95% CI = [−0.12, 0.13]), perhaps suggesting that the default perception of women who engage in committed sex is that they are satisfied with their sex lives and have high self-esteem. There were also greater positive associations for women who engaged in committed sex and who were described as satisfied or for whom no satisfaction information was given than for the women who engaged in committed sex who were explicitly described as unsatisfied (p = .002, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.34], and p = .003, 95% CI = [0.07, 0.33], respectively). We reran this ANOVA including participant sex as a factor; this yielded no significant effects linked to participant sex (ps > .050).

Is this stereotype solely driven by individual-differences factors, or is it robust against them?

Focal effects were robust against participants’ own sociosexuality, self-esteem, religiosity, and conservatism. See the Supplemental Material for detailed results.

Pluralistic ignorance in Experiment 6 (and across experiments)

Even though participants held these lay perceptions about the relationship between women’s sexual behavior and self-esteem, there was no significant association between participants’ reported sexual behavior and self-esteem, whether for the overall sample (r = −.035, p = .568, 95% CI = [−.04, .23]) or given robust, consistent sex differences in sociosexuality, when participants were examined separately by sex (women: r = −.085, p = .240, 95% CI = [−.25, .08]; men: r = .049, p = .667, 95% CI = [−.18, .28]).

We additionally explored the possibility that participants expect women who have casual sex to have lower self-esteem, even as female (and male) participants themselves report no significant correlations between their sociosexual behavior and self-esteem across these same experiments. We did this in several ways, each of which largely supported the same conclusions.³

First, because participant sexual behavior was always measured via variations of the SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008), and self-esteem was always measured via the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1989), we pooled data from across experiments, examining the correlation between sociosexual behavior and self-esteem, r(1092) = −.053, p = .081. We also did this separately by sex—women: r(685) = .001, p = .975; men: r(428) = −.113, p = .019—finding only a small but significant negative correlation between men’s sociosexual behavior and their self-esteem (see Table S1 and see Fig. S2a in the Supplemental Material). In the Supplemental Material, we provide results for associations between self-esteem and sociosexual attitudes, curvilinear analyses for both sociosexual behavior and attitudes, and equivalence testing that further suggests no strong association (negative or positive) between women’s sociosexual behavior and self-esteem. Although we focused here on stereotypes about women rather than men, it is curious that we failed to find consistent positive associations between men’s sociosexual behavior and self-esteem. In fact, if anything, we found evidence of a small association in the opposite direction when the data were pooled.

General Discussion

Across six experiments (consisting of both undergraduate and more general samples), men and women stereotyped women (but not men) who have casual sex as having low self-esteem, both explicitly and semi-implicitly. This stereotype was mediated by perceptions that sexually unrestricted women must be dissatisfied with having casual sex—yet, strikingly, it persisted even when participants were explicitly informed that women who have casual sex could pursue an alternative strategy but do not because they enjoy casual sexual relationships. Finally, this stereotype may be an instance of pluralistic ignorance; across these same experiments, participants’ sexual behavior was not strongly linked to their own self-esteem.

Why might people possess this stereotype?

We present the first evidence for a stereotype about women who have casual sex. However important it is to identify and empirically explore such effects, descriptive work remains a first step. Here, we consider some possible accounts as to why this stereotype remains pervasive, even as it appears unfounded. First, one might wonder whether women who have casual sex are simply stereotyped as possessing more negative features overall. But we found that women who have casual sex were not perceived as less attractive, which would seem to rule out a reverse-halo effect—that people simply view sexually unrestricted women more negatively in every respect. Second, one might expect that certain individual differences might drive this stereotype, but associations between women who have casual sex and low self-esteem held when analyses controlled for participant religiousness, sexism, and conservatism. Third, it might be that women who have casual sex are stereotyped because perceivers view targets as dissimilar to themselves (i.e., out-group members) negatively, yet here too the stereotypic association remained when analyses controlled for participants’ own sexual behavior (and self-esteem).

Another straightforward possibility is that this stereotype exists because it tracks a potentially exaggerated reality (e.g., Jussim et al., 2016). Our findings regarding participants’ own sexual behavior and self-esteem do not support this interpretation, but we note that the real-world relationship between casual sex and outcomes is complex (Vrangalova, 2015). We also considered an evolutionary lens in explaining why we found this stereotype to be prevalent and persistent yet apparently disconnected from reality. Such an account might suggest that this stereotype exists because of a mismatch between humans’ Stone Age brains and their modern environments, including their tools (e.g., reproductive technologies). That is, women have historically faced greater costs and also reaped lesser fitness-linked benefits from casual sex than men: Owing to biological differences obligating women’s greater investment in offspring (e.g., gestation, calorically expensive lactation) and thus allowing for men’s greater net benefits from casual sex (e.g., more offspring; Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Trivers, 1972/2017), people might possess default assumptions that women pursue casual sex only when committed sex is unavailable to them, whereas men pursue casual sex because of its possible benefits (but for possible benefits to women, see, e.g., Buss & Schmitt, 1993). According to this view, people may assume that women who have casual sex are pursuing behavior they would ideally eschew. Supporting this interpretation, our results showed that associating women who have casual sex with low self-esteem was mediated by inferences that women who have casual sex were dissatisfied with their sexual behavior, even though this linkage largely held in the face of explicit information to the contrary. Intriguingly, such an account might further imply that in reality, casual sex does not necessarily cause women’s low self-esteem—even though many people may believe that it does.

Implications, limitation, and future directions

Although data regarding the effects of casual sex on women are equivocal (Vrangalova, 2015), there exists a cottage industry of authors, journalists, some researchers, and professional advice-givers voicing concerns for and about women who have casual sex. These concerns might perpetuate the stereotype, and they might also affect practices and policies regarding female sexuality that caregivers, schools, or even legislatures enact. Curtailing women’s casual sex may be especially problematic in light of the nonrelationship between sexually unrestricted behavior and self-esteem found here, the complex but sometimes positive relationship with well-being reported elsewhere (de Jong et al., 2018; Dubé et al., 2017; Vrangalova, 2015; Vrangalova & Ong, 2014), and other possible benefits associated with sexual activity (e.g., Levin, 2007). Perhaps these concerns reflect this stereotype and lead to well-intentioned but misguided attempts to protect girls and women—attempts that ultimately restrict women’s freedoms and agency.

Moreover, as noted above, this stereotype can have grave consequences for discrimination. For example, people perceived to have low self-esteem experience discrimination in economic, affiliative, and romantic domains (e.g., Cameron et al., 2016; Cavallo & Hirniak, 2019; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2012). Indeed, perceptions of other people’s self-esteem “may play a more important role in interpersonal phenomena than is commonly recognized” (Zeigler-Hill et al., 2012, p. 217). Future work should explore the concrete disadvantages that women who have (or are thought to have) casual sex might face and the extent to which some of these disadvantages might be mediated by stereotypic beliefs regarding these women’s self-esteem. Moreover, women who have casual sex might enjoy positive discrimination by this same logic (e.g., be targeted for perhaps unwanted sexual attention).

Participants were adults residing in the United States. One might expect this stereotype would be weaker in Scandinavian countries, where policies and social attitudes promoting equality across the gender spectrum are more prevalent. But finding robust evidence for this stereotype among contemporary Americans—despite shifts toward both gender equality and hook-up culture being the norm (e.g., Garcia et al., 2012; Varnum & Grossmann, 2017)—implies that this stereotype may be present even in societies that are higher in gender equality than the United States. Yet we also expect this stereotype will be quantitatively and qualitatively affected by cultural factors, particularly norms surrounding gender and sexual behavior. For example, to the extent that this stereotype depends on a presumption of women’s sexual agency, extreme restrictions on women or women’s sexuality might preclude such a stereotype. Relatedly, although individual-level religiosity did not drive this stereotype, nation-level religiosity might play a role. Cultural and ecological variables affecting the prevalence of this stereotype, as well as related stereotypes about men and sexual behavior, might be examined in future work.

Conclusion

The existence and persistence of a negative stereotype about women (but not men) who engage in what may be culturally normative sexual behavior seems at odds with narratives regarding progress toward gender equality. Yet our data reveal that lay theories linking low self-esteem to women’s (but not men’s) casual sexual behavior seem pervasive and robust.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_0956797620983829 – Supplemental material for Lay Beliefs About Gender and Sexual Behavior: First Evidence for a Pervasive, Robust (but Seemingly Unfounded) Stereotype

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_0956797620983829 for Lay Beliefs About Gender and Sexual Behavior: First Evidence for a Pervasive, Robust (but Seemingly Unfounded) Stereotype by Jaimie Arona Krems, Ahra Ko, Jordan W. Moon and Michael E. W. Varnum in Psychological Science

Footnotes

Appendix

Figure A1 shows an excerpt from the sexually restricted stimulus used in Experiment 4.

Transparency

Action Editor: Steven W. Gangestad

Editor: D. Stephen Lindsay

Author Contributions

J. A. Krems and M. E. W. Varnum conceived this work with critical input from A. Ko and J. W. Moon. J. W. Moon, A. Ko, and J. A. Krems ran the experiments and analyzed the data. J. A. Krems, A. Ko, J. W. Moon, and M. E. W. Varnum wrote the manuscript, and all authors approved the final version for submission.

ORCID iDs

Jaimie Arona Krems

Ahra Ko

Jordan W. Moon

Michael E. W. Varnum

Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information can be found at

Notes

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