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Making and Breaking Abstinence Pledges: Moral Foundations and the Purity Movement

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Abstract

The purity movement encourages teenagers and young adults to make abstinence pledges, which are promises not to engage in premarital sexual intercourse. Moral foundations theory contends that there are individual differences in the bases of moral decision-making. The purpose of this study was to investigate, among a large sample (N = 961) of U.S. college students, whether there are differences in moral foundations between individuals who make and do not make abstinence pledges—and, among individuals who make an abstinence pledge, between those who do and do not break their pledge. Results indicated that abstinence pledgers endorsed greater binding foundations than those who did not make a pledge. Among abstinence pledgers, women who kept their pledge reported higher binding foundations than both men who kept their pledge and women who broke their pledge. Overall, these results suggest links between moral foundations and abstinence pledging.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #311280, Denton, TX, 76203, USA

    Michael D. Barnett, Kelly J. Martin & Patrick R. Melugin

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  1. Michael D. Barnett
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  2. Kelly J. Martin
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  3. Patrick R. Melugin
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Correspondence to Michael D. Barnett.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study.

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Barnett, M.D., Martin, K.J. & Melugin, P.R. Making and Breaking Abstinence Pledges: Moral Foundations and the Purity Movement. Sexuality & Culture 22, 288–298 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9467-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9467-1

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