Abstract
Our purpose was to investigate, cross-culturally, university students' premarital sexual standards. A number of predictions were derived from the work of Christensen, Reiss, and Burr. Data were collected via self-administered questionnaires from over 1100 English-speaking respondents in five “cultures” (four countries). These cultural contexts had a strong effect on the attitudes and behavior of individual respondents. As predicted, the difference in the standards held by males and females was small in highly permissive societies. Negative consequences of premarital intercourse (i.e., guilt) were reported by the highest proportion of sexually experienced respondents in the most restrictive society. An unsuccessful effort was made to predict how the correlation between permissiveness and such variables as religiosity would change in different cultures. Across all five cultures, greater courtship participation, less religiosity, greater physical attractiveness, and spending less time with one's family were associated with greater permissiveness. Finally, students from high-status backgrounds were generally more permissive.
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This research was supported by a Canada Council Grant (574–0557) and Leave Fellowship to the senior author.
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Perlman, D., Josephson, W., Hwang, W.T. et al. Cross-cultural analysis of students' sexual standards. Arch Sex Behav 7, 545–558 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541921
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541921