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Concordance Between Romantic Orientations and Sexual Attitudes: Comparing Allosexual and Asexual Adults

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Abstract

Sexual and romantic orientations are often considered one and the same, and attitudes about engaging in sexual behavior are assumed to be predominantly positive. The current study explored the concordance between sexual and romantic orientations among allosexual and asexual adults as well as the frequency with which they identify as having a sex-positive, sex-neutral, or sex-averse attitude. As expected, allosexual adults were largely sex-positive (82%) and almost all (89%) had a romantic orientation that matched their sexual orientation. In contrast, we found that only 37% of asexual adults had concordant sexual and romantic orientations and that most asexual adults self-identify as either sex-neutral (41%) or sex-averse (54%). Further, we used a semantic differential task to assess sexual intimacy attitudes and how they varied for adults based on sexual attitude. Asexual adults, regardless of sexual attitude, had less positive attitudes overall than allosexual adults. Interestingly, aromantic asexual adults did not have more negative attitudes about sexual intimacy than romantic asexual participants. Although asexual adults held less positive attitudes about sex than allosexual adults, there was considerable heterogeneity within our asexual sample. The current study provides further insight into the concordance between romantic and sexual orientation, and the associations among sexual and intimacy attitudes for both allosexual and asexual adults. These findings will have implications for future research on how asexual adults navigate romantic relationships.

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Data Availability

Data files are available upon request.

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Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study or to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alyssa N. Clark.

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article and certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Ethical Approval

The questionnaire and methodology for this study were approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Illinois State University (ethics approval number: 2018-277).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Means, standard deviations, range, and median for the engagement in intimacy attitude semantic differential task for sex-positive, sex-neutral, and sex-averse allosexual participants.

 

Sex attitude

Sex-positive

(n = 274)

Sex-neutral

(n = 50)

Sex-averse

(n = 10)

M (SD)

Range (median)

M (SD)

Range (median)

M (SD)

Range (median)

Negative/positive

90.00 (12.27)

20–100 (92)

61.00 (19.76)

18–100 (65)

28.70 (25.00)

0–85 (27.5)

Disgusted/pleased

88.57 (16.48)

3–100 (92)

61.44 (23.41)

10–100 (60.5)

38.90 (25.87)

0–85 (45)

Uninterested/interested

88.14 (17.14)

2–100 (93)

59.88 (22.44)

1–100 (59.5)

26.90 (29.76)

0–83 (20)

Not aroused/aroused

85.17 (18.03)

3–100 (90)

63.94 (24.25)

1–100 (69.5)

44.10 (37.36)

0–90 (45)

Averse/not averse

84.31 (21.68)

1–100 (91)

60.31 (23.46)

0–100 (60)

25.10 (23.38)

0–53 (24.5)

Unwilling/willing

88.61 (17.40)

1–100 (95)

62.76 (21.36)

15–100 (60.5)

23.40 (18.83)

0–50 (23)

  1. For each semantic differential pair, the positive term was anchored at 100 and the negative term was anchored at 0

Appendix B

Means, standard deviations, range, and medians for the engagement in intimacy attitude scale semantic differential task for sex-positive, sex-neutral, and sex-averse asexual participants.

 

Sex attitude

Sex-positive

(n = 6)

Sex-neutral

(n = 41)

Sex-averse

(n = 54)

M (SD)

Range (median)

M (SD)

Range (median)

M (SD)

Range (median)

Negative/positive

65.33 (35.09)

1–92 (79.5)

48.46 (20.89)

0–85 (50)

20.09 (20.36)

0–83 (15.5)

Disgusted/pleased

66.33 (33.68)

1–92 (75)

47.41 (18.99)

0–100 (50)

17.65 (17.16)

0–60 (15.5)

Uninterested/interested

52.83 (38.61)

1–90 (65)

25.88 (23.62)

0–80 (20)

4.65 (7.62)

0–30 (1)

Not aroused/aroused

61.67 (31.30)

1–85 (74)

27.61 (24.56)

0–80 (20)

9.52 (16.02)

0–70 (1.5)

Averse/not averse

71.33 (36.56)

1–100 (81)

51.05 (25.93)

0–100 (50)

10.17 (14.87)

0–60 (5)

Unwilling/willing

62.17 (35.03)

1–100 (65.5)

49.37 (24.61)

0–91 (50)

11.63 (18.76)

0–75 (1)

  1. For each semantic differential pair, the positive term was anchored at 100 and the negative term was anchored at 0

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Clark, A.N., Zimmerman, C. Concordance Between Romantic Orientations and Sexual Attitudes: Comparing Allosexual and Asexual Adults. Arch Sex Behav 51, 2147–2157 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02194-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02194-3

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