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Many believe that most people dislike individuals who have sex with a lot of partners—although one's definition of “a lot” is highly subjective. In study after study, promiscuous people are seen as less desirable friends, spouses, or dating partners, and are judged as less moral, likeable, intelligent, trustworthy, or psychologically healthy than more sexually-restricted people. One 2013 study of over 24,000 undergrads found that 70% of them would lose respect for someone who “hooks up with lots of people"; another recent study found that even promiscuous women themselves preferred less promiscuous women as friends. And most people—promiscuous or not—expect to be judged harshly by others if they act in a way that suggests they were promiscuous, through their actions or even their style of dress.
Of course, thanks to a pervasive sexual double standard, the social penalties for being promiscuous—or even looking like you might be—are particularly severe for women.
If promiscuity was indeed so undesirable, though, you would expect that promiscuous people—and women in particular—would be socially ostracized, left with no friends, bullied, and lonely, which would obviously be bad for their psychological and physical health. Reports of tragic cases of "slut-shaming"—often, paradoxically, of women who are not particularly promiscuous—appear in the media with some regularity.
But is this what happens to most promiscuous people? Do they really bear the brunt of discrimination and victimization, and if so, does this translate into fewer friends and greater loneliness?
My new study, just published online ahead of print in the journal Personal Relationships, suggests that promiscuous college students may indeed be subjected to more interpersonal aggression and sex-based prejudice than less-promiscuous peers, but they are not more socially isolated.
In fact, they feel less isolated.
My coauthor, Rachel Bukberg, and I recruited 810 undergraduates (73% female; 62% white; ages 18 to 23) from seven social-science and communication courses at a large Northeastern university. We surveyed them about their past sexual behavior (measured as lifetime number of intercourse and non-intercourse sexual partners), the amount of discrimination and victimization they had experienced, and their social connections and loneliness levels. Here’s what we found:
More Victimized, Yet More Connected
As we expected, the more partners someone had, the more relational aggression they had experienced—things like friends going behind their backs and turning others against them, or being the target of rumors or gossip. They were also more likely to report having been the target of discrimination or negative stereotypes based on their sexual behavior.
However, in contrast to our hypotheses, having more sexual partners was at the same time linked to:
- lower loneliness;
- greater likelihood of having a best friend;
- more close friends;
- more acquaintances; and
- more relatives with whom they communicated on a regular basis.
And here’s something even more unexpected: There were no gender differences in any of these links: Men perceived as promiscuous were more victimized, and such women were less lonely and had more friends, than more sexually conservative peers of the same sex.
A Paradox?
These data reveal somewhat of a paradox: How is it possible for promiscuous people to maintain a stronger sense of social connectedness at the same time as they are experiencing more interpersonal victimization?
One possible explanation is that people dislike or condemn promiscuity in the abstract—in hypothetical experimental scenarios, or for some distant "others," but that they’re much more likely to accept it, understand it, or excuse it when it concerns themselves or their already close friends. We tend to unconsciously apply different (read: laxer) standards and set different (read: higher) bars for what counts as “too much” when it hits closer to home. Promiscuous people may also use other more conscious strategies to keep their reputations intact and complications at bay—benevolent ones like seeking partners outside of their main social networks, or more nefarious ones, like lying and manipulating partners and friends.
Yet another possible explanation lies in the personality trait of extroversion. Lots of research (ours included) finds that more promiscuous people are also more extroverted: They enjoy social situations and seek them out, they get energized around people, they seek novelty and excitement, and they’re assertive and gregarious. This makes it easier for extroverts to find or build a group of friends that will like them and support them, even if they break the rules (sexual or otherwise). Extroverts are also generally more cheerful and carefree, which places them at lower risk for loneliness, regardless of the actual social connections they may have. So while their promiscuous behavior may irk some and lead to more bullying, their extroversion endears them to others and steels them against the negative effects of said bullying. Indeed, when we statistically controlled for extroversion in our analyses, most links between promiscuity and social connectedness were rendered insignificant.
(Other major personality traits—conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism, and agreeableness—had no such impact. Demographic characteristics such as sex, race, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, and religiosity also didn’t affect these links).
Of course, the results of this study are limited: They are based on a nonrepresentative sample of undergrads at a single, large, elite, secular, and relatively liberal university in the Northeast. People’s psychological strengths and coping mechanisms are limited in their compensating power, and promiscuous people may not fare as well in more conservative environments where victimization and ostracism may be more severe. This also doesn’t negate the horrendous effects that intense slut-shaming—especially in today’s era of social media—can have on young people. (For a wonderful take on this, see Monica Lewinski’s recent TED talk.)
Limitations and warnings notwithstanding, this study offers hope to those whose "number" happens to be higher than the norm, and requires us to revise the traditional view of promiscuous people—particularly women—because they seem to be much more resilient than imagined.
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References
Vrangalova, Z., & Bukberg, E. R. (2015). Are sexually permissive individuals more victimized and socially isolated? Personal Relationships, online ahead of print. doi:10.1111/pere.12076
