Sociocultural Correlates of Permissive Sexual Attitudes: A Test of Reiss's Hypotheses About Sweden and the United States - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Sex Research,  Feb, 2000  by Martin S. Weinberg,  Ilsa Lottes,  Frances M. Shaver

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Note. t values in parentheses.

(a) p < .003.

Thus, contrary to Reiss's hypotheses, as operationalized in this study gender egalitarianism and a nonregulatory perspective played no role in the relationship between country and sexually permissive attitudes. In conformity with Reiss's hypotheses, however, religiosity and naturalism served to mediate the relationship. Taken together, all of the variables explained a total of 41% of the variance in sexually permissive attitudes. Even with the controls in place, country still showed a significant effect: About half the country effect still remained.

DISCUSSION

Using data from university students, we tested Reiss's hypotheses about characteristics that differentiate Sweden from the United States as well as his hypotheses about their ability to predict permissive sexual attitudes. Because of the limitations in the data collection, the question of generalizability must be addressed. First, limited funding precluded using additional universities or mailing a third questionnaire to raise response rates (Dillman, Christenson, Carpenter, & Brooks, 1974). Second, if sexually active individuals are the ones most likely to respond to sex surveys--as reported by Catania (1990); Catania, Gibson, Marin, Coates, and Greenblatt (1990); Wiederman (1993); and Wiederman, Weis, and Allgeier (1994)--the low response rates might be seen to provide an additional bias. However, the response rates were similar in the two countries and resulting biases (if any) are likely to be comparable. Third, although the response rates for the men in both countries were about half the rates for the women, we do not feel less confident about their data: An overall lack of gender interaction effects mitigates such a concern. Finally, the results are consistent not only with the data referred to in Reiss (1980) but also with findings of the other research discussed in the introduction. At the same time, to increase confidence in generalizability, we would like to see future research involving these countries which uses representative samples of the general population and which obtain higher response rates.

In summary, a number of findings were consistent with Reiss's ideas. We found lesser religiosity and a greater acceptance of gender egalitarianism in different domains by Swedish students than by U.S. students. Support was also found for Reiss's proposal that Swedish people have more naturalistic views of sexuality. More Swedish students than U.S. students scored highly on accepting nudity, masturbation, and the desire for sex with many people as a natural and normal phenomena. The substantially higher rates of masturbation reported by Swedish students in other papers (Schwartz, 1993; Weinberg et al., 1995) provide additional support for their more naturalistic view of sex. There was also support for Swedes being less accepting of governmental restrictions concerning two of the three issues presented: homosexual behavior between consenting adults and first trimester abortions. Finally, there was support for the Swedish being more accepting of permissive sexual attitudes with regard to premarital sexuality.