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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Nonregulatory perspective. Using topics described by Reiss--which are still timely today-- we designed three items to measure the level of support for governmental interference in realms related to adult sexuality: "an adult's right to obtain adult pornography," "adult consensual homosexual behavior," and "a woman's right to have an abortion in the first trimester." Respondents were queried as to whether these activities should or should not be a matter for the law if they were kept private and were not imposed on unwilling people. They answered on a 5-point continuum from strongly agree to strongly disagree with regard to governmental interference. Since the Cronbach alpha was only .61, the items were used individually.

Analyses

First, simple regressions were run to test Reiss's country-difference hypotheses (the independent variable being country and the dependent variables being religiosity, gender egalitarianism, sexual egalitarianism, naturalism, a nonregulatory perspective, and sexually permissive attitudes). Then multiple regressions were run to test for the effect of the various variables above in mediating any relationship between country and sexually permissive attitudes. The order of entry was based on the level of causation implied by Reiss. The stepwise sequence of entry was as follows: Model 1 was the simple regression of sexually permissive attitudes on country, Model 2 brought in religiosity as a control, Model 3 added the gender egalitarianism items to country and religiosity, and Model 4 then entered the naturalism items. Model 5 added the nonregulatory items and represented the full regression equation.

The sexual egalitarian measure was not included in the regression because the sexual permissiveness and sexual egalitarianism measures were composed of various linear combinations of the same variables. Thus, the correlations between these two measures would be difficult to interpret and would provide a poor indication of the empirical correlation between these two constructs. Furthermore, the sexual egalitarian measure did not have much variation: Most of the responses were egalitarian. This was true of nearly all of the women's responses. A minority of the Swedish men and a larger minority of U.S. men had traditional double standard views.

Because of the limitations of the data, the Bonferroni correction factor was used to determine the appropriate probability level for statistical significance. It placed the required level of significance at .003.

RESULTS

Simple Regressions

Simple regressions were run to test for the relationships between country and the dependent variables of religiosity, gender egalitarianism, sexual egalitarianism, naturalism, a nonregulatory perspective, and sexually permissive attitudes. The significant results (p = .003) that support Reiss's bivariate hypotheses were as follows. First, compared to the American students, the Swedish students reported less religiosity; the standardized regression coefficient for the relationship was [Beta] = -.34. Second, the Swedish students also showed more egalitarianism about gender roles. The relationships between country and the three measures of egalitarianism were: for government, [Beta] = .28; for work, [Beta] =. 18; and for social situations, [Beta] = .40. Third, the Swedish students were more naturalistic in their views of sexuality. The [Beta] between country and attitude toward the normality of nudity was .53; toward the normality of daily masturbation, [Beta] =. 18; and toward the normality of sexual desire toward a half-dozen people in one day, [Beta] = .48. Fourth, the Swedish students showed more of a nonregulatory perspective on two of the three items. The [Beta] between country and a nonregulatory perspective on homosexuality was .27, and on abortion was [Beta] = .18. Finally, the Swedish students had more permissive sexual attitudes ([Beta] = .48).