Living the sexual script: College students' views of influence in sexual encounters

Abstract

One hundred and twenty‐four unmarried college students participated in a study which assessed the relationship between gender and locus of control orientation and students' stereotypes about sexual influence and their personal experiences in sexual encounters. Three hypotheses were tested. First, it was expected that students would stereotype initiating sexual intercourse as a masculine activity and refusing to have sex as a feminine activity. Second, students were expected to both personally use and experience dates as using more indirect strategies to have sex and more direct strategies to avoid having sex. Third, internally oriented students were expected to be more likely to report being the influencing agent and less likely to report being the influencee within a sexual encounter than externally oriented students. Participants responded to 38 descriptions of 10 strategies for having sexual intercourse and 9 strategies for avoiding sexual intercourse. For each description, participants were asked whether men or women would be most likely to use a particular strategy, how frequently they personally had used the strategy to influence a date, and how frequently the strategy had been used on them in a sexual encounter. As expected, students stereotyped all strategies for having sex as being used predominantly by men and all strategies for avoiding sex as being used predominantly by women. Unexpectedly, however, both men and women also reported behaving and being influenced according to these same Stereotypic patterns, regardless of their personality (locus of control) or type of strategy considered. The traditional sexual script dictates that men should use any strategy to influence dates to have coitus and that women should either passively acquiesce to their dates' sexual advances or use any strategy to influence a date to avoid sexual