Feasibility Cues during a Sexual Encounter Impact the Strength of Heterosexual Women’s Orgasm Goal Pursuit

ABSTRACT

The “orgasm gap” for women who have sex with men remains a pressing gender equity issue. Recent research found that women who pursued orgasm as a goal were more likely to have one. The current research replicated this relationship between orgasm goal pursuit and orgasm frequency for heterosexual women, and found that this relationship did not exist for heterosexual men (Study 1). Then, across two experimental studies, we examined how heterosexual women vary their orgasm goal pursuit across sexual encounters. In Study 2, women who read that a hypothetical sexual encounter would be “quick” reported less intent to pursue orgasm than women who were told they could “take their time” or received no time information. In Study 3, women who read that their hypothetical sexual partner seemed selfish reported less intent to pursue orgasm than women who were given a non-selfish partner or no partner information. Importantly, these effects were mediated by women’s perceived orgasm likelihood in the scenario. These results suggest that women shift their pursuit of orgasm depending on cues which signal whether orgasm will be feasible. This research used self-regulation theory to understand women’s motivations for pursuing orgasm during sexual encounters with men, with implications for reducing the orgasm gap.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

Data and materials are available online at https://osf.io/xrfhb/.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2168599

Notes

¹ Participants’ reports of their own orgasm frequency with a relationship partner differed by condition. Thus, some women may have allowed the experimental condition to influence their subsequent report of their own orgasm frequency, or women in the low feasibility condition happened to have a lower average orgasm frequency than women in the high feasibility condition. Importantly, reported results held when controlling for participants’ own orgasm frequency as a covariate (see Supplement Document).