Identity–behaviour congruence among behaviourally bisexual young women: The role of individual differences in sexual identity attitudes and beliefs

Abstract

Though sexual identity labels (e.g. straight, bisexual, gay/lesbian) are regularly used as a proxy for sexual behaviour and/or attraction, sexual identity is often imperfectly correlated with these aspects of sexual orientation. In this study, we examined whether individual differences would explain differences in the relationship between sexual identity label (i.e. exclusively straight, mostly straight, bisexual or mostly/exclusively gay) and self-reported sexual behaviour among a sample of 76 behaviourally bisexual college-aged women. We found that individual differences in sexual identity exploration, uncertainty, commitment and integration moderated the relationship between sexual identity label and sexual behaviour among exclusively and mostly straight women. Sexual identity uncertainty and integration moderated the relationship between sexual identity label and sexual behaviour among exclusively straight and bisexual women, and among exclusively straight and mostly/exclusively gay women. We discuss the implications of these results for the measurement of aspects of sexual orientation and future research on the sexual identity–behaviour relationship.

Keywords:

• sexual identity
• sexual behaviour
• individual differences
• self-perception
• bisexuality

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted as part of Elisabeth Morgan Thompson's dissertation research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The authors thank the University of Michigan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Psychology Summer Institute for making this collaboration possible.

Notes

1. We defined identity-inconsistent behaviour for Bisexual women as same-sex behaviour because Bisexual women, on average, reported more other-sex behaviour than same-sex behaviour (M proportion of same-sex behaviour = 0.43, SD = 0.07).