PSYC 350 Ch3
.pdf
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University of British Columbia**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
PSYCH 350
Subject
Sociology
Date
Dec 16, 2024
Pages
11
Uploaded by CoachFlowerGoat32
Indigenous People and Seuxality Most First Nations were considered sexually permissive by European standards - Women encouraged to take initiative, premarital and extramarital sex was acceptable - Bodies and sexuality was not seen as shameful - Gay, lesbian and two spirit people were respected and admired - Sexual behaviour and attitudes negatively influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition due to history of residential schools and dismantled social structures - Importance of elders telling stories on sexual behaviour - Today, they has limited access to sexual health testing and treatment and information of risk, rates of STls are highest in indigenous communities across Canada Cross species behaviour/ Biological perspectives There is sexual behaviour unique to humans - Masturbation, oral sex, same-sex behaviour, female orgasm - Less hormonal and biological control as we go up the evolutionary scale - Sexual behaviour is more controlled by instincts and hormones within fish and rodents - But as we go up the evolutionary scale, sexual behaviour is controlled more by the brain - Animals also use sex for non-sexual purposes such as monkeys when ending a fight - Bonobos, squirrels who display erect penis as sign of aggression - Research on horses show how using visual stimuli allows the horse to ejaculate (while having sex with another horse) - Visual stimuli is of a sexy looking horse? Racial Microaggressions — subtle insults directed at people of a particular race, often done unconsciously. Ethnic minorities in Canada experience them often and they can be a source of stress Sexual Health includes well-being, sexual rights and pleasure Chapter 3- Research Methods - Population vs sample - Ppts need to be chosen to represent to larger population of interest Generalisation - Based on how similar the sample is to the population - Important in sex research because it's not about choosing a sample of convenience but also we are only going to get people who are willing to participate in sex research - Some research you have to go into a lab and get machines and measures onto genitals to measure arousal etc. not everyone is willing to do studies like these - We end up with a narrow sample to undergraduate students who are willing to participate in a study about sex - Moves us further away from having generalization results
Selection/ Volunteer bias - The ppts that are willing to participate in sex research reflects only a certain demographic of the population, those who are more sexually open Ethical Principles with Sex research Tri-council policy statement: statement for ethical conduct for research involving humans - Developed by federal granting agencies - Respect for human dignity is at utmost priority in research involving humans Protection from harm - Researchers should minimize amount of physical and psychological stress on participants - Some people get stressed answering questions about sex - Researchers can alleviate this by making responses anonymous - Researchers can make sure that response options are inclusive Informed consent - Participants have right to be told before they participate what the aim of the research is and what they will be asked to do - If theyre a child or minor, need a guardians consent Debriefing - At the end of the study, need to explain in detail what the study was about - Researchers can give the participant incentives - Benefits can not be coercive to the participant Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis 1932-1972 by US Government A Followed 399 poor uneducated african american men to learn about the course of untreated syphilis 4 Ppts did not give informed consent, did not give treatment they were promised HUNDREDS OF 4 Offered coercive incentives, hot meals etc BLACK MEN i 4 Participants were denied access to penicillin DISCOVERER © (@& A Harm to participants outweighed the benefits of the research | Imml[lg " EXPERIMENT". SEE ARTICI.I‘INIIDI P, Methods of research Surveys Questionnaires vs Interviews - Web based surveys are most popular right now
Issues % Purposeful distortion * Social desirability - Can exaggerate or conceal sexual activity - Often are more likely to do this in a way that is socially desirable % Ability to estimate - Some questions ask on average, how long/ often someone does something % Faulty memory - Some questions require ppts to remember details from a long time ago % Interpreting the question - People have different definitions about different sexual behaviours - Important that definitions are spelled out % Surveys tend to be cross-sectional - Give us information about a person at a specific point in time Operational definitions of behaviours sex virginity kissing 1-20% 0-10% masturbating together 3 -20% 0-11% mutual masturbation 5-35% 0-20% oral contact 25 - 50% 3 -30% anal-penile insertion 75 - 90% 50 - 65% vaginal-penile insertion 80 - 100% 80 - 100% Defining Sex - Biological sex - Sex assigned at birth - Sexual behaviour - Genital non-genital sexual expressions - May or may not include sexual arousal and orgasm - Context matters Examples of Survey methods - Kinsey survey - Using interviews - Collected sex histories
- Highly regarded for his rigorous method in framing questions in non-judgemental ways to yield answers - Criticisms was that the sample was not random - Young white university students in Indiana - NHSLS 1994 - National health and social life survey - Large scale national american study 1994 - Face to face interviews and written questions - Assessed ages 18-59 - Good random sampling - 79% response rate to participate - NSSHB 2009-2018 - National survey of sexual health and behaviour - 7 waves between 2009 and 2018 at indiana university - Resulted in publications about americans and sexual behaviour - 14-94 aged sample - Random sampling - Good representative sample of american public - 50% response rate - British national survey - Data from 2010 and 2020 - Canada - Never have a large scale comprehensive sex survey - Canada Youth sexual health and HIV/aids study 2002 - Examined factors thought to influence adolescent sexual health knowledge, attitudes and behaviour - Students in grades 7,9,11 - 23% boys, 19% girls in grade 9 - In all ten provinces - Hard to get questions about sex included in the grade 7 version - Designed so data represents canadian youth - But some school refused to participate in the survey - 18% of the students were not able to participate , 5% of students refused to participate — volunteer bias etc. still showing - Key findings - 23% of boys and 19% of girls in grade 9 reported engaging in sexual intercourse - 40% of boys and 46% of girls in grade 11 - Lower than the percentages found in 1987 - Canadian community health survey 2012 Rotermann - Examined sexual health behaviour of youth ages 15-24 during 2 time periods (2009-2010) and compared it to 2003 data - 66% of youth had sexual intercourse had sexual intercourse at least one time (consistent with 2003)
- 30% of teens age 15-17, 68% of teens aged 18-19 and 85% of youth aged 20-24 had sexual intercourse at least one time (also consistent with 2003 data) - 2014 health behaviour in school aged children study - Compared grade 10 canadians across time - Focused on percent of grade 10 students who have engaged in intercourse across time - Remained stable from 2002 to 2014 - BC adolescent health survey - 30,000 grade 7-12 students - 19% students reported having intercourse in 2018 compared to 24% in 2008 - Youth who had greater connections to family and school were less likely to be engaging in oral sex compared to others - Research on teen pregnancy rates in BC 1989 to 2013 - Rates are consistently going down and contraceptive use is going up - Still going down from 2014 to 2019 Qualitative methods Results are conveyed with words, make sense of experiences in terms of meaning people give to them — more concerned with ppts pov and lived experiences - Provide quotations and meaningful language rather than statistics Methods - Intensive investigation of a small group of individuals - Due torichness of data, can’'t have a large sample - Interviews - Have people describe experiences of orgasms - Reported that orgasm intensity depending on psychological factors - Intimacy, mindfulness were powerful indicators of intensity of orgasm - Can last hours, can have written responses Lewis and Maticka-Tyndale 1998 study of exotic dancers in Southern Ontario & 30 exotic dancers interviewed about their experiences #» Asked them to ppt and ask their friends, used snowball sampling & Using open ended questions and analysed responses to find themes & Found that dancers main goals for becoming a dancer was for money - 2 types of dancers, one see it as a temporary job, don’'t engage in drug, alcohol use - The other group of ‘career dancers’ heavily involved in strip club culture, involved iIn heavy drinking and to use drugs and engage in sex with customers ¥ This information is different from the info we would have gleaned from quantitative measures
Direct observation Participant observation - Observation in semi-public settings - E.g 1990 research on sex parties and sex clubs, when a researcher would go in and observe what was going on and report back - Moser attended over 200 sadomasochistic sex parties - This approach is frowned upon these days, sex clubs and sex parties have caught onto sex researchers and don’t allow them to enter - Content analysis (media) Eye tracking - Have men look at nude photos of women to see where they looked - Most men looked at the breast and waist and didn't look at the genitals - Another study examined people looking at nude photos and compared people of different sexual orientations - Straight people look at the opposite sex longer, bi people look at both equally Biological measures MRI, brain activity Penile Plethysmography - Flexible loop around the penis that measures the erection volume as a measure of sexual arousal Vaginal plethysmography - Measures blood flow to the vagina Thermography - Camera that points at the genitals that measures patterns of heat and blood flow at the surface of the body - Thought to measure sexual arousal Pros/Cons: - Not influenced by biases or recall - Butinfluenced by the fact that theyre in a laboratory - Hard to get participants because it's an intense procedure Quantitative Method Turning responses into a numerical value to then analyse the data 7 & 4 / oot ntturol | | " {: \/} ‘ o ) o,
Media Content Analysis Can be used to examine magazines, music, social media Once you find your media, you develop a coding protocol (a way to code all the information) E.g; you come up with 5 categories - Then check the reliability of the coding scheme using inter-rater (70-80% is good) Sarah Vanier — content coding on pornhub on Milf pornography - Found out about language used and different themes in pornography Useful to look at different types of media and what's included in them Experimental designs Allow researchers to determine the cause of various aspects of behaviour and sexuality To be qualified as an experiment: - One factor IV has to be changed while all other factors are held constant - So we can be sure that this IV is what is causing the change in the DV - Mostly conducted in a lab Random assignment — experimental group and control group Children report more sexual activity when they were asked the question by a computer - We can say that the type of interview had an effect on childrens’ answers - Had more privacy and felt more comfortable Advantages - Most sex research is correlational and nondirectional but this is the only way to determine causality Problems - Difficult to control all variables and costly to do so - Sample size tends to be lower - Can't address interesting questions in sex research - Cultural factors in sexual identity? Orgasms? - cross sectional research allows us to answer more interesting questions Issue of ‘Normal” There's such large variability in sex research that averages can be misleading and unhelpful - Focusing on the average makes us ignore the huge range and variability in whats out there for sexual behaviour - We need a distinction between the ‘average’ vs what is ‘normal’ (normal is a much larger range of human behaviour) Pseudoscience Reader’s surveys in magazines - This research can not be trusted fully E.g: experiment of effects on visual and literary pornography was related to sexual insecurities
- Found small correlations between sexual insecurities and pornography use but not a causal relationship - Butin a magazine, the results of the study were skewed to be more dramatic Sex research can often be presented in inaccurate ways Theoretical Perspectives Theory — set of ideas or concepts that help explain behaviour and attitudes. There is no unified theory of human sexuality and sexual scientists pull from different theories Evolutionary Perspective Idea that we are designed to produce healthy viable offspring - Evolution through natural selection Sociobiology — aims to examine and explain social behaviour in terms of evolution - Argues that certain sexual behaviour evolved because it gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage of some kind through time - Physical attractiveness is an indicator of health - Parental investment Critiques - Sociobiology rests on outdated models of human evolution - Focus on human struggle for survival and reproduction assumes that the central function of sex is reproduction BUT this is not true today, a lot of people are not trying to reproduce - Function of sex is not longer about reproduction primarily - Don't tell us the whole story of human sexuality Gender Neutral Evolutionary theory Alternative to sociobiology and evolutionary biology - Gowaty believed that it is most adaptive for individuals to be flexible in their behaviours- evolution has selected to flexibility and adaptability - Fixed mating strategies are not adaptive BUT it is a very new theory and has not been fully evaluated - Humans find themselves in environments that vary enormously across their lives Psychoanalytic theory Key Concepts - Libido — life instinct that motivates human sexual behaviour and is focused in erogenous zones - Stages of psychosocial development - People can get stuck or fixated at certain stages and this can create issues - |Id, Ego and Superego
- |d operates on the pleasure principle, superego is the conscience, contains the values and ideals of society that we learn Criticisms - Not testable since theyre all unconscious processes - Based his ideas on discussions with patients coming to him for therapy - Theory is based around disturbances of human personality rather than for normal people - Overemphasised the biological determinants of behaviour and did not recognise the importance of environment and learning Brought stage theory topics into public discussion for scientific research was revolutionary for the victorian era Learning Theory Emphasise the idea that behaviour can be learnt % Classical conditioning - Sexual arousal can be a conditioned response after repeated pairings with stimuli that are not originally sexual - Happened in monkeys - Can be used to explain fetishes % Operant Conditioning - Behaviour is followed by either a reward or punishment - Primary reinforcement — intrinsically rewarding behaviours (food, sex) - Dual role of sex- can act as the reward or reinforcer or it can be the behaviour that is punished or rewarded - When sexual behaviour is punished, they will find other ways to engage in sexual behaviour - Compared to rewards, punishments are not as effective in shaping behaviour % Social Learning - Observational learning, identification, imitation, self-efficacy - Criticisms - Ignore the cognitive or thinking contributors to behaviour - Does not consider cognitive processes in relation to behaviour Cognitive theories Perceptions and evaluation of events affect emotions and responses - When a sexual partner says theyre not in the mood, the cognitive processes that follow that affect someone’s mood - Erectile dysfunction has a cognitive component thats based around how someone evaluates their erectile dysfunction Schema: general knowledge framework that a person has about a particular topic - Gender schema theory (sandra Bem)
- We have schemas about gender and this schema means that we are predisposed to dichotomised people based on this gender binary - People find it difficult when we can'’t put people into these gender categories - When we meet babies, we want to know if it's a girl or boy - Schemas are powerful in the brain - Cognitive schemas are considered to be learned - Can affect our memories - When information is consistent with our schemas, it is easier to remember - 80s study - Showed photos of boys and girls doing activities that were stereotype consistent and stereotype inconsistent - Recall of pictures tested later and found that gender consistent were more easily recalled and memories were distorted to fit their schemas Sociological Perspective Script theory — Sexual behaviour is the result of extensive prior learning - Sexual etiquette, how encounters should proceed etc. Eg. sequence of sexual activity - They play a role in how our encounters unfold Assumes that it's human nature to communicate symbolically, when it comes to sex, we create a shared understanding and this affects our culture - Symbolic communication — human nature - We create shared definitions over time that we agree on Hookup culture and Casual Sex (Dr Lisa Wade) QN e N 4 type of students in college hookup culture . W\\‘ 'if, - Enthusiasts- love it - Abstainers- hate it - Dabblers- have mixed feelings and experiences - Strivers- want to engage in this culture Medical institution AV Medicalisation of sexuality — occurs when certain sexual behaviours or conditions are defined in terms of health and iliness and are medically treated 4 Viagra turned erectile dysfunction into a medicalisation of sexuality 4 Addyi — female viagra ‘corrects an imbalance’ to boost female libido - Only 1 more sexually satisfying result per month compared to control group as opposed to the slew of side effects - Also have to take it every day - Ignores other factors that can influence sexual desire
Sexual Health lliness model — fix the illness with a medical solution Health model — sexual health is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being related to sexuality, it is not merely the absence of disease or disorder Sexual rights WHO — embrace human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents - Right to privacy, equality, sexual education - Negative rights — protection from discrimination, genital cutting etc. Legal institutions - Criminal law is a federal responsibility in Canada but not in the US - Main offences in criminal code - Sexual assault - Sexual interference - Incest - Bestiality - Nudity - Types of laws - To prevent exploitation and force - Prevent crimes against taste and morality - Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — criminal code revised to eliminate aws that reflect moral values, but there are still some morality based laws - 1969 Omnibus Bill Pierre Trudeau — removed laws against oral and anal sex Influence of the Law - Mechanisms of social control - Impose an ideology on sexual behaviour Pleasure Gap/ orgasm gap - Men receive more sexual pleasure than women - 75% for men and 25% for women (orgasm gap) Chapter 4- Sexual Anatomy Genital Self Image Attitudes and feelings about one’s own genitals There are links between genital self image to sexual well being - People with poorer GSI tend to have lower sexual satisfaction, self esteem etc. - Impacts comfort with their partner - genital cosmetic surgery