Attitudes toward Sex and Strength of Sexual Drive

Abstract

According to the literature dealing with sexual expression, there appears to be a particularly strong correlation between attitude and reaction (or performance). Dr. A. H. Maslow, in his classic study of female sexual behavior (1942, pp. 259–294), found the highest correlations were those between sexual attitude and sexual behavior. Dr. Allan Fromme aptly pointed out (1955): “Our sexual behavior is essentially the result of our attitudes toward sex; and these attitudes, in turn, are a product of how we have been brought up.” And Dr. Ira L. Reiss, the well-known sociologist, in discussing the relationship between an individual’s sexual attitudes and actual sexual behavior, stated: “We checked this relationship in one Midwestern college by asking college students both their attitudes and their actual behavior. Based on such reports, it seems that there is a strong, although surely not a perfect, relationship between sex attitudes and behavior.”1 As we have always suspected, in regard to sex, the research is suggesting more and more that people are more conservative in their stated attitudes than in their actual behavior.2