Researchers studied the responses of more than 800 female students regarding their sexual practices, their relationship to bisexuality and pornography, and their degree of permissiveness toward their partners.
Sexually, are you more open or closed-minded? Obviously, this question seems a bit biased. After all, no one wants to appear “uptight” but that’s what it’s all about. To measure the degree of sexual openness of a person, we need to look at five areas, according to the three German researchers who conducted this study, published in the online journal PlosOne. The psychologists analyzed the responses of 859 female students collected in 2012 from 15 German universities about masturbation, their relationship to bisexuality and pornography, their sexual practices and finally their degree of permissiveness.
5 requirements
In their study, they detail the criteria that define openness to sex. First, the positive attitude toward masturbation: the more a woman masturbates without feeling guilty afterwards, the more it indicates a high level of acceptance of her own sexual desire. Second, the sexual repertoire. The wider the repertoire, the greater the openness to sex. This ranges from genital fondling to anal sex to oral or vaginal sex. The assessment may seem a bit crude in view of the diversity of practices, but the authors wanted to keep it simple.
Third, the attitude towards bisexuality. Being bisexual or simply attracted to the same sex, or even being able to imagine a relationship with a person of the same sex as oneself, is undeniably a sign of openness. Fourth, pornography. The authors consider it a sign of openness if one has recently consumed pornography, and even more so if one has varied the themes of what one has viewed.
Finally, the authors consider that having had a sexual relationship outside the couple is an indication of a certain sexual permissiveness, the extent of which also varies according to the threshold at which infidelity is considered to begin: masturbating, watching porn, flirting, flirting on the Internet, kissing, loving, having sex.
Sexual happiness is in the openness
The notion of openness to sex is important because it would have a crucial role in the well-being and happiness of an individual. It derives from many values constructed according to morals, religion, body image, repertoire of practices, etc. “Values reflect what people believe is right or wrong, and what they think should or should not be done,” explained psychologist Sonia Roccas in an article published in the Journal of Social Issues on the value systems of different religious groups.
Keeping in mind that in matters of sexuality, the values one adopts for oneself are not necessarily the same as those one applies to others. “The attitude towards one’s own sexual behavior is rather conservative, while it is more liberal for others,” thus explained in 2012 Valeschka Martins Guerra, professor of psychology at the University of Espírito Santo (Brazil), in the journal Archives of sexual behavior. We are now waiting for researchers to study the sexual openness of men…
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