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Well, the answer is... all of them!
Cindy Meston (at the University of Texas) and colleagues interviewed over 1,000 students in their survey of sexual behaviours, and found almost no difference between the different faith groups in what was reported. Virtually all of them reported in engaging in some form of premarital sex.
Women (although not men) who were Jewish or fundamentalist Christians did report a somewhat lower incidence of sexual intercourse - but apart from that pretty much anything goes.
No differences in the types of sexual activities (it was quite a, erm, exhaustive survey), in the number of partners (both in the past and the number anticipated in the next 5 years), or in the age at which they lost their virginity. If anything, Christian women lost their virginity slightly earlier than atheists.
What's more, there was no difference in the level of infidelity between atheists and the religious - more evidence that religious identification is a poor guide to honesty.
In a separate study, they looked at the frequency and types of sexual fantasies. Here there was a clear difference. Atheist and especially agnostic women (but again, not men) fantasise more often and more widely (gender bending, masochism, sadism, - you name it!).
Oddly enough, the only men to confess to having taken part in homosexual intercourse were Christian (just under 10% of Christian men) - although in the second study there was no hint of increased gender-bending fantasies. Make of that what you will.
So far this has all been about self-reported identification. Are you Christian, Jewish, Spiritualist, Non-religious, atheist, or agnostic? But what about intensity of beliefs?
Meston and colleagues also measured beliefs using some fairly standard scales - spiritual beliefs, paranormal/new age beliefs, fundamentalist beliefs, and intrinsic religiosity (how central religious belief is to your life).
When you look at beliefs, rather than identification, some rather starker differences emerge.
Broadly speaking, compared with non-believers, any form of traditional religious belief has a deadening effect on sexual activity (both the act and also fantasies, especially for women). However, paranormal and new age beliefs were linked to an increase in all kinds of sexual activity.
For men, the effect was much less. Indeed, fundamentalist Christian men actually reported more sexual partners in the past year than their non-religious counterparts! A case of get religion and get laid? Or just down to the fact that here is a relative shortage of evangelical men?
So, among these students, it seems that religious affiliation is a poor guide to sexual behaviour and fantasies, but that women (and also some men) with strong religious beliefs try to avoid even thinking about it.
But that's students! What about older folk? Well, Mark Regnerus (also at the University of Texas - it seems to be a hotbed of sex research) and colleagues have just published a study into the sex lives of older Americans.
It turns out that among oldies, too, there is very little relationship between religion and either sexual frequency or sexual satisfaction. Just as with the youngsters, however, unmarried women who were also religious were also less likely to have had sex.
But religion had no effect on male sexual activity. Makes you wonder why religion is so popular among women in the US, and yet shunned by men!
Farmer, M., Trapnell, P., & Meston, C. (2008). The Relation Between Sexual Behavior and Religiosity Subtypes: A Test of the Secularization Hypothesis Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38 (5), 852-865 DOI: 10.1007/s10508-008-9407-0Ahrold, T., Farmer, M., Trapnell, P., & Meston, C. (2010). The Relationship Among Sexual Attitudes, Sexual Fantasy, and Religiosity Archives of Sexual Behavior DOI: 10.1007/s10508-010-9621-4
McFarland, M., Uecker, J., & Regnerus, M. (2010). The Role of Religion in Shaping Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction: Evidence from Married and Unmarried Older Adults Journal of Sex Research, 1-12 DOI: 10.1080/00224491003739993
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
12 Comments:
The obvious error in this study is that they can't tell who the real Christians are. Just because a person calls themselves a Christian doesn't mean they know and follow Jesus. So the study is meaningless!
[*Sabio sarcastically plays angel's advocate]
heh, that's funny, as I was reading the article, my first thought was "Cue the No True Scotsman argument".
Anyway, fascinating all around. However, why couldn't this study have been performed when I was single and in college?!? New Age beliefs, here I come!
Ahh but who gets to say what a 'true' Christian is? Whatever being a Christian in the USA means these days, it doesn't include abstaining from sex before marriage (at least for college undergrads).
@ Tom
I can't believe you asked "Who gets to say what a 'true' Christian is?
Obvious, God gets to say ! Duh !
And since you will know a Christian by their fruits, only the sexual modest, prudent and chaste ones count -- and only if their conscience is also clear.
Smile.
Yeah, but which god eh? Who gets to decide? Cue infinite recursion... :)
Oh, I can answer Tom's question quite easily: Who says what a 'true' Christian is? Well that's simple! True Christians get to say! :p
Oh well, true Christians are of course those who don't fuck. :-) But then, is that a Christian country still?
"What's more, there was no difference in the level of infidelity between atheists and the non-religious - more evidence that religious identification is a poor guide to honesty."
? Seems there's something wrong here - would you expect a difference between "atheists" and "non-religious"?
That's an error! It should be "no difference between atheists and the religious". Regardless of religious creed (or none) the average number of infidelities was around 1 in this student population.
"But religion had no effect on male sexual activity. Makes you wonder why religion is so popular among women in the US, and yet shunned by men!"
I'm curious, is this statistical fact, more women are religious then men?
It seems to be the case, at least in modern, Westernized countries. But the cause is probably cultural, rather than any deep biological cause. I wrote a series of posts on the subject a while back, starting here.
"Cindy Meston (at the University of Texas) and colleagues interviewed over 1,000 students in their survey of sexual behaviours"
Am I the only one who caught this? The only students they surveyed were students attending UT Austin. A properly conducted statistic never uses samples from only one very specific group. Here in Texas, UT Austin is known to be THE party college, where you go to get drunk, have sex, and maybe pick up a bachelors degree along the way.
The more devout (or less party-minded) religious graduates attend private religious schools such as Baylor, or, much more likely, Texas A&M - the most conservative state university in the US. So of course of there was no difference found between "Christians" and Atheists.
Had they have expanded their search to multiple other universities, they would have obtained much different results.
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