College students in long distance relationships feel worse when on campus
 
Waterman, E. A., Wesche, R., Leavitt, C. E., Jones, D. E., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2017). Long-distance dating relationships, relationship dissolution, and college adjustment. Emerging Adulthood, 5, 268-279.
 
Did you start college with a romantic partner “back home”? Do you think that having a partner back home affected your wellbeing at school, your adjustment to college, and/or your engagement in regular college activities?
 
This paper has an interesting history on how we came about writing it – it’s the most collaborative writing process I’ve ever been involved in. But I think I’ll save those details for another post, and today, just write about the content of the paper.         
 
As part of a special issue on breakups in emerging adulthood, we considered how relationship status and daily location, as well as relationship dissolution, were associated with daily affect and behaviors. First semester college students completed daily surveys of their time use (including whether they were on or off campus, affect, activities, and alcohol use. They also reported whether they were in a romantic relationship, and whether the partner also lived in the same area. We used reports from their first two semesters of their relationship status and relationship length to determine whether they stayed together or broke up, and if they broke up, if they were in a new relationship.
 
In looking at relationship type at first semester, we found that overall, students had less positive affect and were lonelier on days they were on campus compared to other days. But more specifically, these associations only held for students in long distance dating relationships.  
 
Single students participated in university activities more frequently than students in long distance dating relationships.

In contrast, relationship dissolution was not associated with affect or behaviors. That is, students who experienced breakup of long distance dating relationships didn’t differ from those who did not on their affect, loneliness, or behaviors.
 
Overall, findings suggest that students in long distance dating relationships may have more difficulty adjusting to college life than other students. The innovation of our study over prior work is that we considered location, rather than assessing wellbeing/affect/loneliness at a general level. Thus, our findings suggest that differences in wellbeing (in this case, positive affect and loneliness) between students in LDDRs and other students exist only when they are on campus; when they are off campus they are similar to their peers. For students who started college in LDDRs, wellbeing did not subsequently differ whether they maintained or dissolved these relationships, suggesting resiliency.
 
“College Students in Long Distance Relationships Feel Worse When on Campus first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 24, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Kreager, D. A., Lefkowitz, E. S., & Siennick, S. E., (2017). Early sexual initiation and mental health: A fleeting association or enduring change? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 27, 611-627.
We have several papers on whether having sex is associated with negative wellbeing.  Much of our work in this area has used college student samples, and has generally demonstrated that sex is linked, if anything, to improved wellbeing.
 
However, other evidence suggests that early sexual intercourse (before age 16) is linked to adolescent girls’ anxiety and depression.
 
In this paper, we considered within-person associations between sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms. We used annual data on internalizing symptoms from ninth grade to age 19, as well as data on sexual initiation. In addition to generally examining whether sexual initiation is linked with increased internalizing symptoms, we also examined whether this association decayed over time.
 
We replicated prior research, demonstrating that sexual initiation was associated with increases in internalizing symptoms for early initiating girls. However, we also demonstrated that the association decayed over time. By 1 year after sexual initiation, early initiating girls were similar to girls who initiated later and to girls who were not sexually active. Sexual initiation was not associated with internalizing symptoms for boys, or for girls who initiated at age 16 or older.
 
These findings suggest that, although early sexual initiation may negatively impact female adolescents’ mental health, this association fades with time. As with many other types of disruptive life events, the negative impact of early sexual initiation decreases as girls are farther removed from the event. In fact, based on other research, being sexually active may begin to confer mental health benefits for girls, if they become regularly sexually active.
 
Finally, think about the prevention implications of these findings. Although an abstinence only perspective often states that sexual initiation in adolescence is damaging to wellbeing, our findings indicate that, even for early initiating girls, having sex does not confer long term negative consequences. Scholars consistently argue for the importance of comprehensive sex education, to benefit both girls and boys, whether sexually active or not. These findings are another piece of evidence against abstinence only education, and the complexity of associations between sexual behavior and wellbeing.
 
“Early Sexual Initiation Does Not Have Long Lasting Negative Effects on Girls’ Mental Health first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 17, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Vasilenko, S. A., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2017). Latent classes of sexual behaviors: Prevalence, predictors, and consequences. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 14, 100-111.
 
Sexuality researchers (us included!) have increasingly acknowledged the importance of understanding how diverse patterns of sexual behaviors contribute to normative development and well-being. In this paper, we used a person centered approach, latent class analysis, to study patterns of sexual behavior from kissing to penetrative sex, and how different latent classes of behaviors, gender, and partner type predicted subsequent consequences of sexual behavior.
 
Latent class analysis revealed four classes of sexual behaviors: Kissing Only, Kissing and Touching, All Behaviors, and Oral and Penetrative Only. These groups differed in their consequences. Specifically, compared to individuals in the All Behaviors class, individuals in the Kissing Only class were less likely to experience a positive or a negative intrapersonal consequence of sexual behaviors. Men were less likely to report a negative intrapersonal consequence than women were. Participants in the All Behaviors class were less likely to experience a negative interpersonal consequence of sexual behaviors when they had a romantic partner than a nonromantic partner; this effect was not significant for the Kissing and Touching class and the Kissing Only class.

In summary, patterns characterized by all sexual behaviors were especially common among students with romantic sexual partners, and partner type differentially predicted consequences of sexual behaviors across classes. Findings underscore the need to recognize variation in consequences of sexual behaviors with both romantic and nonromantic sexual partners and to further explore the role of sexual behaviors in explaining variation in emotional health outcomes associated with nonromantic sexual
partnerships.
 
 
“Latent Classes of Sexual Behaviors first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 10, 2018.”

Kreager, D. A., Staff, J., Gauthier, R., Lefkowitz, E. S., & Feinberg, M. E. (2016). The double standard at sexual debut: Gender, sexual behavior and adolescent peer acceptance. Sex Roles, 75, 377-392.  

A few weeks ago I described our recent paper that examined when college students do and don’t invoke the sexual double standard to make judgments about people’s motivations for sex. Today I’m writing about another sexual double standard paper with a younger (11 – 16 years old) sample and focused on sexual behavior and peer acceptance. In this study, we used a longitudinal network measure of received friendship nominations to examine changes in peer acceptance based on sexual behavior.
 
In this paper, we demonstrated that, consistent with a traditional sexual double standard, female adolescents who reported having vaginal sex had decreased peer acceptance over time. In contrast, male adolescents who reported having vaginal sex had increased peer acceptance over time. However, these findings did not hold across all sexual behaviors. For instance, the findings for making out showed a reverse double standard. Female adolescents who reported making out (after controlling for sex) had increased peer acceptance over time, whereas male adolescents who reported making out (again, after controlling for having sex) had decreased peer acceptance over time.
 
Thus, findings support a continued sexual double standard among adolescents. Female adolescents can demonstrate their desirability and promote their popularity to male adolescents by engaging in “light” sexual behaviors, but female adolescents who engage in intercourse risk harming their reputation/peer acceptance. In contrast, male adolescents can display their masculinity by engaging in intercourse, whereas light sexual behaviors do not enhance their acceptance. Overall results suggest that in adolescence, the sexual double standard continues to dictate the implications of sexual behavior for adolescents’ peer relationships.
 
“The Sexual Double Standard Lives: How Adolescents’ Sexual Behavior Predicts Their Peer Acceptance first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 3, 2018.”

Lefkowitz, E. S., Waterman, E. A., Morgan, N., & Maggs, J. L. (2016). College students’ perceptions of the links between alcohol use and sex. Emerging Adulthood, 4, 272-283.
 
Alcohol use can lead to impaired decision making and risky behavior, but emerging adults generally perceive the short-term outcomes of alcohol use positively. Similarly, although sexual behavior can lead to unwanted outcomes such as pregnancy and STIs, emerging adults view sex as predominantly positive. Thus, emerging adulthood is a period of exploration and heightened risk-taking, when alcohol use and sexual behavior are normative, but present potential negative consequences. Residential colleges in particular provide an environment that encourages heavy drinking and sexual exploration. However, this contrast between potential negative consequences and emerging adults’ positive perceptions of alcohol use and sexual behavior presents a challenge to creating relevant and effective prevention programming to reduce alcohol-related sexual experiences, or to minimize their harm. 
 
In this paper, we considered college students’ perceptions of how their own alcohol use is linked to their sexual experiences. We used open-ended questions to understand whether college students perceived these sex-related risks of alcohol use, and, more broadly, their most salient perceptions of the links between alcohol use and sexual experiences.
 
In their opened-ended responses, the most common theme was that alcohol was associated with sexual arousal, pleasure, and/or performance. The second most common theme was to explicitly state that their alcohol use and sexual feelings were not associated. Discussing alcohol’s influence on sexual behavior in particular was the next most common theme, but rarely considered aspects of risky behavior. Sexual assertiveness and/or sexual decision making were mentioned by less than 10% of participants. Only two participants’ responses were coded as indicating that alcohol use was associated with sexual aggression, and neither response clearly indicated that the participant had been the perpetrator or victim of a sexual assault. Finally, no participants mentioned condoms, contraception, or STDs. 
 
In terms of gender differences, more women than men described alcohol as relating to sexual arousal, pleasure, or performance. There were also differences by recent heavy drinking. In particular, recent heavy drinkers were less likely to state that alcohol and sex were not related, more likely to see alcohol use as related to sexual arousal, pleasure, or performance, and more likely to see alcohol use as related to sexual behavior, than students who did not recently drink heavily.
 
Even though we know empirically that alcohol use increases sexual risk outcomes, students in this study did not spontaneously report such outcomes, suggesting that unprotected sex and sexual aggression are not a salient part of their conceptualization of alcohol use’s influence on sex at this developmental stage. In addition, our participants clearly viewed alcohol as a social lubricant that increases disinhibition. Alcohol myopia theory posits that after consuming alcohol, individuals will focus only on proximal cues and ignore more distal ones. If alcohol-induced myopia is caused by decreased cognitive capacity to consider all pertinent information, particularly more distal and abstract goals such as health maintenance or general well-being, then myopia should be primarily present while drinking. Myopia should not be present the following day when students are sitting at a computer while presumably sober describing their experiences. However, students also evidenced myopia in their responses, describing increased arousal, increased disinhibition, and increased experiences with sexual behavior, with little mention of negative outcomes. Thus, alcohol myopia may not only be a result of decreased cognitive capacity, but may be due to students’ own orientations or personal framing around how they prefer to consider alcohol’s influence on sexual experiences.  
 
This study demonstrates one of the difficulties of developing successful interventions for alcohol use and sexual behavior among college students: students either do not perceive a link between these behaviors, or perceive the link as positive. People who design prevention and sexuality education efforts must consider emerging adults’ positive attitudes toward experimentation and risk-taking, including alcohol use and sexual behavior. Finally, our results suggest that young women may use alcohol’s known role as a social lubricant to enhance or provide permission for their sexual desire and/or arousal. Comprehensive sexuality education, preferably before college, should consider teaching women that having sexual feelings and desires is natural. Such education may make women less likely to rely on heavy drinking to validate or excuse their sexual desires, and thus aid them to be better equipped to make decisions about sexual behaviors that are consistent with both their short-term and long-term goals. 
 
“College Students Mostly Perceive Alcohol’s Influence on Sex as Positive first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 26, 2018.”

Lam, C. B., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2016). Male role attitudes and self-esteem: A 3-year longitudinal study of heterosexual college students. Emerging Adulthood, 4, 427-435.
 
Research on masculinity provides useful perspectives for understanding individual development. Two approaches or studying masculinity are a trait approach (the degree to which an individual has characteristics that are considered masculine), and a normative approach (the degree to which an individual agrees that men should have these characteristics). Prior longitudinal research has examined the development and correlates of masculinity personality traits. However, most work on male role attitudes has used cross-sectional data on White men. In this study, we examined developmental patterns of male role attitudes on four occasions over a 3-year period in an ethnically and racially diverse sample. Models revealed that, although men’s male role attitudes became more traditional in the first 2 years of college and then more flexible toward the end, women’s male role attitudes did not change over time.

 Within-person variation in male role attitudes was negatively linked to men’s, but not women’s, within-person variation in self-esteem. That is, men felt more positively about themselves during semesters when they endorsed more traditional attitudes about male roles. Overall, finding suggest that men may focus on gender typicality early in the transition to adulthood, but that as they gain more romantic experiences in college, they may become more flexible.
 
“Trajectories of Gender Role Attitudes and Self-esteem first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 19, 2018.”

Wesche, R., Espinosa-Hernandez, G. E. & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2016). Gender’s role in misperceptions of peers’ sexual motives.  Sexuality and Culture, 20, 1003-1019.
 
Men and women consider different reasons for having sex, likely in part influenced by the sexual double standard. The sexual double standard also likely influences perceptions of peers’ sexual motives. In this paper, we tested the possibility that perceptions of peers’ sexual motives align with the sexual double standard.
 
Ethnically and racially diverse college students answered three questions about sexual motives. First, they received these instructions:
When deciding to become sexually intimate with someone, people may consider different things such as personal beliefs, partner’s characteristics, how well people know each other or the situation, to name a few.
 
Then, they answered three questions:
Self-motives: What do you consider necessary/most important when deciding to have sex
with someone?’
Male peer motives: What do you think a male student at [name of the university] considers necessary/most important when deciding to have sex with someone?
Female peer motives: What do you think a female student at [name of the university] considers necessary/most important when deciding to have sex with someone?
 
We coded these responses for themes related to male and female stereotyped motives.
 
Supporting prior research, young men were more likely than young women to report male-stereotyped self-motives for sex, and less likely to report female-stereotyped self-motives for sex.
 
As we predicted, individuals were more likely to attribute a male-stereotyped motive to male peers than to female peers and more likely to attribute a female-stereotyped motive to female peers than male peers. In addition, young men misperceived their same-gender peers’ sexual motives in a manner congruent with sexual double standard beliefs, but young women’s misperceptions of their same-gender peers’ sexual motives did not correspond to the sexual double standard. Finally, young women misperceived men’s sexual motives in a manner congruent with sexual double standard beliefs, but young men’s misperceptions of women’s sexual motives did not correspond to the sexual double standard.
 
These findings suggest that when we simply examined perceptions of one’s own motives, or compared students’ perceptions of female peers to male peers, individuals seemed to rely on the sexual double standard. However, when we compared individuals’ own self-reported motives to their perceptions of peers’ motives, both young men and women were more likely to attribute a female-stereotyped motive, and less likely to attribute a male-stereotyped motive, to themselves than to others. Thus, although individuals sometimes rely on the sexual double standard to attribute sexual motives to others, misperceptions of peers’ sexual motives may also be influenced by other stereotypes, for instance, hookup culture stereotypes. These perceptions of the motives of potential sexual partners may influence behavior in sexual encounters.
 
“Attributions of Peers’ Sexual Motives first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 12, 2018.”

Lefkowitz, E. S., *Vasilenko, S. A., & *Leavitt, C. E. (2016). Oral vs. vaginal sex experiences and consequences among first year college students. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45, 329-337.
 
In my continuing efforts to consider sexual health and wellbeing from a normative perspective, we examined how consequences of oral sex differ from consequences of vaginal sex in an ethnically and racially diverse college sample. From a risk perspective, consequences of sex can be reinforcing. From a normative developmental perspective, consequences provide information about how individuals perceive different sexual behaviors that may play a role in building their sexual sense of self or satisfaction.
 
Most prior work on consequences of sex focused on vaginal sex consequences. Work that did compare vaginal to oral sex generally used a between-person model, comparing people who have ever engaged in vaginal sex to individuals who have ever engaged in oral sex. In our study, we examined consequences at the daily level, comparing days individuals had vaginal sex (with or without oral sex) to days they had oral sex (without vaginal sex).
 
We also considered gender differences in perceived consequences, given sexual double standards that suggest sex outside of marriage or committed relationships is more acceptable for men than for women.
 
Here are the frequencies of the positive and negative consequences:
 

Students were much more likely to report positive consequences than negative consequences of both oral and vaginal sex. However, both positive and negative consequences were more common on days that students had vaginal sex than on days they had oral sex. Specifically, students were less likely to report feeling intimacy, satisfaction, and worrying about their health on days they had oral than on days they had vaginal sex. Thus, oral sex may play a different role in normative sexuality development, potentially leading to less change in sense of sexual self and mental health outcomes than vaginal sex. 
 
We also found that gender played a meaningful role in these associations. Female students were less likely to report feeling intimate with their partner and feeling physically satisfied as a result of sex on days they had oral compare to days they had vaginal sex, whereas the difference was smaller for men. For men, these two types of behaviors may be more similar experiences than for women, perhaps because the sexual double standard places a high value on female virginity. In addition, although oral sex resulted in less worrying about health than did vaginal sex for both female and male adolescents, the difference was greater for female than for male adolescents. Because women may experience pregnancy as a more immediate concern than men do, vaginal sex may have more health salience for women than oral sex does.
 
Overall, the findings contribute to our understanding of oral sex as a normative part of sexuality development, with consequences distinct from vaginal sex.
 
“The post How Consequences of Oral Sex Differ From Vaginal Sex Consequences first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 5, 2018.”

My research group has been really productive over the past three years – in part because I had three students simultaneously finishing their dissertations and prepping for the job market. So, I thought I would intersperse professional development posts with quick summaries of some of our recent research.
 
First up: Maas, M. K., Shearer, C. L., Lefkowitz, E. S., & Gillen, M. M. (2015). Sex rules: Emerging adults’ perceptions of gender’s impact on sexuality. Sexuality and Culture, 19, 617-636.

 
Past work (see Petersen & Hyde, 2011) has demonstrated consistent gender differences in heterosexual experiences and behaviors. However, we have little understanding of what drives these differences. We used semi-qualitative methods to ask male and female college students about their perceptions of how being male or female impacts their own sexual thoughts and feelings. 
 
Specifically, we asked women: “‘‘How does being female affect your thoughts and feelings about sex?’ and “‘How would your thoughts and feelings about sex be different if you were male?’’ We asked men corresponding questions about being male/how things would be different if female. Then we coded their responses for content and tone.
 
The most common response for women was that being female caused them to worry about their reputation and emotional wellbeing (more than a third of women). One women stated, “‘I feel that when girls sleep around they are branded sluts, whores, hos…so I don’t do actions that would make people feel that way about me.’’
 
The second most common theme for women (almost a third of women) was about how women should avoid being promiscuous or should engage in monogamy or abstinence. For instance, one woman stated ‘‘Since I am a female, I feel that it is wrong to have casual sex with as many partners as I like. I have to control my urges when it comes to different men I am attracted to, but not interested in marrying.’’
 
The third most common theme for women was concern about physical protection from pregnancy and STIs (almost a third of women). One woman stated, “‘It makes me more cautious because if someone gets pregnant it will be me. It’s a lot easier for guys to run from a relationship if there are children involved.”
 
When asked how their thoughts and feelings would be different if they were male, women most commonly referred to how they could be more promiscuous, or wouldn’t have to think about monogamy or abstinence. The second most common difference was that they would not have to worry about their emotions or reputations, and the third most common was that sex would have different meaning or that they would have different sexual attitudes.
 
Men’s most common theme was that being male affected their sexual desire (more than a third of sample). One man stated, ‘I feel that being a guy makes you think about sex all the time. Women are everywhere…how can you not think about it?’’
 
Men’s second most common theme was related to the control of sexual activity (e.g., pressure to initiate, needing partner’s consent, about a quarter of men). One man stated ‘‘…I feel I must be careful not to do anything without the proper consent. It is easy for a girl to call rape.’’
 
When asked how their thoughts and feelings would be different if female men were most likely to describe changes in sexual desire, and for instance, thinking about sex less. One man wrote ‘‘I probably wouldn’t think about it as much or be as driven to want it.’’ Second most common for men was having different level of control of sexual activity, or being less aggressive. Third most common was for men to refer to being more cautious or using protection more, referring to both contraception and to being more cautious in sexual situations.
 
There were clearly gender differences in these themes. For instance, women were more likely than men to describe that being female caused them to worry about their reputation and emotional well-being; being female meant they needed to remain abstinent, only have sex in a monogamous relationship, or avoid casual partners; being female caused them to worry about physical consequences such as pregnancy or STDs. Men were more likely than women to describe that being male meant they need to be sexually aggressive, initiate sex, or need a partner’s consent; and being male caused them to think about sex a lot or all of the time.
 
The tone of women’s responses was more negative than men’s, and women’s perceptions about how being female affected their thoughts and feelings about sex were more negative than their perceptions about how their thoughts and feelings would be different if they were male.
 
Overall, these findings provide support for a continuing sexual double standard for men and women, and, I believe, provide a more nuanced perspective than running male/female differences in standardized questionnaires. They are also important to interpret in light of recent attention on rampant sexual assault in Hollywood and other industries, and the associated #metoo campaign.
 
“The post About That Sexual Double Standard…  first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on May 29, 2018.”

Adolescents and young adults who engage in more frequent alcohol use also tend to engage in more frequent sexual behavior. However, most findings in this area are based on cross-sectional data, and thus indicate whether individuals who tend to drink more engage in more sexual behavior, but not necessarily that alcohol use and sexual behavior are temporally linked within individuals. In a recent paper in Journal of Research on Adolescence, Megan Patrick, Jennifer Maggs, and I used data from the University Life Study to examine daily associations between alcohol use and sexual behaviors across seven semesters of college. We found that consuming more drinks and engaging in binge drinking on a given day were associated with an increased likelihood of kissing, touching, oral sex, and penetrative sex on the same day. Findings were stronger at the semester and daily level than at the person level, suggesting that the associations may actually have more to do with situational factors than with stable personal traits.

The association between alcohol use and sexual behavior was higher for students who were not in romantic relationships, and for students with stronger expectations that alcohol was linked to sex.  These findings provide some support for alcohol myopia theory. That is, students who are not in relationships may be relying on the most salient cues in the moment, such as whether a partner is available, when they are drinking. In contrast, the sexual behavior of students who are in romantic relationships and therefore have frequent access to sexual partners are likely less context and state dependent. Findings also support alcohol expectancy theory, given that students who expected alcohol use to be associated with sexual behavior demonstrated stronger associations between their own alcohol use and their sexual behavior. 

“The post Alcohol use linked to a range of sexual behaviors, especially for single students first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on January 7, 2016.”