A new psychological study suggests that a person’s comfort with casual sex is linked to very different inner experiences for women and men. The study, titled “Sociosexuality in men and women: Considering core self-judgments and (im)moral orientations,” adds nuance to debates on sexual behavior and gender. It underscores that similar sexual patterns can be embedded in very different psychological and cultural contexts depending on whether the person is a woman or a man.
Published in Personality and Individual Differences, the research found that while men’s openness to sex outside committed relationships appears largely unrelated to how they view themselves or their moral values, women’s openness shows consistent associations with self-esteem, authenticity, purpose in life, and several moral orientations.
Understanding Sociosexuality
The researchers examined sociosexuality, a personality trait describing how comfortable someone is with engaging in sexual relationships without emotional closeness or long-term commitment.
People with unrestricted sociosexuality generally feel comfortable with casual sexual encounters, while those with restricted sociosexuality tend to prefer sexual relationships within committed, emotionally close partnerships.
Previous research has consistently shown that men, on average, report more unrestricted sociosexuality than women. However, individual differences within each gender are much larger than the average difference between men and women, prompting researchers to ask whether similar sociosexuality scores carry different psychological meaning depending on gender.
How the Study Was Conducted
The study included 295 adults in the United States recruited through an online research platform, including 120 women. Participants had an average age of approximately 37 years.
They completed questionnaires assessing sexual attitudes, self-perceptions, and moral orientations in randomized order.
Sociosexuality was measured using participants’ reports of previous sexual behavior, attitudes toward casual sex, and desire for short-term sexual relationships.
To evaluate how participants viewed themselves, researchers measured self-esteem, authenticity, and sense of purpose in life.
Authenticity referred to the extent to which participants felt their actions reflected their genuine selves rather than external pressures.
The study also assessed moral orientations, including personal integrity, recent helping behaviors, and altruistic motivations for volunteering.
To examine less ethical tendencies, participants answered questions about everyday lying, justification of unethical behavior, and moral disengagement—a psychological process in which people temporarily set aside their moral standards to justify harmful actions.
Men and Women Showed Different Patterns
The results revealed striking gender differences.
Among men, sociosexuality showed almost no meaningful relationship with self-esteem, authenticity, or purpose in life. Men who were more comfortable with casual sex generally did not feel either better or worse about themselves than men with more restricted sociosexuality.
Similarly, men’s sociosexuality was largely unrelated to measures of integrity or prosocial behavior.
There was, however, a small positive association between unrestricted sociosexuality and certain less ethical tendencies, including a slightly greater willingness to justify everyday dishonesty and questionable behavior.
The pattern was considerably different among women.
Women with more unrestricted sociosexuality tended to report lower self-esteem, reduced authenticity, and a weaker sense that their lives had purpose. Although these relationships were generally small to moderate in size, they appeared consistently across multiple measures.
Women with higher sociosexuality also reported lower levels of personal integrity and fewer recent helping behaviors while scoring higher on measures of moral disengagement and justification of unethical conduct.
Possible Role of Social Pressures
The researchers examined several possible explanations for these gender differences, including whether they resulted from differences in age, measurement reliability, or restricted variation within the data.
None of these factors explained the findings.
Lead author Charlotte Kinrade noted that the consistency of the overall pattern, rather than any individual statistical result, was particularly noteworthy. Across multiple measures of self-evaluation and morality, women consistently showed stronger associations than men.
Importantly, the study does not suggest that engaging in casual sex causes women to develop lower self-esteem or weaker moral orientations.
Because the research relied on self-reported information collected at a single point in time, it cannot determine the direction of cause and effect. It remains equally possible that pre-existing psychological characteristics influence sexual choices.
One possible explanation involves cultural expectations.
In many societies, women continue to experience greater social judgment than men for having multiple sexual partners. Researchers suggest that these double standards may become internalized, influencing how women with more unrestricted sociosexuality evaluate themselves and their own behavior.
What Future Research Could Show
The authors emphasize that their findings should not be interpreted as stigmatizing women who engage in casual sex.
The observed relationships are correlational and may partly reflect the influence of social expectations rather than inherent differences in character or morality.
Future longitudinal studies following individuals over time could help determine whether changes in sociosexuality precede changes in self-esteem or moral orientations, or whether the reverse occurs.
The researchers also recommend conducting similar studies in more culturally diverse populations. In societies with more equal attitudes toward sexuality, the psychological associations observed among women may be weaker, different, or absent altogether, providing an important test of the role of cultural norms.
Future research may also examine how personal autonomy influences these relationships. If women feel their sexual decisions are entirely self-directed rather than shaped by external pressure, the links between sociosexuality, self-worth, and moral orientations could differ substantially from those observed in the current study.
