An experiment published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that people’s attitudes toward short-term sexual relationships changed when they were reminded of the danger of disease. According to the new research, people’s willingness to engage in non-romantic sexual relationships has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study’s author, James B. Moran of Tulane University, explains, “This topic was interesting to me because before I entered my PhD program, my research mainly focused on how men and women differ in casual sex and breakup sex.” Our attitudes toward infectious diseases and our social and sexual behaviors are shaped in part by how we think about our health and how we feel about it. So this was one of the first steps I took in integrating my previous research with my current research. COVID-19 pandemic and social upheavals also sparked the idea of how this might affect people’s sexual lives.”
People who participated in the study were randomly assigned to read about the outbreak of the coronavirus or how people accidentally poison themselves, or to not participate in a reading exercise as part of their random assignment (the control condition). Assessments of sexual attitudes, risk-taking, and perceived disease vulnerability were then completed by the participants.
It was conducted in the first week of March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, before the United States enacted travel bans to stop the spread of the disease.
When compared to those in the control group and those who read about self-inflicted poisoning, those who read about the coronavirus outbreak had a more restrictive sociosexuality. If you read about the coronavirus outbreak, you’re less likely to agree that “Sex without love is OK” and less likely to engage in one-night stands. Furthermore, participants who thought they were more susceptible to disease had a more conservative sociosexuality.
When people think they’re at risk of contracting an infectious disease, they’re less interested in having casual sex, according to Moran. Individual differences in how we feel about germs also have an impact on our everyday desires and motivations for casual sex. Those who are concerned about germs in their daily lives are less likely to be interested in casual hookups.”
Prior cross-cultural studies have found a correlation between higher disease threat and more restrictive sociosexuality. A lot remains to be discovered in terms of how disease threat affects sexual attitudes and behaviors, according to the researchers.
According to Moran, “the most important caveat is that this research is only scratching the surface. Other related but distinct behaviors may be affected by the possibility of contracting a disease.”. This, for example, may influence our choice in hookup partners and how safe they make us feel when there is a high risk of catching a disease. Furthermore, we used the looming COVID-19 pandemic as an acute disease threat in our study as an experimental manipulation. Now that we’ve been thinking about this disease for so long, the results may be different.
When discussing the findings of Murray and colleagues (2013), Moran noted that they are “conceptually consistent.” “Further research in public health may benefit from these findings as well. People are less likely to engage in promiscuous behavior if they believe they are at greater risk of contracting a disease, which could help in the development of health interventions such as condom use and safe sex practices.”