Sexual double standard endorsement

Sexual assertiveness remains an issue of great interest in light of gender equality and young peoples’ sexual health. The aim of the present study was to explore how individual sexual assertiveness is influenced by perceived gender traditionality of an interaction partner among young men and young women. We hypothesized effects in line with sexual double standards, i.e. that encountering a traditional partner would increase sexual assertiveness among men, but decrease among women. A vignette experiment was conducted with 271 young adults. A new romantic partner was presented as either ‘traditional’ or no such information was given. Subsequently, participants read a sexual scenario and indicated their intentions towards sexually assertive behaviour. Results showed no differences in response to the manipulation at first look. However, when the degree of masculinity was added to the model, a significant three-way interaction emerged, which showed that a higher degree of masculinity was related to higher scores on assertiveness for girls in the experimental, but not the control condition, whereas for boys it emerged in the control, but not the experimental condition. We conclude that sexual assertiveness is dependent upon a complex interplay between sex, gender and gendered partner characteristics, but that more research is needed.