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Sexual Motives

The term sexual motives refers to the underlying reasons for, or purposes served by, sexual behavior. Typically assessed through self-report, motives or reasons represent a person's own understanding of why he or she has sex and thus provide an important window onto the meaning that individuals ascribe to their sexual experiences. According to this perspective, sexual behavior motivated by different needs or goals should be triggered by unique antecedents, characterized by qualitatively different styles of behavior and emotions, and ultimately result in distinct consequences. This entry (a) distinguishes sexual motives from related feelings, desires, and thoughts and then identifies the most important goals thought to underlie and drive sexual behavior; (b) describes patterns of endorsement; and (c) reviews research linking these motives to unique patterns of sexual behavior and outcomes.

How Are Sexual Motives Different from Other Sexual Feelings and Thoughts?

Sexual desire or lust is experienced as an interest in sexual activities, a drive to seek out sexual objects, or a wish, need, or craving for sexual contact. Sexual thoughts refer to cognitive representations of sexual activity, such as fantasies, whereas sexual emotions include specific emotions experienced in connection with sex, such as jealousy, joy, and passion, as well as more general emotional responses to sexual stimuli, known as erotophilia (a positive emotional response) and erotophobia (a negative emotional response). Although sexual desire, thoughts, and emotions typically co-occur with sexual motives, they are readily distinguishable. For example, an individual may desire and fantasize about having sex with her partner because she wants to strengthen an emotional bond or because she wants to experience specific physical sensations. In both cases, the intensity or frequency of sexual desire and fantasy may be similar, but the needs or goals the person hopes to satisfy differ. Similarly, an individual may experience positive emotions in connection with a sexual experience regardless of whether the sexual experience was primarily motivated by a need to connect with one's partner, bolster one's self-esteem, or have a physically exciting sexual encounter.

Motives are typically measured by asking individuals to rate the relative importance of different reasons for having sex (e.g., In general, how important is expressing love for your partner?) or to report the frequency with which they have sex for different reasons (e.g., How often do you have sex to avoid a fight or hassle with your partner?). Dispositional or trait-like measures that focus on usual or typical reasons for having sex have been used, as well as more specific measures that assess reasons for having sex on a particular occasion (e.g., at last sex) or with a particular partner.

Why Do People Have Sex?

Having sex to promote intimacy and to enhance one's physical or emotional pleasure are the most common reasons for having sex. Other less commonly reported motives for sex that nonetheless have important consequences for sexual experience include: to cope with negative emotions (coping motives) or affirm one's self-worth (affirmation motives); to please or appease one's partner (partner approval motives) or alternatively, to dominate or control him or her (power motives); and, finally, to fit in with, or avoid censure by, peers (peer approval motives). Although procreation is clearly an important motive in an evolutionary sense, research shows that only a small percentage of all intercourse occasions is motivated by a desire to conceive and, moreover, that people actively try not to conceive in the vast majority of instances. Thus, an explicit desire to procreate cannot account for most day-to-day sexual experiences.

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