Sociosexual Orientation

The construct of sociosexuality was developed to explain variation in the degree to which individuals need to feel emotionally close and connected to romantic partners before having sex with them. In his pioneering study of human sexuality, Alfred Kinsey documented that, although men on average report being more comfortable engaging in different forms of sociosexual behaviors than do most women, considerably more variability existed within each gender than between women and men. Early models developed to explain this variation posited that individuals who are willing to engage in sex without closeness or emotional intimacy have stronger sex drives. The sociosexuality construct, which was first introduced in 1990, shifted the causal focus away from a sex drive interpretation and toward a more psychological one.

Jeff Simpson and Steve Gangestad developed and validated the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI) in 1991 to measure the degree to which individuals need or require closeness and emotional intimacy before engaging in sexual intercourse with romantic partners. The SOI has five self-reported components: (1) the number of different sex partners (where sex connotes sexual intercourse) the respondent has had in the past year; (2) the number of lifetime one-night-stand partners; (3) the number of different sex partners realistically anticipated within the next 5 years; (4) the frequency of having sexual fantasies involving persons other than the current (or most recent) romantic partner; and (5) attitudes toward engaging in casual, uncommitted sex (e.g., “I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying casual sex with different partners”). The five components of the SOI are weighted and then summed to form a single sociosexual orientation score.

Individuals who score higher on the SOI have a more unrestricted sociosexual orientation in that they report having more sex partners in the past year, they have had more one-night stands, they foresee having a greater number of sex partners in the near future, they fantasize more about having sex with people other than their current or most recent romantic partner, and they express more positive attitudes about engaging in casual sex in the absence of love, commitment, or intimacy. Individuals who have lower scores on the SOI have a more restricted sociosexual orientation given that their behavior and attitudes indicate that they require some level of love, commitment, or intimacy prior to having sex with someone. The SOI has recently been used to gauge the general mating strategies/orientations that individuals tend to adopt. People who score higher on the SOI (more unrestricted individuals) typically pursue short-term mating strategies devoid of emotional intimacy and commitment, whereas those who score lower (more restricted individuals) tend to enact long-term mating strategies defined by greater emotional intimacy and commitment.

Several studies have confirmed that scores on the SOI are systematically related to two constellations of variables: (1) other individual difference constructs and measures (e.g., measures of sexuality, personality traits, attachment styles, and gender-based measures) and (2) mating orientations and preferences (e.g., motives for mating, preferred mate attributes, and relationship initiation and interaction styles). As a rule, more unrestricted people tend to be more extraverted, less agreeable, more erotophilic, more disinhibited and impulsive, more likely to take risks, and more avoidantly attached. More restricted people, in contrast, are more introverted, more agreeable, more erotophobic, more socially constrained, less impulsive, less likely to take risks, and more securely attached. Although some evidence suggests that highly unrestricted individuals might also have more masculine characteristics than more restricted persons, this association is less conclusive.

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