Sexist attitudes about men’s sexual behavior: Development of a measure

Sexism research to date has routinely focused primarily on the negative implications sexism has for women, yet has not directly addressed the question of whether such beliefs exist toward men, particularly men’s sexual behavior. In the current study, the Sexist Attitudes About Men’s Sexual Behavior Scale (SAMSB) was developed based on women’s responses to 126 rationally-derived items. Exploratory factor analyses of the SAMSB revealed three latent factors: Men’s Drive for Sex; Disapproval of Men’s Sexual Behavior; and Men’s Sexual Immorality. As hypothesized, scores on the SAMSB were positively correlated with two other measures of negative attitudes toward men: the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (ATMI), and the Attitudes Toward Men Scale (ATMS). Additionally, the hypothesis that scores on SAMSB would be positively correlated with women’s negative views of their sexual selves, based on responses to the Conservative-Embarrassed subscale of the Sexual Self-Schema Scale (SSS) was confirmed. A simultaneous regression analysis revealed that the SAMSB composite score was positively correlated with the Hostility Toward Men subscale of the ATMI, the ATMS total score, and the Conservative-Embarrassed subscale of the SSS. As expected, the SAMSB significantly predicted HM (hostility toward men) as well as the Conservative-Embarrassed subscale of the SSS. Results suggest that women who endorse sexist attitudes toward men’s sexual behavior may use sexist attitudes to inform an overall set of generally negative, if not hostile attitudes toward men. Results also suggest that women with sexual self-views reflective of less sexually permissive attitudes also have negative attitudes toward men’s sexual behavior.