Sexual guilt, behavior, attitudes, and information

The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether or not sexual quilt, when conceptualized as an avoidant type of motivation, is significantly related to sexual behavior, attitudes, and fund of accurate sexual information. Subjects were 207 college students (90 male, 116 female, 1 unknown) enrolled in a marriage, family and sex education course at the University of Houston. Subjects anonymously completed a 251-item questionnaire which included the McGary Sex Information Test, the Mosher 'G' Inventory to assess sexual guilt, a number of questions concerning attitudes toward a wide variety of sexual practices and standards, questions concerning behavior actually engaged in, and a number of items regarding background information. All attitude items and reasons for restricting premarital coitus items were factor analyzed, with seven of nine extracted attitude factors being retained as variables, and all three restriction factors being retained. Sexual guilt was found to be negatively related to the overall level of sexual activity, frequency of coitus in the previous six months, age of first intercourse, number of premarital partners, accumulative incidence and frequency of masturbation, frequency of oral-genital stimulation, petting to orgasm on dates, and engaging in mutual oral-genital stimulation on dates. Higher sexual guilt was also negatively related to having a positive response to erotic or pornographic material, using contraceptives, frequency of extramarital experiences, the number of homosexual experiences, and was directly related to experiencing problems with sex in marriage. Multiple regression analysis found response to pornography, age at first intercourse, and sex problems in marriage to be significantly related to guilt and to account for at least one per cent of the variance of sexual guilt. Higher sexual guilt was found to be significantly related to being female, having higher past and present interest in religion, attending church more frequently than average, having a less intimate relationship with one's dating partner, but was not related to age, marital status, family stability, or regret over past premarital coitus. Only present religious interest was found to account for at least one per cent of the variance of sexual guilt in a multiple regression analysis of variance. High sexual guilt was positively related to restricting premarital coitus out of the belief that premarital intercourse will damage one’s self-image. High sexual guilt was also positively related to a conservative position on six of the seven attitude factors: Non-marital sex, Impersonal-personal sex. Effects of premarital intercourse. Information availability. Benign effect of several partners, and Community attitudes. Effects of premarital coitus and Information availability continued to be significantly related to guilt and to account for at least one per cent of the variance of sexual guilt when subjected to multiple regression analysis. Sex information was negatively related to sexual guilt and was the fourth most potent predictor of sexual guilt in a multiple regression analysis. Sex information was positively related to overall sexual activity. This relationship however, does not reflect increasing promiscuity as sex information improves, but rather reflects subjects with high sex information scores participating in more types of sexual activity, particularly oralgenital stimulation. Higher sex information was significantly related to holding a more liberal position on attitude factors regarding non-marital sexual activity, the effect of having several sexual partners, and the harshness with which sex offenders should be treated. Greater present religious interest was found to be significantly related to holding a more conservative position on all attitude factors except the last factor extracted, which is related to the harshness with which sex offenders should be punished. When the effect of sexual guilt was controlled, religiosity did not correlate significantly with sexual activity.