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Summary - Sexology
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Complete summary for the Sexology University Leiden exam year 2
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Week 1Chapter 1
This book defines sexual behaviors as behavior that produces arousal and increases the
chance of orgasm.
Greek view: all humans split up. Some were double female, some double men, some half
men half women. This decided their sexuality.
Nocturnal emissions: according to fifteenth-century Christians wet dreams because of sex
with tiny creatures.
Henry Havelock Ellis included medical and anthropological findings. He desired to collect
information about human sexuality rather than to make judgments.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, his specialty was pathological sexuality. He was neither
objective nor tolerant.
Magnus Hirschfeld: founded the first sex research institute. He established a marriage
counseling service. His specialty was homosexuality.
Cultivation theory: the finding that what people see on television, represents the mainstream
of what happens in their society for those people.
Framing theory / agenda setting: means that news reporters decide what to report and what
to ignore within the stories itself what the angle and focus is.
Social learning: people on television may serve as models whom we imitate, sometimes
without realizing it.
Social cognitive theory: states that the effect of the media on our behavior, thoughts and
affect happen through processes such as modeling, imitation and identification.
Selectivity: means that people select and pay attention to only certain media and their
messages and not to others.
Reinforcing spiral theory: social identities influence what media we watch and that
influences our beliefs and identity again.
Differential susceptibility model: not everyone reacts to the same media in the same way.
Ethnocentrism: people often perceive their culture as superior.
Individual cultures: stress independence, autonomy and the individual rights of people.
Collectivist culture: stress interdependence and connections among people, making the
group more important than the individual.
Honor cultures focus on ‘face’, the reputation of an individual and the respect or honor that
people show to others.
Cunnilingus: mouth stimulation of the female genitals.
Two general rules which do seem to emerge about same-gender partners:
, 1. No matter how a particular society treats homosexuality, the behavior always occurs
in at least some individuals.
2. Same-gender sexual behavior is never the predominant form of sexual behavior.
The more educated you are the safer your sex life you will have.
having a different ethnicity results in having different cultural heritages. This results in two
rules:
1. There are ethnic-group variations, but there are also ethnic-group similarities;
2. Cultural context is the key.
Factors that act to make the sexuality of blacks somewhat different from that of whites:
1. The african heritage (Caribbean of African slaves);
2. The forces that acted upon Blacks during slavery;
3. The current economic and social conditions.
Latinos have a cultural heritage distinct from that of both African americans and Anglos.
Boys are given greater freedom and are encouraged in sexual exploits. Girls are expected to
be passive, obedient and weak.
Machismo: cultural code among Latin americans mandates that men are responsible for the
well-being and honor of his family.
Marinismo: the female counterpart, motherhood.
Familismo: another important aspect of latino culture (support, loyalty, solidarity).
Latinx: unisex name for Latin people.
Several Asian core values affect sexual expression: collectivism, conformity to norms and
emotional control.
Racial microaggressions are subtle insults directed at people of color, often done non
consciously.
As we move from lower to higher species, sexual behaviors move from more hormonally
(intuitively) to more in the brain (influenced by learning).
Phallic aggression: male squirrel monkeys sometimes use an exhibitionist display of their
erect penis as part of an aggressive display against another male.
Negative freedom: the freedom from sexual violence.
Positive freedom: the freedom to express sexual feelings towards someone of the same
gender.
Chapter 2
,Sociobiology: the application of evolutionary biology to understanding the social behavior of
animals.
Physical attractiveness is an important aspect in natural selection and evolution because is
reflects on an individual’s health.
Attractiveness → probable health → high predicted reproductive success → high probability
of passing on genes → preference spreads through natural selection.
The emotional bond between the parents greatly increases the infant’s chances of survival.
Parental investment refers to the behavior and resources invested in offspring to achieve
survival and reproductive success.
Sexual selection: selection that creates differences between males and females. Consists two
processes:
1. Competition among members of one gender for mating access to members of the
other gender.
2. Preferential choice by members of one gender for certain members of the other
gender.
Evolutionary psychology: focuses on psychobiological mechanisms that have been shaped
by natural selection.
In short-term mating a female would prefer a partner who offers her immediate resources and
in long term mating the would choose a partner willing and able to provide for the long term.
A male choose a sexually available female for a short term relationship, but avoid those for a
long-term relationship.
Females engage in intrasexual competition for access to males. Women pursuing a long-term
strategy should react negatively to women who make sex easily available for men.
Criticism of evolutionary theory:
- If circumstances are controles, men and women have very similar mating strategies.
Gowaty proposed that humans evolved to be flexible and adaptable - thus they can display
different gender-typed behavior and mating strategy in different situations. Het theory is
supported by the finding that the individuals who change their reproductive strategies most
adaptably based on the situation have the best reproductive success.
Freud termed the sex drive as libido, which he saw as one of the major forces motivating
human behavior (the other is Thanatos, death instinct).
The id is the basic part of personality. It operates on the pleasure principle and is thus
irrational.
The ego operates on the reality principle, tries to keep de id in line and functions to make
the person have realistic, rational interactions with others.
, The superego is the conscience. It contains the values and ideals of society that we learn and
it operates on idealism. Its aim is to inhibit the impulses of the id and to persuade the ego to
strive for moral goals rather than realistic ones.
Erogenous zones: parts of the skin or mucous membrane that are extremely sensitive to
stimulation.
Stages of psychosexual development:
1. Oral stage (0-1 years)
2. Anal stage (2 years)
3. Phallic stage (3-5 years) - oedipus conflict: boy loves the mother and desires her and
he hates the father. Girls suffer from penis envy: the traumatic realization that she has
no penis and whishes she had one. Electra conflict: a desire for her father. According
to freud she remains somewhat immature compared with men.
4. Latency stage (5 years - adolescence): sexual impulses are repressed or are in a
quiescent state.
5. genital stage (puberty onwards): sexual urges become more specifically genital.
Classical conditioning is useful in explaining a number of phenomena in sexuality (why
people can find the smell of perfume arousing).
Some rewards, like sex and food, are called primary reinforcers because they are intrinsically
rewarding. It can itself be a positive reinforcer, but it can also be the behavior that is
rewarded or punished.
Three principles of operant conditioning:
1. If sexual intercourse had repeatedly been associated with a punishment (pain), the
behavior becomes less frequent.
2. Sequences, whether reinforcement or punishment, are most effective in shaping
behavior when they occur immediately after the behavior.
3. Compared with rewards, punishments are not very effective in shaping behavior.
An important difference between psychoanalytic theories and learning theories is that
according to psychoanalytic theorists, the determinants of human sexual behavior occur in
early childhood, whereas in learning theory, the sexual behavior can be learned and changed
anytime during one’s life span.
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