The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Why Some Women Consent to Unwanted Sex With a Dating Partner: Insights from Attachment Theory
Abstract
Several studies have shown that many college women engage in unwanted sexual activity with a dating partner. However, little research has examined the differences between women who comply with requests for unwanted sexual activity and women who do not. This study utilized an attachment theory framework to investigate individual differences in women's compliant sexual behavior. An ethnically diverse sample of 125 college women who had consented to unwanted sex with a current dating partner completed measures of their attachment style, commitment to their current relationship, perceptions of their partner's commitment, and willingness to consent to unwanted sex in a hypothetical scenario. Results showed that attachment style and commitment perceptions were associated with women's willingness to consent to unwanted sex with a dating partner in the hypothetical scenario and their reasons for this decision. As predicted, anxiously attached women were the most willing to consent to unwanted sex, and they often cited fears that their partner would lose interest in them as reasons for their compliance. Contrary to hypotheses, avoidantly attached women were not the least willing to consent to unwanted sex. They often reported passively complying with a partner's sexual request in order to fulfill relationship obligations. The importance of sexuality to attachment formation in dating relationships and the potential consequences of consenting to unwanted sex are discussed.
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Citations
Cites
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“Research shows that individuals who score high on the dimension of avoidance tend to feel emotionally distant in relationships and become apprehensive when a partner tries to get too close (Collins & Read, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1987).”
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Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships
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“These findings extend previous research demonstrating that anxiously attached individuals are overly sensitive to rejection (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Downey et al., 1998) by showing that fear of rejection translates into behavior, and more specifically, sexual behaviors that are at least partially…”
Sexual Experiences Survey: A research instrument investigating sexual aggression and victimization.
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Cited by
Attachment and daily sexual goals: A study of dating couples
IMPETT, E. A., GORDON, A. M., & STRACHMAN, A. (2008) · Personal Relationships · doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2008.00204.x · Cited by 114
Self-citationKatz, J., & Tirone, V. (2009) · Sex Roles · doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9566-4 · Cited by 95
Sexual Motives: Cultural, Evolutionary, and Social Psychological Perspectives
Hatfield, E., Luckhurst, C., & Rapson, R. L. (2010) · Sexuality & Culture · doi:10.1007/s12119-010-9072-z · Cited by 62
Psychosocial Factors in Vulvodynia
Bergeron, S., & Rosen, N. O. (2020) · Female Sexual Pain Disorders · doi:10.1002/9781119482598.ch11 · Cited by 9
MacDonald, T. K., Wood, V., & Fabrigar, L. R. (2019) · European Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1002/ejsp.2578 · Cited by 8
Metadata
- Authors
- Impett, E. A., & Peplau, L. A.
- Venue
- Psychology of Women Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2002-12
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 360-370
- ISSN
- 0361-6843 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-6402
- OpenAlex
- W2114124731
- Cited by
- 261
- References
- 11
- FWCI
- 3.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Impett, E. A., & Peplau, L. A. (2002). Why Some Women Consent to Unwanted Sex With a Dating Partner: Insights from Attachment Theory. Psychology of Women Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.t01-1-00075
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
