{"title":"Attitudes and Behavior Feedback Loops for Young Women's Premarital Sex.","authors":"Michelle A Eilers","doi":"10.1177/23780231241277690","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sociologists have long been puzzled by whether attitudes inform behaviors or vice versa. Accurately assessing both possibilities requires panel data collected at relatively short intervals. In this study, I leverage intensive panel data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Study to assess the case of young women's premarital sexual attitudes and behavior. Through a series of descriptive analyses and cross-lagged panel models, I show that opposition to premarital sex in young adulthood is only sometimes associated with subsequent sexual behavior and that premarital sex is negatively associated with later opposition to premarital sex. Young women are especially likely to reduce their opposition following first sex relative to sex reported at any time. Thus, initial behavioral experiences may result in outsized shocks to attitudes, following an active updating model. That subsequent sex is associated with less attitudinal change suggests that young women initially update their attitudes before settling into them. This study nuances long-standing debates on the malleability of attitudes within a person over time and with respect to behavior and has implications for how people approach behavior according to their attitudes across a wide spectrum of social phenomena.</p>","PeriodicalId":36345,"journal":{"name":"Socius","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11526198/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Socius","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231241277690","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/10/7 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Sociologists have long been puzzled by whether attitudes inform behaviors or vice versa. Accurately assessing both possibilities requires panel data collected at relatively short intervals. In this study, I leverage intensive panel data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Study to assess the case of young women's premarital sexual attitudes and behavior. Through a series of descriptive analyses and cross-lagged panel models, I show that opposition to premarital sex in young adulthood is only sometimes associated with subsequent sexual behavior and that premarital sex is negatively associated with later opposition to premarital sex. Young women are especially likely to reduce their opposition following first sex relative to sex reported at any time. Thus, initial behavioral experiences may result in outsized shocks to attitudes, following an active updating model. That subsequent sex is associated with less attitudinal change suggests that young women initially update their attitudes before settling into them. This study nuances long-standing debates on the malleability of attitudes within a person over time and with respect to behavior and has implications for how people approach behavior according to their attitudes across a wide spectrum of social phenomena.
长期以来,社会学家一直困惑于态度是否会影响行为,反之亦然。要准确评估这两种可能性,需要在相对较短的时间间隔内收集面板数据。在本研究中,我利用 "关系动态与社会生活研究"(Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Study)的密集面板数据来评估年轻女性的婚前性行为态度和行为。通过一系列描述性分析和交叉滞后的面板模型,我发现年轻时反对婚前性行为只是有时与随后的性行为相关,而婚前性行为与后来反对婚前性行为呈负相关。与任何时候报告的性行为相比,年轻女性在第一次性行为后特别有可能减少其反对程度。因此,根据主动更新模型,最初的行为经历可能会对态度产生巨大的冲击。随后的性行为与态度变化较小的关联表明,年轻女性在最初更新自己的态度,然后再将其固定下来。这项研究细化了长期以来关于人的态度随时间和行为的可塑性的争论,并对人们如何在广泛的社会现象中根据自己的态度对待行为产生了影响。