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I just can’t resist this update. In recent posts I offered an evolutionary explanation for some politicians’ remarkably boneheaded sexual behavior ("Sexcapades at City Hall" and "Re-electing Rascals"). Well, there’s new research that shines an interesting, informative, and controversial light on this issue.
Psychologists at Brand X and Brand Y universities down the road (OK, it’s Texas A&M and the University of Texas at Austin--I’m a scientist, and I can give credit where credit is due, if I have to) asked if impulsive behavior is driven by the overwhelming strength of the impulse or if it’s driven by weak self-control. These questions relate to self-regulation regarding behaviors like overeating, drug use, chronic gambling, and in the case of this research, sexual temptations.
My Aggie and Longhorn colleagues argued there are sex differences in the tendency to succumb to sexual temptations, which, they suggest, is why men are more likely to stray. They tested their argument using people’s self-reported behavior regarding a real-life sexual temptation (i.e., describing an instance when “you were attracted to someone who you felt it was wrong to pursue”) as well as a computer game-like implicit procedure that allowed them to mathematically distinguished the effects of impulse from self-control. And I will quote their findings:
“Men appear to be more likely to succumb to sexual temptations because they experience stronger sexual impulses than women, not because they are less able to exert intentional control than women.”
This research nicely updates my discussion in “Sexcapades at City Hall.” I argued male politicians have high-status traits that make them highly desirable as mates. And being driven by the desire to maximize their reproductive success, some of the morally weaker ones yield to the increased access they have to mating opportunities as a result of their desirability.
What more do we now know? On one hand, males’ stronger sexual impulses combined with the increased sexual opportunities of male politicians suggest they are more likely to sexually misbehave than female politicians. On the other hand, maybe we over-emphasize self-control in the form of moral weakness.
Shhh…Brand X and Brand Y just may be OK.
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For more information, see:
Tidwell & Eastwick. 2013. “Sex Differences in Succumbing to Sexual Temptations: A Function of Impulse or Control?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin DOI: 10.1177/0146167213499614.
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