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Category: Project

Description: How reliable are the answers given in research about sex and sexual behavior? This replication and extention of a study done bij Alexander and Fisher (2003) examined how likely heterosexual men, heterosexual women and non-heterosexual women are to answer honestly to the question “how many sexpartners have you had in your life?”. The role of an experiment leader, who did or did not look at the given answer, was taken into account. Honesty on the self-reports was determined by an autobiographical Implicit Association Task. Results showed that each group, in each condition, seemed to have answered honestly in the self-reports. This finding nuances the findings of Alexander and Fisher, and supports the idea of self-reports as a reliable tool to study sexuality. It was remarkable that there was no significant difference in the self-reported amount of sex partners between heterosexual men, heterosexual women and non-heterosexual women. It is possible that social expectations indicated by the sexual double standard are not highly influencial in this population and/or anno 2022. We recommend further investigation of other populations, and use other experiment leaders, such as authority figures. Concludingly, the current findings are promising regarding the usefulness of self-reports in further research on sexual behaviour.