Feasibility Cues during a Sexual Encounter Impact the Strength of Heterosexual Women's Orgasm Goal Pursuit.

The "orgasm gap" for women who have sex with men remains a pressing gender equity issue. Recent research found that women who pursued orgasm as a goal were more likely to have one. The current research replicated this relationship between orgasm goal pursuit and orgasm frequency for heterosexual women, and found that this relationship did not exist for heterosexual men (Study 1). Then, across two experimental studies, we examined how heterosexual women vary their orgasm goal pursuit across sexual encounters. In Study 2, women who read that a hypothetical sexual encounter would be "quick" reported less intent to pursue orgasm than women who were told they could "take their time" or received no time information. In Study 3, women who read that their hypothetical sexual partner seemed selfish reported less intent to pursue orgasm than women who were given a non-selfish partner or no partner information. Importantly, these effects were mediated by women's perceived orgasm likelihood in the scenario. These results suggest that women shift their pursuit of orgasm depending on cues which signal whether orgasm will be feasible. This research used self-regulation theory to understand women's motivations for pursuing orgasm during sexual encounters with men, with implications for reducing the orgasm gap.

Attitude toward women's societal roles moderates the effect of gender cues on target individuation.

In 4 studies, participants read trait descriptions and formed impressions of 2 male and 2 female targets. They then attempted to recall which traits had described each target. As predicted, participants with a "progressive" attitude toward women's rights and roles (J. T. Spence, R. L. Helmreich, & J. Stapp, 1973) made fewer within-group recall errors for female targets than for male targets, indicating greater individuation of the female targets, whereas participants with a "traditional" attitude made fewer errors for male targets. The findings of a 5th study suggested that progressive participants were motivated to individuate women by their belief that it is important to improve the status of women and other groups low in power and by their identification with women and feminism. Traditional participants' greater individuation of men was believed to stem from their perception of men's higher status (as confirmed by pretests) and their acceptance of the status quo.