Listening and responsiveness in getting-acquainted processes.

Listening and being responsive to another's turns at disclosure are essential processes that occur at all stages of a relationship, including and perhaps particularly at the formation stage. This article discusses research on the role of responsiveness and listening in contributing to positive outcomes from getting-acquainted interactions. Integral to listening and responsiveness in the getting-acquainted process is asking questions, which is also discussed in this article. Because getting-acquainted interactions can occur in different communication modalities and also with artificial intelligence (AI), variation in the degree to which listening and responsiveness occur as a function of the context will be considered. Although listening skills and responsiveness are desired in a romantic partner, these skills are difficult to assess in online profiles and dating apps, which have become common ways for meeting partners.

The role of expectations for liking and other positive Affiliative outcomes in the get-acquainted process that occurs over Computer-mediated video communication.

People often develop expectations prior to meeting someone for the first time. These pre-interaction expectations, which include how much they will like the other and how much they will enjoy the interaction, have likely increased because of information easily obtained about others through social media. What is not well understood is whether these expectations prior to a first meeting are associated with interpersonal evaluations formed during the get-acquainted interaction. In this study, pre-interaction expectations were collected from both members of 71 dyads. Then, after the dyads interacted through a structured self-disclosure task conducted over Skype, their reactions were assessed again. Several findings of the study have implications for people meeting for the first time, including over visual forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Findings included that pre-interaction expectations were associated with reactions after the interaction, a visual greeting with another before learning information about the other did not moderate the effect of that information on liking and other affiliative outcomes, and participants underestimated how much they were liked after the interaction. The implications of the findings are important because people are increasingly becoming acquainted through visual forms of CMC, which has been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01466-4.

Perhaps It Was Too Soon: College Students' Reflections on the Timing of Their Sexual Debut.

Early sexual debut has been a focus of social scientific research due to its association with adverse circumstances and negative outcomes. However, there has been a recent shift to considering not only chronological age, but also the degree to which the event is viewed to be optimally timed (i.e., the perception that it occurred at the "right time" versus too soon). The purpose of this study was to assess how individual/family background variables and contextual aspects of the experience (including partner and relationship aspects) are associated with both the actual age at sexual debut and the perceived acceptability of the timing of the event. Using data collected from students at a U.S. university between 1990 and 2019 (N = 6,430), several factors (in addition to chronological age) were associated with the perceived acceptability of the timing of sexual debut. Strong gender differences were found - women perceived their timing to be less acceptable, even though they did not differ from men in actual age at sexual debut. Other robust predictors of perceived acceptability included (lower) religious involvement and recalling desire (for the experience), pleasure, and lower guilt at the time. Only slight changes occurred over the 30-year period in age at sexual debut and perceived acceptability of the timing. Suggestions for future research are provided and implications for sex education/sexual health interventions are discussed.

Virgin College Students' Reasons for and Reactions to Their Abstinence From Sex: Results From a 23-Year Study at a Midwestern U.S. University.

Sexual activity is normative in college. Thus, college students who are virgins are a minority; they are also an understudied group. This study extended a prior investigation (Sprecher & Regan, 1996 ) that focused on U.S. college virgins' reported reasons for and reactions to virginity. Data were collected from the same university over an additional 18 years and from more than 700 additional virgin students. We found differences between male and female virgins that showed that men are more reluctant virgins. For example, the only reason for being a virgin that male virgins endorsed to a greater degree than did female virgins was "my partner was not willing." Men also had more negative affective reactions to being a virgin than did women. We also found some variation in reasons for and reactions to virginity based on sociodemographic variables such as religiosity and ethnicity. A temporal analysis revealed that reasons for being a virgin that referred to a fear (e.g., fear of AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections) became less important over the 23-year period. We discuss our findings in the frameworks of evolutionary and social exchange theories.

Evidence of change in men's versus women's emotional reactions to first sexual intercourse: a 23-year study in a human sexuality course at a midwestern university.

With a large sample (N = 5,769) of university students obtained over a 23-year period (1990-2012), which represented three decades of first sexual intercourse experiences, the present study examined gender differences in pleasure, anxiety, and guilt in response to first intercourse. Men reported more pleasure and anxiety than women, and women reported more guilt than men. Anxiety decreased over the three decades for men; pleasure increased and guilt decreased for women. As a result of these changes, the differences between men and women in emotional reactions decreased slightly over time. The magnitude of the gender differences overall and in the most recent years of data collection, however, suggests that emotional responses to first sexual intercourse should be included in a small list of sexuality variables that are exceptions to Hyde's ( 2005 ) gender similarities hypothesis.

Premarital sexual standards and sociosexuality: gender, ethnicity, and cohort differences.

In this article, we present results from a "cohort-longitudinal" analysis of sexual attitudes and behaviors based on a large sample of young adults (N = 7,777) obtained from a university setting over a 23-year period. We investigated gender, ethnicity, and cohort differences in sexual permissiveness, endorsement of the double standard, and sociosexuality. Compared to women, men had more permissive attitudes, particularly about sex in casual relationships, endorsed the double standard to a greater degree, and had a more unrestricted sociosexuality. Black men were generally more permissive than White, Hispanic, and Asian men, whereas ethnic differences were not found among women. Participants from the 1995-1999 cohort were slightly less permissive than those from the 1990-1994 and 2005-2012 cohorts. Although prior meta-analytic studies (e.g., Petersen & Hyde, 2010) found reduced gender differences in sexuality over time, our cohort analyses suggest that gender differences in sexual permissiveness have not changed over the past two decades among college students.

Relationship Compatibility, Compatible Matches, and Compatibility Matching / Compatibilidad de la relación, parejas afines y compatibilidad del emparejamiento

Many leading Internet dating sites claim to be able to find compatible matches for singles, and that they use principles from Relationship Science to generate their matching algorithms. In this article, I first discuss how "relationship compatibility" has been studied in Relationship Science. It is generally not directly studied, but inferred from related constructs, including satisfaction, commitment, and endurance of the relationship. Second, I discuss three principles that are referred to in Relationship Science as defining a pair being a "compatible match." These principles are similarity, complementarity, and matching (on same level of socially desirable characteristics, regardless of whether they are the same or different between partners). In the final section, I discuss what aspects of science are being used at the Internet dating sites to create compatible matches.

Muchos de los sitios líderes en "la búsqueda de pareja" se dicen capaces de lograr coincidencias compatibles para solteros, usando los principios de la Ciencia de las Relaciones para generar sus algoritmos de emparejamiento. En este artículo primero se discute cómo la "compatibilidad en las relaciones" ha sido estudiada en la Ciencia de las Relaciones. Generalmente no es directamente estudiada, pero sí inferida a partir de constructos relacionados, incluyendo satisfacción, compromiso y mantenimiento en la relación. En segundo lugar, se discuten los tres principios referidos por la Ciencia de las Relaciones que definen lo que es "el emparejamiento compatible. Estos principios son similitud, complementariedad, y emparejamiento (el mismo nivel de características socialmente deseables, relativas a si ellos son iguales o diferentes entre ambos miembros de la parejas). En la sección final, se discuten qué aspectos de la ciencia han sido usados en los sitios de internet de búsqueda de pareja para crear emparejamientos compatibles.

The influences of sociosexuality and attachment style on reactions to emotional versus sexual infidelity.

Although numerous studies have empirically supported the evolutionary-based prediction of sex differences in reactions to infidelity (men being more distressed by sexual infidelity and women being more distressed by emotional infidelity), little attention has been given to within-sex individual differences in the type of infidelity found to be more distressing. This article considers the effects of sociosexuality (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991 ) and attachment style (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991 ) with data from 3,879 college students collected over 14 years. In addition to replicating the robust sex differences, some evidence that sociosexuality and attachment style were related to infidelity reactions was found. Greater sexual permissiveness (i.e., high scores on sociosexuality) was associated with greater distress to sexual infidelity. In addition, a preoccupied attachment style was found to increase men's odds of selecting emotional infidelity, whereas an avoidant attachment style was found to increase women's odds of selecting sexual infidelity.

The importance of fairness and equity for the marital satisfaction of older women.

In all societies, people are concerned with social justice. "It's just not right" is a fairly common lament. In these two studies, we interviewed 240 older women, who ranged in age from 50 to 82. We found that most older women (85%) considered their marriages to be fair and equitable. Older women were less concerned about existing inequities than their younger peers. Nonetheless, they were somewhat concerned with how rewarding and how fair and equitable their relationships were perceived to be. Those who felt over-benefited, for example, felt more guilty than did their less advantaged peers; those who felt under-benefited felt far more angry than did their privileged peers. Stressful life events--such as the arrival of children, retirement, serious illness, or the awareness impending death--often brought to awareness long simmering resentments over issues of fairness.

Perceptions of sources of sex education and targets of sex communication: sociodemographic and cohort effects.

As part of a larger survey study on young adult sexuality conducted over a 17-year period at a Midwest U.S. university, more than 6,000 college students completed questions on the sources of their sex education and the degree to which they have communicated about sex with various types of individuals. Participants reported receiving more sex education from peers and media than from parents (and mothers more than fathers). Respondents also reported communicating more about sex with peers than with parents or any other categories of individuals. Differences were found in the degree of sex education from various sources and in communication with various targets based on gender, ethnic background, and social class. Furthermore, changes were found over the 17-year period. More recent cohorts of students perceived that they received more sex education from media, peers, and professionals, and communicated more about sex with professionals, relative to earlier cohorts.

Sexual satisfaction in premarital relationships: associations with satisfaction, love, commitment, and stability.

This investigation focused on how sexual satisfaction is associated with relationship quality and stability in premarital couples. With data collected at multiple times over several years from a sample of heterosexual couples (who were all dating at Time 1), we examined how sexual satisfaction was associated with relationship satisfaction, love, commitment, and stability. At each wave of the study, sexual satisfaction was associated positively with relationship satisfaction, love, and commitment for both men and women. In addition, change in sexual satisfaction between Time 1 and Time 2 was associated with change over the same period in relationship satisfaction, love, and commitment. Furthermore, some evidence was found that sexual satisfaction was associated with relationship stability. Overall, sexual satisfaction had stronger links with relationship quality for men than for women.