Gender differences and the effects of perceived internet privacy on self-reports of sexual behavior and sociosexuality

• Gender differences in sociosexuality remained consistent across conditions.
• Reports of sexual behavior varied between threat conditions.
• For women anonymity assurance had a strong impact on their self-reports.
• Men and women underreported sociosexuality in high threat condition.
• Effects of social constraints on Internet based research are discussed.

The use of the Internet for conducting research has found that the level of anonymity intrinsic to web-based surveys is useful in deterring various participant biases. Though, concerns about Internet privacy could interfere with the effects of perceived anonymity and influence how a person responds. In this study, participants were asked to take an Internet survey and then were randomly assigned to conditions with varying degrees of implied privacy in which they answered questions about their desire for casual sex (sociosexuality) and their lifetime sexual partners. Only in the condition without any threat to the participant’s anonymity was there no difference between men and women’s reports of their sexual behavior. However, in every condition men reported having a significantly higher sociosexuality than women. Findings are consistent with both the biologic and gender-biased explanations in differences of self-report for sexual information. Implications for social constraints and Internet based research are discussed.