The impact of culture and gender on sexual motives: Differences between Chinese and North Americans

Recently, social scientists have begun to investigate the myriad of reasons why young men and women engage in sexual activities. As yet, however, they have not begun to investigate the impact of culture on people's sexual motivations. In this paper, we will address three questions: Does culture have an impact on sexual motives? Does gender have an impact? Do culture and gender interact in shaping sexual motives? In this study, we asked Chinese and North American college students to indicate the extent to which communal and individualistic sexual motives had influenced their decision to participate in sexual activities. As predicted, both culture and gender had an impact on young people's endorsement of various sexual motives. In a few cases the findings were not entirely as we had predicted, however.

► Does culture impact sexual motives? ► Does gender effect sexual motives? ► Chinese and American men and women are equally likely to engage in sex out of a desire to please their partner and a desire to maintain their relationship. ► American men are far more likely to cite pleasure and stress reduction as motives for sex than are their Chinese counterparts.