Why has promiscuity been the target of so much reprobation? You could try and explain it in terms of organised religion, which has indeed been an historically powerful purveyor of anti-promiscuity morality. But explaining morality in terms of religion (or any other cultural force) seems superficial, as it just moves the question back one step, so that any truly curious person must now ask: Why has promiscuity been the target of so much religious reprobation?
Instead of trying to explain culture in terms of more culture, it would be more satisfying to find an ultimate evolutionary explanation for anti-promiscuity morality.In search of such an explanation, I collaborated with two other psychologists, Nicholas Pound and Isabel Scott, on a paper (free to download by clicking here) that has just been published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour [3].
We hypothesised, based on the evolutionary concepts of paternity certainty and paternal investment, that in social environments in which women were more dependent economically on a male mate, people would be more opposed to promiscuity. When women depend more on men to provide resources for their children (paternal investment), then mothers and fathers both have greater interest in ensuring that fathers can identify their own children and thus deliver this investment. Because promiscuity undermines paternity certainty, people object to it more in environments entailing high female economic dependence.
We found that in U.S. states where women earn more money and are perceived as being less economically dependent on men, people were indeed less opposed to promiscuity.We tested this hypothesis in two studies involving several thousand U.S. residents. We found that in U.S. states where women earn more money and are perceived as being less economically dependent on men, people were indeed less opposed to promiscuity. We also found that individuals who reported knowing more economically-dependent women tended to be more opposed to promiscuity.
These relationships between female economic dependence and anti-promiscuity morality persisted, even after controlling for other influences on sexual morality such as religiosity and political conservatism. That is, female economic dependence wasn’t correlated with anti-promiscuity morality merely because religious and conservative people tended to score highly on both female economic dependence and anti-promiscuity morality; instead, female economic dependence explained variance in anti-promiscuity morality above and beyond that explained by religiosity and conservatism.
Moreover, attitudes towards promiscuity were specifically related to female income, rather than to male income or wealth in general.In communities where women earn less, people may be more hostile towards behaviours that are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to entail promiscuity.
These findings have potentially important implications for how people in different social environments judge the sexual behaviour of others. In communities where women earn less, people may be more hostile towards behaviours that are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to entail promiscuity, such as open marriage or homosexuality. People in these environments may also be more likely to think that promiscuous individuals deserve any hardships that befall them.
For example, if they perceive a pregnancy as having resulted from a woman’s promiscuity, they may see it as a justified punishment for her behaviour, and see abortion as an unfair attempt to escape this punishment.Our results don’t suggest that female economic dependence is the only influence on moral attitudes about promiscuity; religiosity and conservatism were also highly related to such attitudes in our study. However, our results do imply a hypothesis for why religious and conservative ideologies themselves tend to be anti-promiscuity: because they emerged in environments characterised by high female economic dependence.
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By Michael E. Price
