Sex-positive personal characteristics (attractiveness, sexual fantasy, pornography use) & positive relational ones (commitment, egalitarianism, & sexual frequency) are related to more sexual novelty

Encouraging erotic variety: Identifying correlates of, and strategies for promoting, sexual novelty in romantic relationships. Marissa N. Rosa et al. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 146, 1 August 2019, Pages 158-169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.04.009

Abstract: In the present investigation, we identified correlates of sexual novelty in existing relationships and also investigated whether experimentally manipulating persuasive information about sexual novelty could encourage sexual novelty within a relationship. Participants in committed relationships of 6 months or longer were recruited online through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to complete a two-part survey on sexual relationships. The initial survey (Time 1) was completed by 352 predominantly White US citizens (204 women, 146 men, 2 unreported), and a subset of 244 people (140 women, 101 men, 3 unreported) completed the follow-up survey two weeks later (Time 2). We found that several sex-positive personal characteristics (e.g., pornography use and sexual fantasy) and positive relational characteristics (e.g., commitment, egalitarianism, and sexual frequency) are related to engaging in sexual novelty, as well as desire for sexual novelty, willingness to initiate sexual novelty, and willingness to comply with partner-initiated sexual novelty. We also found that certain persuasive strategies (i.e., those incorporating fear appeals, narrative accounts, or examples of successful initiation strategies) may be effective at altering perceptions of sexual novelty and increasing novel intimate behavior between relationship partners.

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General discussion

In order to extend the literature on sexual novelty, the current study sought to identify correlates of sexual novelty and to investigate whether learning more about sexual novelty could result in changes in attitudes and behaviors toward sexual novelty within a relationship. Whereas previous research has shown that engaging in arousing, novel behaviors can increase sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction (Aron et al., 2000; Morton & Gorzalka, 2015), our correlational results identified both personal factors (i.e., age, religiosity, bodily attractiveness, body consciousness, sexual boredom, sexual fantasy, and pornography use) and relational factors (i.e., length of relationship, length of sexual relationship, commitment, egalitarianism, and sex frequency) associated with how much sexual novelty a person is likelyto engage in. Additionally, prior research has documented how detrimental sexual boredom can be to a relationship, potentially resulting in infidelity (e.g.,Allen et al., 2008), divorce (e.g., Counts & Reid, 1987),or relationship dissolution (e.g.,Hill et al., 1976). Therefore, an important contribution of our study is thefinding that levels of sexual novelty can be influenced—and levels of sexual boredom can potentially be decreased as a result—through the introduction of additionalinformation about sexual novelty using certain persuasive methods, further extending the literature on the use of fear appeals (e.g., Tannenbaum et al., 2015), narrative accounts (e.g., De Wit et al., 2008), strategies (e.g., Humphreys & Newby, 2007), and self-efficacy (e.g.,Azjen, 1991) in persuasion.

Another interesting result from the current study was the positiverelationship we found between sexual novelty and religiosity. Contrary to our predictions, the more religious people were, the more likely they were to report engaging in sexual novelty in their current relationships. However, Matthews et al. (2018) found both a positive and a negative relationship between religiosity and sexual novelty in two different samples; as such, it is possible that the conflicting finding of the current research may be an anomaly, and further replication is necessary to fully understand the relationship between religiosity and sexual novelty. One possible explanation is that more religious people may notactually be engaging in more sexual novelty but rather subjectively interpreting their sexual activities as more novel. Consistent with this notion, research shows a negative association between conventional religiosity and sensation seeking (Zuckerman & Neeb, 1980); thus, thethreshold for novel sexual activity may be lower for more religious people.

We also found an interesting correlation between sexual boredomand sexual novelty. As expected, the more sexual boredom people re-ported experiencing, the more likely they were to report lower levels ofsexual novelty within their current relationships and the less willingthey were to initiate and comply with sexual novelty initiated by apartner. However, people who reported experiencing more sexualboredom were also more likely to desire sexual novelty within theirrelationships. The idea that people who are bored sexually have a desire for sexual novelty but are unwilling or unmotivated to take action to fulfill this desire seems to be related to the view that sexual boredom is unavoidable in long-term relationships (Tunariu & Reavey, 2003). Similarly, given that sexual boredom predicts relationship and sexual dissatisfaction (e.g., Tunariu & Reavey, 2007), it is plausible that thelack of motivation to engage in sexual novelty with their relationshippartner could lead individuals to fulfill their desire for sexual novelty by seeking extra-dyadic relationships.