Understanding Human Ambivalence About
Sex:
The Effects of Stripping Sex of Meaning
continued from
Undoubtedly these factors do contribute to the human propensity for
sexual regulation; however, we suggest that mortality concerns also play a
significant role. The terror management perspective seems particularly
useful for understanding many of the cultural taboos and strategies we have
just discussed because they typically focus on denying the more creaturely
aspects of sex and sustaining faith in the idea that humans are spiritual
beings. Of course, the most definitive support for the role of mortality
concerns in attitudes toward sex should come from experimental evidence, and
the present research was designed to add to a growing body of research
supporting such a role.
Love and Other Meaningful Views of Sex
Of course, regardless of celibacy vows and other restrictions on sexual
behavior, sex happens (or none of us would be here!). How then are the
threatening aspects of sex "managed"? We suggest that the answer involves
embedding sex within the context of one's meaning-conferring CWV. Whereas
some of the body's creaturely functions are denied by confining them to
private quarters (e.g., bathrooms and menstrual huts) and finding them
disgusting (e.g., Haidt, Rozin, McCauley, & Imada, 1997), sex, because of
its very strong positive appeal, is often transformed by embracing it as
part of a profound and uniquely human emotional experience: romantic love.
Love transforms sex from an animal act to a symbolic human experience,
thereby making it a highly meaningful part of one's CWV and obscuring its
threatening links to animality and mortality. Indeed, research has shown
that sex and love often accompany one another (e.g., Aron & Aron, 1991;
Berscheid, 1988; Buss, 1988; Hatfield & Rapson, 1996; Hendrick & Hendrick,
1997), sexual arousal often leads to increased feelings of love for one's
partner (Dermer & Pyszczynski, 1978), and, at least among Americans, sex is
legitimized by viewing it as an expression of romantic love (e.g., Laumann,
Gagnon, Michaels, & Stuart, 1994). Furthermore, Mikulincer, Florian,
Birnbaum, and Malishkevich (2002) have recently shown that close
relationships can actually serve a death-anxiety buffering function.
In addition to romantic love, there are other ways in which sex can be
elevated to an abstract level of meaning beyond its physical nature. CWVs
provide various other meaningful contexts for sex; for example, sexual
prowess can serve as a source of self-esteem, sexual pleasure can be used as
a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, and we would even argue that some of
the so-called sexual deviations can be understood as making sex less
animalistic by making it more ritualistic or transforming the source of
arousal from the body to an inanimate object, such as a high heel shoe (see
Becker, 1973). In these ways, sex becomes an integral part of a symbolic CWV
that protects the individual from core human fears.
Sex, Death, and Neurosis
This perspective implies that people who have difficulty sustaining faith
in a meaningful CWV would be particularly troubled by their corporeality,
and in particular, by both sex and death. Clinical theorists from Freud on
have suggested that neuroses and many other psychological disturbances are
associated with an inability to successfully manage anxiety associated with
death and sexuality (e.g., Becket, 1973; Brown, 1959; Freud, 1920/1989;
Searles, 1961; Yalom, 1980). Following Becket (1973), we believe that
neuroticism arises in part out of difficulties with the transition during
socialization from living as a mere physical creature to existing as a
symbolic cultural entity (Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, et al., 2000). (1) We
suggest that because of their insecure attachment to the CWV (which offers
the possibility of transcendence over the physical realities of existence),
neurotics are especially troubled by physical activities that can remind
them of their mortality. Consistent with this view, empirical researchers
have shown a consistent pattern of correlations between neuroticism and (a)
concerns about death (e.g., Hoelter & Hoelter, 1978; Loo, 1984), (b) disgust
sensitivity (e.g., Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994; Templer, King, Brooner, &
Corgiat, 1984; Wronska, 1990), and (c) worry about sex, including the
tendency to view sex as disgusting (e.g., Eysenck, 1971).
We (Goldenberg et al., 1999) recently reported three experiments that we
believe to be the first empirical demonstration of an association between
sex and mortality concerns among individuals high in neuroticism. In Study
1, high-neuroticism participants expressed decreased attraction to the
physical aspects of sex subsequent to reminders of their own death. In a
more direct test (Study 2), thoughts of either the physical or romantic
aspects of sex were primed and the accessibility of death-related thoughts
was then measured. Thoughts of physical sex increased the accessibility of
death-related thoughts for high- but not low-neuroticism participants. This
finding was replicated in a third experiment that added a condition in which
thoughts of either love or a control topic were primed after the physical
sex prime. Thinking about love but not about another pleasant topic (a good
meal) after the physical sex prime eliminated the increased death-thought
accessibility that thoughts of physical sex otherwise produced among
neurotic participants. These findings suggest that at least for neurotics,
love obscured the deadly connotations of sex by transforming creaturely
copulations into meaningful amorous adventures.
The Present Research: The Role of Creatureliness in the Sex-Death
Connection
As suggested at the outset of this paper, the present research was
designed to answer two questions: (a) Under what conditions would people
generally (independent of level of neuroticism) show such sex-death effects,
and (b) what is it about sexuality that leads to these effects? The
hypothesized relationship between sex and death has thus far been
established only for individuals scoring high in neuroticism. We have
suggested that these effects have been limited to neurotic individuals
because such individuals lack the soothing balm of meaning imparted by
sustained faith in a meaningful CWV, and thus, we propose that sex will be
more generally a problem when people lack a meaningful cultural context in
which to embed sex and elevate it above a mere physical activity. Although
the previous research is consistent with this theoretical framework, it has
yet to be explicitly shown that a concern about creatureliness underlies the
sex-death connection.
The present research was designed to show just that by testing the
proposition that sex is threatening because it has the potential to
undermine our efforts to elevate humans to a higher and more meaningful
plane of existence than mere animals. Whereas neurotics are especially
troubled by the connection between sex and death because they have
difficulty embedding sex in the context of a system of cultural meaning, our
conceptualization implies that the physical aspects of sex would be
threatening to anyone when sex is stripped of its symbolic meaning; one way
to do this is to make creatureliness especially salient. Conversely, when
individuals are able to embed themselves in a meaningful cultural system,
sex should not pose such a threat.
A recent set of studies examining the tendency for humans to distance
themselves from other animals offers a possible way to make creatureliness
especially salient. Goldenberg et al. (2001) hypothesized that MS would
intensify disgust reactions because, as Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley (1993)
have argued, such reactions assert that we are different from and superior
to mere material creatures. In support of this reasoning, Goldenberg et al.
found that MS led to increased reactions of disgust to animals and bodily
products. More direct evidence was provided by a follow-up study showing
that MS (but not thoughts of dental pain) led people to express strong
preference for an essay describing people as distinct from animals over an
essay emphasizing the similarity between humans and animals (Goldenberg et
al., 2001). This latter study suggests that these essays might be useful for
increasing or decreasing concerns about creatureliness, which should then
affect the extent to which physical sex reminds people of death. Study 1 was
designed specifically to test this hypothesis.
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