Theories Of Sexual Behavior

In the past few classes, one of the big things we learned was what sex really is. We learned that the traditional view of sex is actual penetration of a penis to a vagina between a married couple so they can procreate. If we look at sex from a more modern view, there is more of a variety that is considered sex. This can include sexting, oral, masturbation, etc. We also learned what sex can be influenced by: psychology, culture, and biology. Psychology mainly refers to our mood and personality. With culture, this refers to our own standards of sexuality, religion, and what media is like in our culture. Lastly, biology refers to our genetics and how as humans sexuality is compared to animals. Most of us are more influenced by one of these than …show more content…
One theory is Psychoanalytic theory. This theory was created by Sigmund Freud who believed that there were three parts to our personality that drove us sexually. We have our “Id” which is our pleasure principle. Then there is the “Ego” which is our reality principle. Lastly, there is the “Superego” which was considered our conscious. Another theory is classical conditioning. This is where an unconditioned response can become conditioned when placed with a conditioned stimuli. For example, if a couple has sex to one song in particular multiple times, the next time one of them hears that song, they can start to feel turned on. The last theory I’ll talk about is Social/Observational Learning. This theory claims that we learn by observing those around us. This can include seeing our parents, anything in the media, and the internet. If one sees their parents as an affectionate couple, their child may also be more prone to be more affectionate with their own …show more content…
Some major researchers of sexology are Sigmund Freud who we discussed earlier, Richard Von Krafft-Ebing who created the terms “masochism” and “sadism”. We also have Alfred Kinsey who went around the U.S. conducting experiments about sexual habits. Lastly, we also discussed William Masters and Virginia Johnson who looked at sex in a laboratory study. There are many different ways to study sexology. Some of these methods include case reports –studying one person or group in great detail-, nonexperimental research- no direct manipulation of variables-, or experimental research-manipulate or change a variable. When studying sexology, the researcher much be very careful to reach ethical standards when conducting their study. This includes getting informed consent from the person in the study, debriefing the person after they’ve finished the study, assure confidentiality of all participants, and making sure the benefits of the study don’t outweigh the