Terri Fisher

The Ohio State University at Mansfield · Psychology

Sexual concordance—the agreement between physiological (genital) and psychological (emotional) sexual arousal—is, on average, substantially lower in women than men. Following social role theory, the gender difference in sexual concordance may manifest because women and men are responding in a way that accommodates gender norms. We examined genital...

The current research used two 8-wave longitudinal studies spanning the first 4–5 years of 207 marriages to examine the potential bidirectional associations among marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and frequency of sex. All three variables declined over time, though the rate of decline in each variable became increasingly less steep. Control...

The present study used a bogus pipeline methodology to investigate the extent to which grandiose narcissism and other narcissism-related constructs were sensitive to bias in reporting. In addition, we sought to test the psychodynamic mask model by examining the association between narcissism variables and deep-seated feelings of self-esteem for men...

A bogus pipeline procedure was used to examine whether gender and testing condition influenced 474 college students’ reports of cheating behaviors. Participants were assigned to an anonymous condition, a condition in which they believed that a peer would be handling their completed questionnaires, or one in which they thought they were being monito...

Previous studies have indicated that the research context has an influence on whether gender differences are found in sexual behavior, likely due to adherence to different gender norms for men and women. The present study utilized bogus pipeline methodology to help determine if the purported use of a lie detector would influence gender differences...

It is commonly believed that men think about sex much more often than do women, but the empirical evidence in this area is fairly weak. By means of a golf tally counter, 283 college students kept track of their thoughts pertaining to food, sleep, or sex for one week. Males reported significantly more need-based cognitions overall, but there was no...

This study explored the impact of verbally-conveyed social norms on college students’ reports of sexual behavior and attitudes. Some participants overheard a staged conversation that enforced conservative or permissive social norms. Men and women in the permissive condition were more likely to report extradyadic involvement than those in the conser...

This longitudinal study of 72 newlywed couples examined the effects of spouses' expectancies for their sexual satisfaction and changes in their sexual frequency on changes in their sexual satisfaction over 6 months. At Time 1 (baseline), both spouses reported their levels of sexual satisfaction and sexual frequency and completed a 7-day diary of th...

Why is Neuroticism so harmful to marriage and other intimate relationships? Given that such relationships generally involve a sexual component, the current longitudinal study explored whether the apparent negative impact of own and partner's Neuroticism on marriage could be explained by dissatisfaction with the sexual relationship. Just after their...

In a survey of 48 men and 61 women from a southwestern US college, the gender difference in reported number of sex partners was mediated by the degree to which individuals felt that men and women who had many sexual partners were prestigious. In addition, men cared about the quantity and quality of their sex partners more than women did and these t...

Past studies indicate that men generally report having had more sexual experience and sexual partners than women, as well as an earlier age at first intercourse. At least some of these findings may partially reflect different responses to certain contextual variables in research. College students (266 men and 463 women) were asked to anonymously re...

Men report more permissive sexual attitudes and behavior than do women. This experiment tested whether these differences might result from false accommodation to gender norms (distorted reporting consistent with gender stereotypes). Participants completed questionnaires under three conditions. Sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior were n...

This study examined the relationship between parenting style and adolescent decision making. Two hundred sixty-two college students completed a decision-making scale as well as a parenting scale in an effort to determine if the child-rearing style of their parents was related to the tendency of these late adolescents to reference peers rather than...

We developed a 14-item Attitudes Toward Sexuality Scale (ATSS) to compare the sexual attitudes of early, middle, and late adolescents and their parents. One hundred forty-one adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20 and their parents completed a questionnaire consisting of the ATSS and demographic information. The Cronbach alpha reliability coeffi...

Variables in addition to gender that might be related to perceptions of sexual intent were examined. College students reported the degree to which they thought characters in various interpersonal situations were indicating sexual interest and completed measures of attitudes toward women, sexual experience, number of sexual partners, hypermasculinit...

Research on the impact of parent‐child communication about sexuality has yielded contradictory and inconsistent results, perhaps because of the lack of a standard measure of the concept. Nine previously used scales which were purported to measure family sexual communication were administered to 363 college students and their parents to compare the...

The purpose of the present investigation was to develop and validate an objective self-report instrument, the Multidimensional Sexuality Questionnaire (MSQ), designed to measure psychological tendencies associated with sexual relationships. Results indicated that the MSQ subscales had high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and were lar...

The purpose of the present investigation was to develop and validate an objective self-report instrument, the Multidimensional Sexuality Questionnaire (MSQ), designed to measure psychological tendencies associated with sexual relationships. Results indicated that the MSQ subscales had high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and were lar...

The Sexuality Scale (SS; Snell & Papini, 1989) was designed to measure sexual‐esteem, (the dispositional tendency to evaluate positively one's capacity to relate sexually to others), sexual‐depression, (the chronic tendency to feel depressed about the sexual aspects of one's life), and sexual‐preoccupation, (the persistent tendency to be absorbed a...

Two separate investigations were conducted to develop an objective self-report instrument, the Sexual Awareness Questionnaire (SAQ), designed to measure four personality tendencies associated with sexual awareness and sexual assertiveness: sexual-consciousness (attention to internal private sexual cues), sexual-monitoring (sensitivity to others'' e...

To determine chracteristics of parents who talk to their adolescent children about sexuality, 194 female and 88 male college students (aged 18–23 yrs) and their parents completed questionnaires measuring psychological, family, and demographic variables, including sexual attitudes, sexual knowledge, erotophobia-erotophilia, social desirability respo...

On the basis of findings by Moore, Peterson, and Furstenberg (1981), the variables of gender and parental sexual attitudes (liberal or conservative) were used to categorize 349 college students and their parents into four groups. The relationship between family communication about sexuality and adolescent sexual behavior, attitudes, knowledge, and...

Research has shown that parents may influence the sexual attitudes and behaviors of their late adolescent children. Family sexual communication and the quality of general family communication are two variables that seem to be related to aspects of adolescent sexuality. To examine this issue, college students (N=95) and their parents were administer...

Some researchers have reported that when parents are the main source of sex education, their adolescent children are less likely to engage in premarital sexual activity and are more likely to use effective contraception. This study used the variables of gender and parental sexual attitudes (liberal or conservative) to categorize 349 college student...

PIP 95 college students and both of their parents completed questionnaires that measured sexual attitudes, sexual behavior, general family communication, and parent-child communication about sex. Generally, parents and children from high sexual communication families and sexual attitudes that were significantly correlated whereas those from low sex...

Past research reporting a relationship between parent-child communication about sex and similarity in sexual attitudes between late adolescents and their parents studied late adolescents who were still residing with their parents. The present study attempted to determine whether this relationship was present in college students who were living away...

In an attempt to examine the relationship between parent-child communication about sex and parent-adolescent attitudes about sex, 12- to 20-year-olds (N = 141) and their parents completed sexual communication and attitude questionnaires. The correlation between parents' and children's attitudes were high for all the early adolescents and low for al...

Replicated W. K. Kirchner and M. D. Dunnette's (see record 1955-03161-001) study on attitudes toward older workers with 71 male and 5 female hourly employees (aged 18–61 yrs) and 22 male supervisors (aged 27–63 yrs) of a nonunion manufacturing plant. Ss completed a questionnaire that was nearly identical to the one administered in the Kirchner and...

This study examined the effect of reference group norms on individual attitudes when these norms were transmitted to the individual via the results of an opinion poll. It was hypothesized that the effect of reference group norms would be mediated by prior attitude polarization. In a sample of 180 introductory psychology students, subjects who recei...

Previous studies indicate that adolescents whose parents talk to them about sex tend to be less sexually active and more likely to use an effective means of contraception. This study sought to determine the relationship between parent-child communication about sex and young adolescents' reproductive and contraceptive knowledge and sexual attitudes....

There are few ways in which comparable measures of sexual arousal may be obtained from males and females. Because latency to orgasm is an objective measure that is equivalent for both sexes, it may be a useful dependent variable for the investigation of response patterns and differences in men and women. To explore this possibility 24 men and 18 wo...

Male and female undergraduates were administered the Gough-Heilbrun Adjective Check List and a questionnaire assessing menstrual regularity. The females' reported regularity was positively correlated with scales for self-control, order, and endurance, demonstrating that women who describe themselves as orderly, methodical, persevering, and dependab...