Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

Study Alert
Remember the diff erent 
approaches to sexual 
normality (deviation from 
the average, comparison 
against a standard, and 
psychological consequences).
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364 Chapter 
11 
Sexuality and Gender
dramatic shifts from one generation to another in defi nitions of what constitutes 
appropriate sexual behavior. People can and should make their own personal value 
judgments about what is appropriate in their own sex lives, but there are few uni-
versally accepted absolute rights and wrongs.
Surveying Sexual Behavior: 
What’s Happening Behind 
Closed Doors?
For most of recorded history, the vast variety of sexual practices remained shrouded 
in ignorance. However, in the late 1930s, biologist Alfred Kinsey launched a series 
of surveys on the sexual behavior of people in the United States. The result was the 
fi rst comprehensive attempt to see what people were actually doing sexually and 
was highlighted by the publication of Kinsey’s landmark volumes, Sexual Behavior 
in the Human Male (Kinsey et al., 1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(Kinsey et al., 1953). 
Kinsey’s efforts represented the fi rst major systematic approach to learning about 
human sexual behavior. Kinsey and his colleagues interviewed tens of thousands of 
individuals, and the interview techniques they devised are still regarded as exemplary 
because of their ability to elicit sensitive information without causing embarrassment. 
On the other hand, Kinsey’s samples refl ected an overrepresentation of college 
students, young people, well-educated individuals, urban dwellers, and people liv-
ing in Indiana and the northeast (Kirby, 1977). Furthermore, as with all surveys 
involving volunteer participants, it is unclear how representative his data are of 
people who refused to participate in the study. Similarly, because no survey observes 
behavior directly, it is diffi cult to assess how accurately people’s descriptions of what 
they do in private match their actual sexual practices. 
Kinsey’s work set the stage for later surveys. But due to political reasons (the 
use of government funding for sex surveys is controversial), surprisingly few com-
prehensive, large-scale, representative surveys—either in the United States or in other 
countries—have been carried out since Kinsey did his initial work (Pinkerton et al., 
2003). However, by examining the common results gleaned from different samples 
of subjects, we now have a reasonably complete picture of contemporary sexual 
practices—to which we turn next.