Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Sexual Promiscuity

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

  • 77 Accesses

Synonyms

Casual sex; Sexual infidelity; Sexually unrestricted; Short-term mating; Sociosexuality

Definition

Sexual promiscuity refers to mating with more than one partner in a relatively short-time period (e.g., within one estrus cycle). Promiscuous individuals may or may not exhibit long-term social bond(s) with one (or more) partner(s).

Introduction

Under some conditions, mating with multiple partners is adaptive. Evolutionary perspectives emphasize adaptive psychological sex differences involved in producing promiscuous sexual behavior. In addition to such sex-differentiated and species-typical psychological adaptations underlying promiscuous sexual behavior, evolutionary perspectives point to individual and socio-ecological variation to explain individual-level and population-level differences in sexual psychology and behavior. We briefly review some theory and evidence for context-dependent adaptations designed for sexually promiscuous behavior. We refer to “sexual...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Buss, D. M. (1998). Sexual strategies theory: Historical origins and current status. Journal of Sex Research, 35(1), 19–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Durante, K. M., Griskevicius, V., Simpson, J. A., Cantu, S. M., & Li, N. P. (2012). Ovulation leads women to perceive sexy cads as good dads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(2), 292.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Druschel, B. A., & Sherman, M. F. (1999). Disgust sensitivity as a function of the Big Five and gender. Personality and Individual Differences, 26(4), 739–748.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gildersleeve, K., Haselton, M. G., & Fales, M. R. (2014). Do women’s mate preferences change across the ovulatory cycle? A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 140(5), 1205.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gwynne, D. T., & Simmons, L. W. (1990). Experimental reversal of courtship roles in an insect. Nature, 346(6280), 172–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill, S. E., Prokosch, M. L., & DelPriore, D. J. (2015). The impact of perceived disease threat on women’s desire for novel dating and sexual partners: Is variety the best medicine? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 244–261.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lukaszewski, A. W., & Roney, J. R. (2011). The origins of extraversion: Joint effects of facultative calibration and genetic polymorphism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(3), 409–421.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lukaszewski, A. W., & von Rueden, C. R. (2015). The extraversion continuum in evolutionary perspective: A review of recent theory and evidence. Personality and Individual Differences, 77, 186–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nettle, D. (2005). An evolutionary approach to the extraversion continuum. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(4), 363–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nettle, D. (2011). Evolutionary perspectives on the five-factor model of personality. In D. M. Buss & P. H. Hawley (Eds.), The evolution of personality and individual differences (pp. 5–28). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Price, M. E., Pound, N., & Scott, I. M. (2014). Female economic dependence and the morality of promiscuity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43(7), 1289–1301.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Schacht, R., & Mulder, M. B. (2015). Sex ratio effects on reproductive strategies in humans. Royal Society Open Science, 2(1), 140402.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Schmitt, D. P. (2005). Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A 48-nation study of sex, culture, and strategies of human mating. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(02), 247–275.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Thornhill, R., Fincher, C. L., Murray, D. R., & Schaller, M. (2010). Zoonotic and non-zoonotic diseases in relation to human personality and societal values: Support for the parasite-stress model. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(2), 151–169.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, R. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection (Vol. 136, p. 179). Cambridge, MA: Biological Laboratories, Harvard University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, T. M., & Reise, S. P. (1997). Personality and unrestricted sexual behavior: Correlations of sociosexuality in Caucasian and Asian college students. Journal of Research in Personality, 31(2), 166–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Criminal Justice, Middle Georgia State University, Macon, GA, USA

    Paul R. Gladden & Amanda Tedesco

Authors
  1. Paul R. Gladden
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Amanda Tedesco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul R. Gladden .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Jon Sefcek

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Gladden, P.R., Tedesco, A. (2018). Sexual Promiscuity. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1572-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1572-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation