The Impact Of Religiosity And Self-Esteem On The Sexual Autonomy

Due to the fact that some individuals revere religion as a major part of everyday life, values, and beliefs, it is evident that religiosity could have an effect on the behaviors of individuals. In addition to religiosity, this idea also applies to self-esteem. However, in order to obtain reliable and accurate data, it is necessary to explore what specific behaviors are being affected by religiosity and self-esteem. It is also important to know how these factors affect certain groups. Specifically, this review of literature will explore past research on religiosity, self-esteem, and sexual autonomy in certain groups of individuals

In 1979, Dickstein and Hardy conducted research on self-esteem, autonomy, and moral behavior in college aged men and women. They found that self-esteem was a very significant variable within women. They also found that self-esteem had a positive relationship with autonomy. However, they used the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS) to measure self esteem; when Dickstien and Hardy used this scale in their research in 1979, validity studies being conducted were yielding varied results. According to Dickstien and Hardy (1979) the scale possessed a test-retest reliability in the high. 80s. However, they did not provide information on the overall reliability and validity of the scale. In this study the researchers used 100 subjects: 50 males and 50 female, and the race of these individuals is not specified. This study was conducted over 30 years ago; it is possible that the values of women and men have most likely changed significantly since that time.

Research on the religiosity and the sexuality of women was conducted in 1995. In their study, Davidson, Darling, and Norton et al. (1995) assessed the effects of religiosity on sexual behavior and sexual satisfaction in 868 female nurses from 15 varying states. They measured the religiosity of participants by asking two self-evaluating questions. The first question asked the participant how religious she was compared to others: more than others, about the same as others, or less than others. The second question asked how often the individual attended church services: have not attended in the past year, attended yearly, attended monthly, attended weekly. Past research in 1977 had found that frequency in church attendance did have a correlation with higher levels of sexual satisfaction. However, research found by Davidson et. al revealed no significances between the two, even after splitting sexual satisfaction into two separate categories: physiological and psychological sexual satisfaction. Considering the gaps in time, it is possible that the overall outlook of women have changed concerning religiosity and sexuality. Consequently, Davidson et al. were correct to conclude that there was more research that needed to be done regarding the figurations used to measure religiosity and its effects on sexual attitudes. It is evident that the researchers in this study did not use a thorough enough items to accurately measure religiosity. Therefore, creating or administering a more thorough set of items to measure religiosity will most likely present more accurate data regarding its effects.

Ten years later a study was conducted on the effects of religiosity and spirituality on the sexual attitudes of 330 college students, 72% of the participants were female and 34% of the participants were African American. Unlike the previously study mentioned, Beckwith and Morrow used a more reliable scale: The Duke Religion Scale, which was created in 1997 and has an overall reliability of. 88. This equipped researchers with a more accurate representation of what makes an individual more religious than another. The researchers believed that previous studies performed stating low religiosity yielded a greater possibility for sexually permissive attitudes, proved that religiosity does have a significant impact on an individual’s sexual behaviors. In fact, Beckwith and Morrow found that higher levels religiosity would most likely predict lower levels of sexual permissive attitudes. Considering these findings, could religiosity also have an effect on the sexual autonomy of female African American college students?

Another study in 2005 explored the effects of investing in gender norms and the sexual experience on a predominantly white population. They hypothesized that, “men and women who invest in gender norms are more likely to base self-esteem on others’ approval and thus feel sexual autonomy and consequently experience less sexual satisfaction”. The Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale was used to measure basing self-esteem on others approval. The scale has 35-items total, however, the researchers in this study only concentrated on the Approval From Others sub scale, which contains 5 items with an internal validity of. 87. Overall it is said that the scale may be exposed to the social desirability effect, but that may have been combatted when the researchers parceled the items in order to reduce bias. In addition, sexual autonomy was computed using 3 items from the scale used in the self-determination theory. Currently known as the Index of Autonomous Functioning, the scale is said to have acceptable validity. The items assessed how self-determined the students considered their sexual behaviors the items possessed an internal consistency of. 75. Although it was not expressed in the article, the data from this study revealed many significant findings: specifically in women. For example, sexual autonomy had a negative relationship with approval contingency. This means that a woman who is very sexually autonomous is less likely to base her self-esteem on others’ approval and a woman who is less sexually autonomous is more likely to base her self-esteem on others’ approval. Considering this study was done a predominantly white population it would be beneficial to explore the views of women of other races.

In 2007 another study was published researching the effects of self-esteem on autonomy and control motivation. They used a group of 77 participants who were predominantly white women. In this particular study, the researchers developed their own material to prime autonomy and control motivation in the participants. Hodgins et al. (2007) used the 20-item State Self-Esteem scale that was developed in 1991 in order to measure explicit self-esteem and an implicit self-esteem measure developed by Spalding and Hardin in 1999. Their data revealed that men had higher explicit self-esteem than women. Because the research was done on a population of mostly white women, it is difficult to say that the results of the research may apply to all races of women. Also, it is difficult to say that these results are accurate. The fact that significantly more women were surveyed could easily create the phenomenon that the women in the study had lower self-esteems than the men.

A more recent study was conducted in 2016 using 207 female college students of multiple races. The study assessed the effects of religious commitment on women’s self-esteem. The data reported that women with higher levels of religious commitment were less likely to partake in sexually permissive behaviors and that religious commitment had no correlation with sexual self-esteem. Another interesting finding was that women with sexual permissive attitudes were less likely to feel in control of their sexual acts. It is evident that Abbottt et al. (2016) were very thorough in the measurement tools they chose: the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory for Women, which yields an internal consistency of. 96, was used to measure self-esteem. They used permissiveness subscale of The Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale to measure attitudes about sex. The permissiveness scale also has a high internal consistency of over. 90. Based off their data, Abbot et al. concluded that religious commitment did have a varied effect on the sexual self-esteem of women. Considering the consistency of their measurement tools, the diversity of their participants, and the up to date information provided, it is safe to say that the research conducted by Abbott et al. leads researchers to attempt to answer more in-depth questions concerning how religious beliefs may affect women in different ways, especially women of certain races and ethnic backgrounds.

Considering past and present research on religiosity, self-esteem, and sexual autonomy, there is little to no research exploring the effects of religiosity and self-esteem on sexual autonomy of female African American college students. There are a few studies on groups of predominately white women that yield significant results; however, none have been done on a predominately African American population. In addition to the issue of diversity, there is also a lack for research assessing sexual autonomy of women and men resulting in a lack of tools that specifically measure sexual autonomy. More data may be needed on the topic of sexual autonomy in order to develop a more specific scale. Overall, there are no studies that specifically analyze the effects of religiosity and self-esteem on sexual autonomy. Considering past research it is possible that these variables could have a correlation.