To assist you on your journey to greater sexual intelligence, this book takes a psychosocial approach, reflecting our view that psychological factors (emotions, attitudes, motivations) and social conditioning (the process by which we learn our social groups’ expectations and norms) have a crucial impact on sexual attitudes, values, and behaviors. Our Sexuality also covers the crucial biological foundations of human sexuality, including the roles of hormones and the nervous system, the biological components of sexual orientation, theories about the role of genetic selection through thousands of years of human evolution, and the impact of specific genetic variables on an individual. The term biopsychosocial describes the integration of the three dimensions.
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We may not always be aware of the extent to which our sexual attitudes and behaviors are strongly shaped by our society in general and by the particular social and cultural groups to which we belong (Laumann et al., 1994). The subtle ways we learn society’s expectations regarding sexuality often lead us to assume that our behaviors or feelings are biologically innate, or natural. However, an examination of sexuality in other periods of Western history or in other societies (or even in different ethnic, socioeconomic, and age groups within our own society) reveals a broad range of acceptable behavior. What we regard as natural is clearly relative. For example, Margaret Mead’s studies of Pacific Islanders from 1928 to 1949 found that Islander parents encouraged adolescents to be sexually active, demonstrating that expectations in the United States for adolescents to be chaste were by no means universal (Correa et al., 2008).
The diversity of sexual expression throughout the world tends to mask a fundamental generalization that can be applied without exception to all social orders: All societies have rules regulating the conduct of sexual behavior. "Every society shapes, structures, and constrains the development and expression of sexuality in all of its members" (Beach, 1978, p. 116). Knowledge about the impact of culture and individual experience can make it easier to understand and make decisions about our own sexuality. Therefore, the major emphasis in Our Sexuality will be on the psychosocial aspects of human sexuality. We hope this approach serves as an asset to you throughout this course and throughout your lives.