Why Do Women’s Sexual Attitudes and Behavior Vary across Sexual Orientations? Evaluating the Psychosocial Stress Hypothesis

The current work evaluates whether variation in sexual risk taking among adult women across self-identified sexual orientations can be accounted for by differences in mating costs, mating opportunities, or psychosocial stress. Results suggest that differential psychosocial stress due to stigma may explain variation in women’s sexual permissiveness across sexual orientations.