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Sexual economics theory in define social exchange and female resource theory, local sexual market places, compitition among women and sex and money outside prostitution.
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Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions Roy F. Baumeister Florida State University Kathleen D. Vohs University of British Columbia RUNNING HEAD: Sexual Economics; Sex as Female Resource In press, Personality and Social Psychology Review
Abstract A heterosexual community can be analyzed as a marketplace in which men seek to acquire sex from women by offering other resources in exchange. Societies will therefore define gender roles as if women are sellers and men buyers of sex. Societies will endow female sexuality, but not male sexuality, with value (as in virginity, fidelity, chastity). The sexual activities of different couples are loosely interrelated by a marketplace, instead of being fully separate or private, and each couple's decisions may be influenced by market conditions. Economic principles suggest that the price of sex will depend on supply and demand, competition among sellers, variations in product, collusion among sellers, and other factors. Research findings show gender asymmetries (reflecting the complementary economic roles) in prostitution, courtship, infidelity and divorce, female competition, the sexual revolution and changing norms, unequal status between partners, cultural suppression of female sexuality, abusive relationships, rape, and sexual attitudes.
goods (such as services) and nonmonetary media of exchange (such as time or emotion). In adopting such an approach, our theory will therefore be primarily cultural in the sense that it looks at how individual behavior is shaped by the market and other aspects of the collective network, but just as economic exchange is based on what nature has shaped people to want and need, natural motivations and tendencies will provide a foundation for the sexual economy. Although applying economic principles to sex may seem novel, psychology has invoked economic theories in other contexts. Social exchange theory has been used to analyze a broad range of social interactions (e.g., Blau, 1964; Homans, 1950, 1961; Sprecher, 1998), based on the assumption that each party in an interaction gives something and gets something in return. Analyzing the costs and benefits of various interpersonal behavior furnishes a useful basis for making predictions about how people will think, feel, and choose to act. In our view, previous attempts to apply social exchange theory to sex have neglected one crucial aspect, which will be featured in this manuscript. Specifically, sex is a female resource. Put another way, cultural systems will tend to endow female sexuality with value, whereas male sexuality is treated by society as relatively worthless. As a result, sexual intercourse by itself is not an equal exchange, but rather an instance of the man getting something of value from the woman. To make the exchange equal, the man must give her something else in return, and his own sexual participation does not have enough value to constitute this. How much he gives her in terms of nonsexual resources will depend on the price (so to speak) set by the local culture and on her relative standing on valued sexual characteristics (see Table 1). When sex happens, therefore, it will often be in a context in which the man gives the woman material gifts, consideration and respect, commitment to a relationship as desired by her, or other goods.
There are two main parts to this manuscript. The first will consist of an extended exposition of the theory. We shall attempt to develop and elaborate the economic analysis of sex from an exchange perspective as thoroughly as we can, even extending to aspects and predictions that are not fully testable against extant data. The second section will then review published empirical findings about many patterns of sexual behavior, as a way of evaluating the exchange theory’s capacity to account for what is known. Social Exchange and Female Resource Theory Social exchange theory analyzes interactions between two parties by examining the costs and benefits to each. Interactions are only likely to continue if each party gains more than it loses. Crucially, the exchange analysis assumes that in each social interaction each person gives something to the other and gains something from the other (hence the exchange). The value of what is gained and exchanged depends in part on the preferences of the individuals and in part on the broader market. By applying economic principles to social rewards, one can make predictions about how social behavior will proceed. How much someone pays for a banana, for example, depends partly on that person’s hunger and liking for bananas, but also partly on the shifting balance between the local community’s supply of bananas and its demand for them. The central point to our social exchange analysis of sex is that sex is essentially a female resource. When a man and a woman have sex, therefore, the woman is giving something of value to the man. In that sense, the interaction is one-sided — unless the man gives the woman something else of comparable value. Although the social exchange analysis will invoke a social system to explain sex and is therefore essentially a cultural theory, ironically its most famous advocate came from evolutionary theory (although Cott, 1977, developed a similar line of analysis in a feminist historical context). Symons (1979) observed that “Everywhere sex is understood to be
limitations — and we think that would be preferable to relying on impressions and stereotypes, as many writers currently must. Sex as Female Resource A consideration of the cultural economy of sex goes beyond the simple recognition that men want sex from women. Insofar as that is generally true, the social network will recognize it and organize the behavior of individuals and couples on that basis. Treating sex as a female resource means that each culture (we define culture as an information- based social system) will endow female sexuality with value, unlike male sexuality. Women will receive other valued goods in return for their sexual favors. Male sexuality, in contrast, cannot be exchanged for other goods. Put another way, women become the suppliers of sex, whereas men constitute the demand for it and play the role of purchasers and consumers. Even though in one sense a man and a woman who are having sexual intercourse are both doing similar things, socially they are doing quite different things. Thus, the first prediction based on the social exchange theory of sex is that interpersonal processes associated with sexual behavior will reveal a fundamental difference in gender roles. Men will offer women other resources in exchange for sex, but women will not give men resources for sex (except perhaps in highly unusual circumstances). In any event, the bottom line is that sexual activity by females has exchange value, whereas male sexuality does not. Female virginity, chastity, fidelity, virtuous reputation, and similar indicators will have positive values that will be mostly absent in the male (see Table 1). Put another way, it will matter more to the formation and continuation of a relationship whether the woman is a virgin than whether the man is; whether the woman engages in sex with another partner than whether the man does; and so forth.
Why a Female Resource? Why would sex be a female resource? Symons’s (1979) original answer focused on reproductive strategies shaped by evolution as the ultimate cause. In his account, the minimal male investment in parenthood is almost zero, whereas for a woman it is substantial. Therefore, he proposed, sex for a man is all benefit with little or no cost, whereas for a woman the potential cost (possible pregnancy, with pain and possibly death attending childbirth) is substantial even if the pleasure is quite high. The risk of high cost will be an incentive for the woman to hold back, and so the man must offer her some benefits to offset this. However, Symons also acknowledged (p. 261) that human beings do not necessarily care about these ultimate causes, and so the immediate psychological factors that lead people to treat sex as a medium of exchange require further explanation. A somewhat different explanation for why sex is a female resource can be deduced from motivational differences. Social exchange theory has featured the “principle of least interest” (Waller & Hill, 1951). According to that principle, a party gains power by virtue of wanting a connection less than the other wants it. For example, Waller and Hill proposed that the person who is less in love has more power to shape and influence the relationship, because the one who is more in love will be more willing to make compromises and offer other inducements in order to keep the relationship going. If men want sex more than women, therefore, men would have to offer other benefits to persuade women to have sex, even if women desire and enjoy sex too. Is it plausible that men desire sex more than women? A literature review recently examined the question of gender differences in sex drive by comparing men and women on behavioral indices of sex drive (Baumeister, Catanese, & Vohs, 2001). On every measure, men were found to display greater sexual motivation than women. Specifically, men think about sex more often, have more frequent fantasies, are more frequently aroused, desire sex more often (both early and late in relationships, and outside of relationships), desire a
aging, and the reduced freedom of both spouses to seek other partners and thereby ensure that they get full market value. A last perspective on why sex is a female resource would invoke the economic subjugation of women in society. In hunter-gatherer and subsistence farming societies, men and women already had separate roles and spheres of activity, both of which made vital contributions to survival. The development of a broader sphere of economic and political activity occurred mainly from the male sphere, however, and so as wealth and power were created in society, they were created by and owned by men, leaving women at a disadvantage (see Wood & Eagly, 2002). Sex was one of the few resources women had with which to barter for access to these new, social resources (and the material resources that often depended on the social resources). The social exchange surrounding sex may therefore be especially associated with cultures and periods in which women lack avenues other than being a supplier of sex for obtaining material and social resources. The Local Sexual Marketplace Most theories of sex have acknowledged that local norms exist to guide behavior, and even that people are curious to learn about the sex acts of others as a way of learning what those norms are. The exchange theory endows those norms with much greater power and importance, however. One crucial feature of the social exchange analysis is that all the sexual activities within a community are loosely interconnected as part of a sexual marketplace. Sex is therefore not entirely a private matter between two consenting adults. Rather, sex becomes part of an economic system, just as the sale of a house is not purely a transaction between two parties but is tied in to the local economy and housing market. Stated this way, our analysis is compatible with recent dynamical systems approaches to gender differences in mate selection. A comprehensive paper emphasizing emergent social norms during mate selection (Kenrick, Li, & Butner, 2003) noted that male and female mate selection does not occur in a vacuum but rather that men and women
influence each other’s sexual choices. This reciprocal-influences approach is similar to our perspective, in which the local cultural marketplace influences the behavior of individuals, which in turn changes local norms and expectations, which cycle around again to influence individuals’ behavior. Hence in our model, the local culture and the individuals therein affect one another in a recursive fashion. The social exchange analysis emphasizes that sex is a female resource, so that men must offer women other resources in exchange for it. But how much? The price of sex (so to speak) may vary widely. In order to commence a sexual relationship with a particular woman, a man may have to offer her a fancy dinner, or a long series of compliments, or a month of respectful attention, or a lifetime promise to share all his wealth and earnings with her exclusively. This price is negotiated between the two individuals in the context of the prices that other, similar couples set. Sexual norms thus constitute a kind of local going rate as to the appropriate price for sex. Across cultures and across different historical periods, the going rate may vary widely. Within a given community, however, it probably varies much less. Market forces will tend to stabilize this rate within a community (but not necessarily across communities). To illustrate, suppose a particular woman demands too high a price for sex, such as if she refuses to have sex until the man has promised to marry her and has given her an engagement ring. Her suitor may abandon her and turn his attention to another woman – but only if other women in the community will offer sex at a significantly lower price. If all the woman in her community demand an engagement ring before giving sex, however, the man will be more likely to agree. A related prediction is that a low price of sex favors men, whereas a high price favors women. Therefore men will tend to support initiatives that lower the price of sex, whereas women will generally try to support a higher price. Ideologies of “free love” (that
conversation may feature and exaggerate sexual activity, whereas female conversation should conceal and understate sex. Supply and Demand The laws of supply and demand can be substantiated in all sorts of marketplaces, and there is no reason that sex should be an exception. With sex, the female resource hypothesis depicts that women constitute the supply and men constitute the demand. Patterns of sexual activity should change drastically with the balance between supply and demand, such as the sex ratio. When the pool of eligible women (that is, young, unattached female adults) is much larger than the pool of eligible men, supply can be said to exceed demand. The price will therefore drop, which means that men will be able to obtain sex without giving or promising much in return. In contrast, a shortage of eligible women relative to men means that demand outstrips supply, and so the price is likely to be high. Thus, contrary to any simple view that power in the marketplace depends on having a majority, the price of sex will tend to favor the minority gender. More precisely, men will give women more resources for sex when men outnumber women than when women outnumber men. Another common result of shortages of desired goods is that low-cost substitutes become available. Prostitution and pornography may be regarded as low-cost substitutes for the preferred alternative of having sexual relations with a special, desired partner (e.g., Cott, 1977). The economics of the sexual marketplace would suggest that such low-cost alternatives will be targeted for men and to varying degrees will be welcomed by men. In contrast, women should generally oppose them as if they represent a threat to women generally — which they do, in an important sense. Put another way, why should a woman care whether men in her community purchase pornographic materials and masturbate? But
if pornography satisfies some of the male demand for sex, then it may reduce the total demand for her own sexual favors, and as a result the price she can obtain will be lower. Assuming that most men would prefer to have sex with affectionate female partners (as opposed to prostitutes or by masturbating while watching pornography), the women in a community would potentially have a monopoly if they could band together to reduce competition among themselves. A rational economic strategy that many monopolies or cartels have pursued is to try to increase the price of their assets by artificially restricting the supply. With sex, this would entail having the women put pressure on each other to exercise sexual restraint and hold out for a high price (such as a commitment to marriage) before engaging in sex. Economic history suggests that such efforts, as in the case of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) are only intermittently successful and may often be undermined as individuals seek to underbid each other. Still, monopolies are sometimes sufficiently successful that most developed nations have found it necessary to enact laws against them. It would therefore not be surprising that economic self-interest would occasionally drive women to work together to restrain the availability of sex. Competition Among Women We have said that the sexual marketplace links together the negotiations and sexual activities of all the different couples and will tend to stabilize the price of sex. This process of stabilization will remain incomplete, however, except in rare or extreme cases. Usually the price of sex will vary somewhat within a community. Some women can command higher prices than others for their sexual favors. In this section we consider some of the factors that will contribute to these variations in price. The more men desire any particular woman, the higher a price she can command. This is true in both senses of the word “more:” more men, and stronger desire. Most obviously, her sex appeal will influence how much and how many men want her. An
any particular one of them. Given her role in the sexual marketplace, she will rationally seek to get many men to desire her, but she does not want to have sex with most of them. In fact, having sex with different partners would be a problematic strategy for a woman. As social exchange theorists emphasize, the value of any commodity rises and falls with scarcity. Even such fully renewable resources as praise can rise or fall in value as a function of how widely they are distributed (Blau, 1964; Jones & Wortman, 1973). A compliment may have only modest value from someone who praises everybody liberally, whereas the exact same compliment might have much higher value if given by someone who is perceived as rarely praising anyone. By analogy, sex would have high value if the woman has had few lovers or is known to be reluctant to grant sexual favors, whereas the same activity might have less value if the woman is reputed to be loose or to have had many lovers. The amount a man would be willing to give in order to have sex with the woman would therefore differ as a function of her (perceived) sexual history. In this respect, the woman’s sexual favors are not a fully renewable resource, and the woman will have some incentive to grant them only sparingly. Thus, a woman’s sexual favors lose value as she distributes them widely. In consequence, she has an incentive to be selective in her sexual partners and to maintain a reputation for having relatively few partners. Put another way, a woman has two resources to consider. Actual sexual activity is a fully renewable resource, insofar as her ability to engage in sex is not heavily dependent on what she has done previously. In contrast, her reputation is a non-renewable resource. A fully rational approach to social exchange would therefore cause the woman to care less about what she actually does than about what she is perceived by the community as doing. Whenever she engages in sex, she should seek to keep it somewhat secret and deniable, so that her reputation is that of someone whose sexual favors are highly exclusive and therefore of high value.
Men are far less constrained by these concerns, and so men would be more willing to admit and even exaggerate how much sex they have had. In fact, if low-cost sex represents a loss for the woman, it may be regarded as a gain for the man, and so the man who can boast of multiple lovers without incurring substantial costs (such as having had to marry each sex partner) may lay claim to high respect from other men. As long as demand is high, competition among women may be confined to showing off one’s beauty to best advantage and maintaining a good reputation for sexual exclusivity. When supply is high relative to demand, however, other forms of competition may become necessary. Derogating rivals would be an obvious strategy, and this derogation would likely focus on the two main determinants of a rival’s sex appeal, namely her attractiveness and her exclusivity. Hence women who wish to derogate other women would portray them as either unattractive or as having had many lovers. In contrast, the accusation of having had many sex partners would not be an insult between men. Individual and Cultural Differences Earlier we speculated that sex might be a female resource either for reasons of innate differences in sexual desire or in terms of cultural access to resources. For a woman with any positive sexual desire to refrain from sex can be regarded as irrational, insofar as she denies herself some pleasure, and economic theories loathe assertions of irrationality. However, such refraining becomes rational if she can gain other resources by holding back on sex so as to maintain a high price. In particular, if she lacks alternative means of access to desired resources, sex may become an important resource for her to use to bargain for them. In our view, it is likely that both the milder female sex drive and the lack of access to other resources contributed to creating the market economy for sex, but certainly there is ample room to dispute which factor should be emphasized.
minor impact when they are starting out, because the community norms are powerful, but ten years into their marriage that difference may be one of the most salient determinants of their sex life and any exchange processes connected with it. In contrast, if the main factor is women’s lack of access to the valued resources in the male sphere, then cultural differences should outweigh individual (intracultural) ones. In some societies and some historical periods, women have had hardly any way to gain access to the highly valued goods created by men, including money, food, education, technological devices, and new products. In other societies, especially modern Western ones, women have been given all or nearly all the rights and privileges that men have, so they do not need to trade sex as their only way of securing these resources. The price of sex may well vary substantially between such cultures, especially insofar as women can work together to restrict men’s access to sex. In particular, in early hunter-gatherer societies, sexual economics may have operated in a much less effective manner, simply because there were relatively fewer goods around for women to gain by virtue of sex. Although we do not have systematic data, our impression is that both individual variation and cultural variations in the price of sex are substantial. Hence for the present it seems most plausible to conclude that sex is a female resource both because of the average gender difference in sex drive and because women have sometimes relied on sex as a principal means of access to a culture’s resources. Additional Implications Whereas competition between females is complicated by multiple factors, competition among males is relatively straightforward. As buyers in the exchange, males compete against each other simply by offering the desired woman more (that is, a higher price) for sex.
Sexual decision-making is likely to be more complex for the woman than the man. Faced with a suitor desiring sex, she may feel pulled in conflicting directions. Her own sexual desires, as well as the potential advantage to be gained over other women by underbidding (that is, offering sex at a slightly lower price in order to attract the man she wants) would encourage her to consent to having sex without asking for much in return. Meanwhile her desire to get a good price for her sexual favors would counsel restraint, as would her concern over developing a bad reputation and thereby lowering her own individual market value. The man’s role is not subject to such competing, contradictory forces, and so men may be able to decide easily, quickly, and consistently whether they desire sex with a particular woman or not. At the broadest level, a particular couple’s sexual negotiations may be linked not only to the sexual norms of the local community but to the socioeconomic position of women in society. In principle, sex is only one of several means by which individual women can obtain resources, but in many societies women’s alternative options have been severely limited. When women lack educational, legal, occupational, political, and other economic opportunities, the price of sex may be a major determinant of each woman’s lifelong well-being. This too can cut both ways. If sex is women’s only ticket to the good life, then it becomes strategically important for women to maintain a high price. However, as individual women find themselves in desperate circumstances, many of them may find it necessary to offer sex relatively cheaply. Although these two trends may seem opposites, they are probably separated by socioeconomic status. The majority of women, which in modern societies would be in the middle class, should lean toward restraint in order to ensure that they obtained a good value for sex, whereas the women at the bottom of the economic spectrum would be the ones who would periodically find themselves in circumstances where they considered it necessary to trade sex for whatever they could get.
