Research on sexual behavior existed long before we talked about it on social media

In 1976, Social Psychology published a piece that today sounds like an archaeological relic. It recounted the evolution of the study of sexual behavior: it had started with less risqué topics—animal behavior, primitive cultures, anomalies. Then came the shocks: Freud, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson. Each one pushed the boundary of what could be investigated, and therefore understood.

Anyone who does sex education knows it: with every step forward in research, someone cries scandal. And that's where true knowledge is born.

It wasn't pure academic curiosity. It was an attempt to drag sexuality out of the enclosure of the forbidden and into the laboratories of social psychology.

It changed everything.

Kinsey and the Difference You Don't Expect

Alfred Kinsey, with his reports on male and female behavior in the 1940s and 1950s, showed how broad the variety of sexual practices was. Ordinary, respectable people did things society called deviant.

Criticism poured in. Kinsey's samples were skewed, full of volunteers, unrepresentative. Jenkins, in 2010, pointed this out clearly. Yet without that pioneering work, we wouldn't have the basis to talk about normalization of desire.

Kinsey recorded a bewildering diversity. Sex alone, in couples, in groups. Practices that today would fall under BDSM and that at the time were labeled as pathologies.

Social psychology was never the same again.

Social psychology meets sex (and it's not a blind date)

The 1976 article saw the study of sexual behavior as a continuous evolution. From animals and primitive peoples, the focus had shifted to the contemporary human being, normal and close at hand.

It was not a linear path. Every step met resistance. Freud was accused of obsessing society with the libido. Kinsey of corrupting morality. Masters and Johnson of reducing love to physiology.

Today we know they were all right, in their own way. Social psychology has shown that sexual behavior depends on norms, expectations, identity. It is not just biology or individual choice.

That's why discussing culture of consent makes sense today: we read it as a social phenomenon, not just as a personal rule.

What this story teaches us (and what still eludes us)

Research on sexual behavior has always had a problem: those who volunteer to talk about their sexual lives do not represent everyone. Researchers know this. Samples are skewed toward people who are more open and uninhibited.

Even so, the work of Kinsey and his successors has shattered stereotypes. It has shown that women have desires as complex as men's. That sexual orientation is not binary. That fantasies are not a danger.

It's not strange.

An open question remains: how much of what we know about sexual behavior is universal, and how much depends on culture, era, and the sample of volunteers? Social psychology is still looking for answers. Those who work on these topics know we don't have enough.

Sources and references

• Social Psychology and the Study of Sexual Behavior – Journal of Social Psychology
• Sexual Behavior – Psychology (Open Educational Resource)
• Psychology, Emotion and Motivation, Sexual Behavior – OpenEd CUNY
• The Kinsey Institute – Research and Resources
• AASECT – American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists