Women's Sexual Self Schemas: A Cognitive Approach to Women's Sexuality

Research on the self suggests that one's self views are powerful regulators of both cognitive processing and behavioral responding. Sexual self schemas have been defined as cognitive generalizations about the sexual aspects of the self, that are derived from past experience, manifest in current experience, and that function to guide the processing of sexually-relevant social information. Previously, women's sexual self schemas have been assessed as a unidimensional, bipolar phenomenon. In the current research, the sexual self schema construct has been reconceptualized in terms of a bivariate model, in which positive and negative components of women's sexual self views independently contribute to their schematic representations. Using this bivariate approach, four types of schematic representations have been delineated, including Positive, Negative, Aschematic and Co-Schematic groups.The current research is composed of two independent studies. In Study 1,318 female undergraduate students completed anonymous questionnaires, which included the Sexual Self Schema scale as well as converging assessments of sexual behaviors, sexual responses (i.e., desire, arousal, orgasm and resolution) and sexual evaluations, as well as measures of past and current relationship patterns and romantic attachment styles. Obtained results highlight predictable patterns of schema group differences across sexual/romantic behaviors, cognitions and affects. Specifically, results replicated and extended previous Positive-Negative schema group contrasts, and, importantly, distinguished the response patterns of the newly-differentiated Aschematic and Co-Schematic groups. Finally, findings were related to existing theories of attachment style representations within the proposed cognitive hierarchy of the self.Next, the bivariate model of sexual self schema was tested with an explicitly cognitive, information-processing paradigm. In Study 2, 271 female undergraduates who had been prescreened with the Sexual Self Schema scale participated in a timed selfjudgment task. Drawing from previous research, we theorized that women's sexual self views would function to mediate the processing of schema-relevant cues. Moreover, we predicted potential interactive effects between self-schematic person variables and schemarelevant situational cues - which were controlled via a priming manipulation. Results provided preliminary support for these schematic hypotheses, and, in conjunction with Study 1 findings, stimulate theoretical speculations regarding the cognitive-affective response patterns of women with alternative sexual self views.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

1996

Author dc:creator

• Cyranowski, Jill M.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Andersen, Barbara

• Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1363685789

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1363685789