Are Spiritual Women More Sexual?

Men, when your wife/girlfriend/fiancée tells you she wants to take up yoga, instead of laughing at her for picking up yet another hobby to go along with her unfinished scrapbooks, half-completed knitting and feeble attempts at recycling, consider this: a recent study has shown that women who are more spiritual tend to have more sex. In a study out of the University of Kentucky, it was discovered that, even over alcohol consumption, rash impulses and religion, having a greater sense of spirituality most affects a young female adult’s sexual life.

Jessica Burris, a researcher in the study, states, “I think people have been well aware of the role that religious and spiritual matters play in everyday life for a very long time. But in the research literature, the unique qualities of spirituality — apart from religiousness — are not usually considered.” Researchers in the study used a measure called the Spiritual Transcendence Scale. The “unique qualities” that Burris refers to include fulfillment of prayers, universality and a feeling of being connected. While the study included questions on all three qualities, the data demonstrated that a feeling of being connected was the most impacting in terms of affecting one’s sexual activity. Having this feeling usually caused one to have sex with multiple partners and to have unprotected sex (not using condoms).

Burris states, “Believing one is intimately tied to other human beings and that interconnectedness and harmony are indispensible may lead one to believe sexual intimacy possesses a divine or transcendent quality in itself. In fact, ascribing sacred qualities to sex has been positively associated with positive affective reactions to sex, frequency of sex, and number of sexual partners among university students.” Participants in the study all came from the University of Kentucky. They included over 350 students with over 60% of them being female. Each of the study’s participants were asked to honestly answer questions which included such topics as spirituality, religious background, impulsive actions, alcohol consumption and sexual activities.

The statements in the questionnaires required the participant to rank their agreement level with the statement. For example, one spirituality-based statement read, “In the quiet of my prayers and/or meditations, I find a sense of wholeness.” Another stated, “Although individual people may be difficult, I feel an emotional bond with all of humanity.” Results from the study showed that men who ranked high in terms of spirituality did not seem to have their sexual lives affected in a positive way; in actuality, how often they had sex decreased. Researchers in the study concluded that for men spirituality and sex are not linked since for many men sex does not have to necessarily lead to an emotional attachment.

In the questionnaire, spirituality amongst the women participants, however, did impact in terms how many sexual partners a woman had, how often a woman had sexual relations and whether or not a woman decided to use a condom for protection. Burris states, “It is possible female young adults yearn for greater connectedness with other humans. Spirituality, at least for women, could be considered a risk factor.” Some may wonder if spirituality directly affects a woman’s sexuality or if a woman who considers herself spiritual is really just a bit more open-minded and carefree. Burris responds, “Research suggests that spirituality provides predictive utility over and above personality traits such as conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness. So while it may be the case that spirituality is correlated with other variables that show similar relationships with human sexuality and sexual practices (such as openness to experiences), the relationship we observed, in my opinion, cannot simply be explained away by other variables.”