The Impact of Religious Commitment on Women’s Sexual Self-Esteem

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2016-07Author
Abbott, Dena M.
Harris, Jeff E.
Mollen, Debra
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Show full item recordAbstract
Religious commitment is associated with decreased sexual activity, poor
sexual satisfaction, and sexual guilt, particularly among women. The purpose of this
paper was to investigate how religious commitment is related to sexual self-esteem
among women. Participants included 196 female undergraduate students, 87 % of
whom identified as Christian. Participants completed the Sexual Self-Esteem
Inventory for Women (SSEI-W), Religious Commitment Inventory-10, Revised
Religious Fundamentalism Scale, Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale, and a measure of
their perception of God’s view of sex. Results suggested that women with high
religious commitment held more conservative sexual attitudes. Significant relationships
between religious commitment and two subscales (moral judgment and
attractiveness) of the SSEI-W revealed that women with high religious commitment
were less likely to perceive sex as congruent with their moral values and simultaneously
reported significantly greater confidence in their sexual attractiveness. A
significant relationship between religious commitment and overall sexual self-esteem
was found for women whose religion of origin was Catholicism, such that
those with higher religious commitment reported lower sexual self-esteem. A
hierarchical regression analysis revealed that high religious commitment and perception
that God viewed sex negatively independently predicted lower sexual selfesteem,
as related to moral judgment. Implications of the findings are provided. *This article was published with the assistance of the Texas Woman's University Libraries Open Access Fund. The original article can be found at:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9374-x
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