Sex And Eating: Relationships Based On Behavior Psychology And Socio-culture

Sex and eating are natural, instinctive needs: the former encourages reproduction, ensuring continuation of the species, whereas the latter is required for individual survival. As the most important part of all kind of lives, is there any relationship between sex and eating? Much literature has explored sex and eating separately from different perspectives and has indirectly found out that sex and eating had something in common indicating a link between sex and eating. Besides, sex and eating are often referred to simultaneously. For example, in Chinese culture, the concepts of food and sex are traditionally linked, and many expressions describe food and sex in terms of each other, such as “a beauty to feast one’s eyes on”. However, little research has explored the connection of sex and eating. We supposed that the connection of sex and eating is obligated to the frequent appearance of them in culture. So we are going to directly explore relationships between sex and eating not only from the perspective of psychology and behavior, but also of social culture.In addition, much research has respectively investigated sex and eating as stress reliever. Life experiences also expressed that sex and eating were often used to manage negative mood or stress and males and females behave differently. So we are also going to simultaneously investigate changes in sex and eating under stress. At last, according to much literature, it seemed to be that there were gender differences in sex and eating. Therefore, we wonder if there is any gender difference in the relationship between sex and eating. In a word, we will explore sex and eating from three perspectives to understand their relationship gradually.Research 1 investigated the behavioral and psychological relationships between sex and eating.To solve this question, we explored if there was any relationship between wanting(liking) for sex and eating from a reward perspective. Further, we also explored wanting(liking) models of sex and eating. Participants were recruited via the internet to fill in questionnaires about wanting and likingfor sex and eating. The results revealed that first, there was a positive correlation between wanting for sex and wanting to eat only for males, and the relationship between liking for sex and eating was also positive for males and not significant in females. Second, the correlation between sociosexual orientation and wanting to eat was significant only in females, and there was no significant correlation between sociosexual orientation and liking for eating. Third, emotional sex cravings(or emotional sexual activity) was positively correlated with emotional food cravings(or emotional eating behavior), with a higher magnitude correlation in males than females. Finally,analysis of wanting(liking) models of sex and eating for males and females revealed three models for wanting among females: high wanting, low wanting for eating, and low wanting for sex; and two models for wanting among males: high wanting and low wanting. Liking for sex and eating among females consisted of two types of model: high liking and low liking; whereas three type models existed for males: high liking for sex, high liking for eating, and low liking. Research 1suggested that there existed positive relationship between sex and eating, but this relationship was displayed only in males. The magnitude of correlation between sex and eating under negative mood or stress was higher in males than in females. Taken together, we speculated that the roles of sex and eating may be more equivalent in males’ lives than females’. The analysis of sex and eating model revealed that, although both sex and eating were both important, there were more than one kind of sex and eating model among the two genders. It was possible that different motivations to reproduce and personal survival accounted for the different models.Research 2 explored how stress affected sex and eating and whether there was any gender difference. Participants were recruited via the internet to complete questionnaires about stress,changes in eating and sexuality(including changes in overall amount eaten, eating/sexual activity frequency, wanting, and liking for eating/sex in the last month). The results showed that:(1) For males, stress was positively correlated with changes in both eating and sex in general. Specifically,stress could predict males’ eating frequency, wanting to eat, liking for eating, sexual activity frequency and wanting for sex. Nevertheless, the correlation of stress and liking for eating was no longer significant after Bonferroni correction.(2) For females, stress was only positive correlated with sex. Stress could predict females’ wanting and liking for sex. But after Bonferroni correction stress could only predict liking for sex. That is, females would like sex more under stress. Our results suggested that in China, males may relieve stress by eating and sexual activity, while females do not have uniform reaction to stress.Research 3 tried to explain the reason of simultaneously appearance of sex and eating in many kind of culture from social culture perspective. We supposed that this phenomenon was due to the sexual metaphor in eating. Participants were recruited and randomly allocated to groups whereinthey were either exposed to images of food or neutral images. Then, they were asked to judge a series of male and female smiling faces in terms of whether the people in the images were expressing sexual attractiveness. The results showed that people exposed to food images were more likely than were those exposed to neutral images to perceive target people as expressing sexual attractiveness. These results suggest that exposure to food images may prime eating-related cognitions, which carries the “sex” connotation and thus sexual cognitions that are in turn projected onto neutral targets. Thus, smiling faces were perceived to be having more sexual intent. In sum,our findings demonstrated that eating had a sexual metaphor.In general, these three researches demonstrated that first, there were relationships between sex and eating in behavior and psychology, and their connections were only linked in males. And these results remained the same even under negative mood or stress condition. Second, there were more than one model for wanting(liking) for eating and sex, and both sexes had different model. Third,the two genders reacted differently to stress, which was consistent with the previous results we have found. It seemed likely that males would use sex and eating as stress relievers, while females had no unique reaction to stress. At last, our results also showed that eating had a sexual metaphor indicating that the association of sex and eating had already infiltrated into all aspects of social life.